Doppler Weather Radar Research and Development
NOAA/HPCC – Winter Hydrometeor Classification Ground Truth Experiment
Funding Type: CIMMS Task II
Objectives
Create a reporting form hosted on the NSSL web site that encourages the
public to log observations of winter storm hydrometeor type within about
150 km of the KOUN radar (Norman); test the ability of the KOUN polarimetric
radar to discriminate between rain, drizzle, snow, ice pellets, freezing
rain, and freezing drizzle – once data are gather
Accomplishments
Observations of interest to this project consist of at a minimum time
of occurrence, location, and hydrometeor type, but may also consist
of temperature and wind speed and direction. General comments from
observers can be entered as well. During the 2006-07 winter season
three major winter storms occurred; approximately 2,600 separate observations
were logged on the project’s web site during them. Of all the
entries made, only about 3% were removed for quality control purposes.
As expected, entries were clustered within the Oklahoma City metropolitan
area, but many observations also were made at more remote locations.
Observations close-in are useful for direct scoring of the hydrometeor
classification algorithm, while observations from more distant locations
are useful for developing diagnostic algorithms to determine the hydrometeor
type most likely to be observed at the surface.
This project is ongoing.
Temporal distribution of observations for the first major winter storm event during the winter of 2006-07.