Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot Gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

HTTPS

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Storm-scale Data Assimilation and Ensemble Forecasts For The 27 April 2011 Severe Weather Outbreak In Alabama

Abstract

As part of NOAA’s Warn-on-Forecast (WoF) initiative, a multiscale ensemble-based assimilation and prediction system is developed using the WRF-ARW model and DART assimilation software. To evaluate the capabilities of the system, retrospective short-range probabilistic storm-scale (convection allowing) ensemble analyses and forecasts are produced for the 27 April 2011 Alabama severe weather outbreak. Results indicate that the storm-scale ensembles are able to analyze the observed storms with strong low-level rotation at approximately the correct locations and to retain the supercell structures during the 0–1-h forecasts with reasonable accuracy. The system predicts the low-level mesocyclones of significant isolated tornadic supercells that align well with the locations of radar-derived rotation. For cases with multiple interacting storms in close proximity, the system tends to produce more variability in mesocyclone forecasts from one initialization time to the next until the observations show the dominance of one of the cells. The short-range ensemble probabilistic forecasts obtained from this continuous 5-min storm-scale 6-h-long update system demonstrate the potential of a frequently updated, high-resolution NWP system that could be used to extend severe weather warning lead times. This study also demonstrates the challenges associated with developing a WoF-type system. The results motivate future work to reduce model errors associated with storm motion and spurious cells, and to design storm-scale ensembles that better represent typical 1-h forecast errors.

Article / Publication Data
Active/Online
YES
Volume
143
Available Metadata
Accepted On
March 24, 2015
DOI ↗
Fiscal Year
NOAA IR URL ↗
Peer Reviewed
YES
Publication Name
Monthly Weather Review
Published On
August 01, 2015
Publisher Name
American Meteorological Society
Print Volume
143
Print Number
8
Page Range
3044–3066
Issue
8
Submitted On
August 19, 2014
URL ↗

Authors

Authors who have authored or contributed to this publication.