Statistical Forecast Development (P. Dallavalle):   Development of cool season MOS equations to predict total sky cover and ceiling height from the 0000 and 1200 UTC cycles of the Eta model has been completed for sites in the CONUS. Tests on independent data indicated that the forecast skill of the Eta MOS guidance was equal to or better than that of the AVN MOS guidance over much of the CONUS for forecast projections of 6 to 36 hours. After the 36-h projection, the AVN MOS guidance was generally more skillful. The Eta-based MOS total sky cover guidance is available in the MET alphanumeric product. The ceiling height guidance will be issued during FY03 as part of an expanded Eta MOS guidance package. Two papers describing earlier Eta MOS developmental work have been completed and will be presented at the upcoming American Meteorological Society's 19th Conference on Weather Analysis and Forecasting. "Eta-based MOS Probability of Precipitation Amount Guidance for the Continental United States" by J. Maloney and "Automated Gridded Forecast Guidance for Thunderstorms and Severe Local Storms Based on the Eta Model" by K. Hughes discuss precipitation and thunderstorm guidance, respectively.

Development of cool season equations to predict precipitation occurrence at a specific hour and during a 3-h period has been completed for the four forecast cycles of the Global Forecast System (GFS). Guidance generated from these equations will be used in the Interactive Forecast Preparation System (IFPS). We are also developing a new GFS-based system to predict the probability of specific categories of wind speed over 12-h periods for projections of 1 to 7 days in advance. Guidance from this system will be available during the 0000 UTC forecast cycle and will be part of the extended-range MOS alphanumeric messages (also known as the MEX products). We are currently developing and testing the guidance equations.

Operations and Software Support (M. Erickson): Effective with the 0000 UTC cycle on July 31, climatic normals for the maximum (max) and minimum (min) temperature and monthly relative frequencies of the occurrence of precipitation were added to the MEX products. The temperature normals were based on data provided by the National Climatic Data Center, while the precipitation relative frequencies were computed by MDL over a decade ago. The climatic information is available for a subset of the stations in the MEX products.

On July 9, MDL discontinued generation of the FONA10 product, an outdated SHEF message containing max/min temperature and probability of precipitation forecasts for stations in the northwest U.S. With the implementation of an enhanced max/min temperature guidance package for the Northwest River Forecast Center, this product was no longer needed.

Users of MDL MOS products available on the old NWS ftp server, tgsv1.nws.noaa.gov, have been notified that this service will be discontinued in late August. Instead, users have been asked to obtain the MOS products from the new NWS ftp server: tgftp.nws.noaa.gov. Conversion of the processes that make the products available to the new server has been an ongoing effort of staff from MDL, NCEP Central Operations, and the CIO's Telecommunications Operations Center. The MOS products, which are generated on the IBM supercomputer, are shipped to the NWS server where they are available to customers via anonymous ftp.

MESOSCALE PREDICTION PROJECT: (D. Ruth)

Statistical Update Development (J. Ghirardelli):  In collaboration with OCWWS we are analyzing QPF verification data generated in near-real-time by the National Precipitation Verification Unit. The objective is to determine the effectiveness of the new NWS QPF Process implemented in 2000. This month we studied QPF verification statistics for 16 months available in the NPVU website. The website contains verification data for QPFs from several operational NCEP NWP models, human-prepared QPFs from HPC, and the RFCs over the CONUS. The principal finding is that HPC is making a clear improvement on the model QPFs, and the RFCs are making an improvement (though slight) to the HPC product.

Ms. Judy Ghirardelli presented a talk entitled "Generating Weather Forecasts" to 28 9th and 10th grade students who were participating in the Maryland Chapter of the Mathematics, Engineering, and Science Achievement (MESA) program's summer camp program.

National Digital Forecast Database Development (D. Ruth): MDL is now regularly producing experimental GRIB2 bulletins from the NDFD for distribution via the NWS Gateway FTP servers. These data will be made available in order to obtain feedback from customers and partners on the usefulness of the NDFD.

PRODUCTS GENERATION PROJECT (M. Peroutka)

IFP Implementation and Enhancement (R. Meiggs):  IFPS 10.4 began its national deployment. By the end of the month, roughly 50 WFOs were using IFPS 10.4 for product generation. Major features in IFPS 10.4 include intersite coordination of gridded forecasts, a Daily Forecast Critique, and formatters for Fire Weather forecasts.

The Customer Support Team (CST) continued contacting RAP sites scheduled to install R5.2.1 and IFPS 11. The CST recorded and archived comments and concerns during its pre/post site install interviews.

IFP Product Development and Evolution (M. Peroutka):   The second product of the IFPS Rapid Alpha Process (RAP), IFPS 11, was deployed to six WFOs for Alpha Testing. IFPS 11 features support for Service Backup and improvements to Fire Weather product generation.

IFPS 10.4 and IFPS 11 web sites are available to support IFPS 10.4 national deployment and IFPS 11 RAP testing. These web sites feature Installation Instructions, Release Notes, and links to IFPS User's Guides and Lessons Learned documentation.

Development for IFPS 12 continued. This release will support phrases that describe snow levels and improve support for Fire Weather and Marine product generation.

An MDL developer traveled to Billings, Montana to meet with forecasters there. Discussions focused on improving local effect phrases.

FORECAST EVALUATION PROJECT (W. Shaffer)

Forecast Verification Analysis (V. Dagostaro):   The National Verification Integrated Work Team (NVIWT) met July 8-10, headed by Drs. Bob Livezey of OCWWS and Bob Glahn of MDL. Following presentations and discussions of the current state of NWS verification, action items were assigned to various team members.

We're devising a plan to verify the gridded NDFD forecasts, beginning by extracting forecasts from the NDFD grid and interpolating to specific points (forecast/observation sites). We've identified existing software to manipulate and extract the necessary data, obtained a small sample of the NDFD, and begun preparation work to test a prototype verification system. This prototype verification system will be used to produce verification scores for max/min temperature and PoP forecasts for the forecast sites in the NDFD prototype areas. The system will be expanded to include additional forecast sites and weather elements as the NDFD forecasts become available for them.

COASTAL MARINE PREDICTION PROJECT (W. Shaffer)

Storm Surge and Wave Forecasting (W. Shaffer):  We coded our extratropical storm surge model to run with winds and pressures produced by NCEP's eta-12 model and are testing our scripts on the IBM mainframes. The 12-km resolution model is expected to give better winds over coastal portions of our surge model, and especially for the Chesapeake Bay. We're testing the surge model over the Eastern U.S. and the Gulf of Mexico, and will expand these tests to include the Northwest and Alaska.

Dr. Wu presented a talk on hurricane waves to the quarterly workshop of the Chinese-American Ocean-Atmosphere Association on July 13 at College Park, Maryland.