Since 2005, the NWS Meteorological Development Laboratory (MDL) has been collaborating with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to demonstrate the functionality and capability of the Autonowcaster (ANC) at the Fort Worth, Texas Weather Forecast Office (WFO). This work initially focused on how a human forecaster–automated system approach (so-called Man-In-The-Loop) could produce a significant improvement in thunderstorm nowcast accuracy above and beyond that provided by a purely automated nowcast system. Today, the program has evolved to support the prototyping of the NWS’ 4-D weather data cube known as the Weather Information Database (WIDB) for the FAA's Next Generation Air Transportation System. For that purpose, a second ANC system has been installed to run at the Melbourne, Florida WFO to support specifically the nextGen demonstration.

The system runs at MDL and forecast products are sent in real time to Fort Worth and Melbourne WFOs. A forecaster at each WFO can remotely interact with the ANC system using the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) Display 2 Dimensions (D2D) display to create surface boundaries and to set or update the convective regime expected to dominate the weather for the next 6-8 hours. These data are then sent instantly to ANC via AWIPS Local Data Acquisition and Dissemination system (LDAD) and ingested by ANC algorithms. The forecast products are also disseminated to the NWS’ Forth Worth and Orlando Center Weather Service Units (CWSUs) via web pages.

The ANC system is a suite of automated applications that produces 0-1 hour thunderstorm nowcasting predictor fields derived from observation-based feature detections, numerical weather prediction model output, and human forecaster input. Data ingested by ANC include WSR-88D level 2, satellite, sounding, and surface observations. The software applications in the ANC environment include algorithms for boundary-storm interactions, cumulus cloud detection and growth, boundary-relative shear profile, boundary-relative updraft strength and storm trends and tracks. A fuzzy-logic application is used to combine the weighted outputs from the various analysis algorithms to produce time- and space-specific forecasts of thunderstorm initiation, growth and decay. A more comprehensive and detailed overview of ANC is described in a paper titled NCAR Auto-Nowcast System.