Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies

RESEARCH

 

NOAA Strategic Goal 3: Serve Society’s Need for Weather and Water Information

Forecast Improvements

NSSL Special Project – Severe Hazards Analysis and Verification Experiment (SHAVE)

T. Smith (primary – CIMMS at NSSL), Manross, Scharfenberg, Witt, Ortega, Kolodziej, Legett, Riley, Irwin, Roberts

Objectives
Improve the verification of severe weather events in the United States through use of very high resolution (1 km) multi-sensor/multi-radar data, phased array radar, and verification phone calls, integrated within a geographic information system.

Accomplishments
The Severe Hazards Analysis and Verification Experiment (SHAVE) is a unique project that blends highresolution radar data with geographic information. The primary objective of this experiment is to collect high temporal and spatial resolution data that describe the distribution of hail sizes and wind damage produced by severe thunderstorms. These data will enable several goals, including to:

  1. Provide high-resolution verification data for the National Weather Radar Testbed's multi-purpose phased array radar;
  2. Use the high-resolution verification data in the development of techniques for probabilistic warnings of severe thunderstorms;
  3. Evaluate the performance of multi-sensor, multi-radar severe weather algorithms;
  4. Associate changes in hail size and wind damage distributions with storm evolution; and
  5. Enhance climatological information about severe storm threats in the United States.

The high spatial and temporal resolution of the dataset collected during the project will facilitate the development of decision-making tools that improve forecasts and warnings of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, and pave the way for improvements to the historical severe storms database. The 2007 data collection period was from mid-May to mid-August.

This project is ongoing.

Publications
Smith, T. M., K. L. Ortega, and K. A. Scharfenberg, 2006: The Severe Hail Verification Experiment. 23rd Conference on Severe Local Storms, St. Louis, MO, Amer. Meteor. Soc., CD-ROM 5.3.

Smith, T. M., K. L. Ortega, and A. G. Kolodziej, 2007: Enhanced, high-density severe storm verification. 23rd Conference on Interactive Information Processing Systems, San Antonio, TX, Amer. Meteor. Soc., CD-ROM 4B.3.

Ortega, K. L., T. M. Smith, K. A. Scharfenberg, and A. Witt, 2006: An analysis of thunderstorm hail fall patterns in the Severe Hail Verification Experiment. 23rd Conference on Severe Local Storms, St. Louis, MO, Amer. Meteor. Soc., CD-ROM P2.4.

The NSSL Hail Swath algorithm showing radar-estimated maximum hail size aloft over a 180 minute period for a storm that occurred in Lac qui Parie County, MN on 27 July 2006.

The NSSL Hail Swath algorithm showing radar-estimated maximum hail size aloft over a 180 minute period for a storm that occurred in Lac qui Parie County, MN on 27 July 2006. The grey icons (no hail), green icons (hail up to 1” 2.54 cm) and yellow icons (hail >1” to 2” 2.54 cm to 5.08 cm) represent “ground truth” data points collected by SHAVE. The single “push pin” icon represents two data points collected in the county by the National Weather Service as part of warning verifications efforts. The yellow line is 10 km long in the scale of the map.