Simulated Lake Effect Nov 18

Below is an animated gif of the NSSL-WRF forecast from Nov 18, 2014 at 0000 UTC of the 0-3km Updraft helicity (hourly max) during the Lake effect snow event. 

What is a test bed?

The formal definition from wikipedia: "A platform for experimentation of large development projects."

Oct 13 Verification

Here is the promised update to my experimental graphics, though reports are still trickling in as surveys are completed. When I ran my code last Tuesday not all of these reports were accounted for. Remember that I have a modeling slant to present. Below are two versions of verification (all reports including damage, and one where we stick to reports that meet formal severe criteria).

October 13th Severe Event

As of 915pm, storm reports pretty much show a hole in the MDT issued at 06Z which was focused on wind and sig wind. A comparison of the categorical outlook and the SSEO forecast I generate using UH tracks, showed a few interesting things:

#AMS2014

I havent been a big fan of the annual meeting. It is simply too big. This is partly my fault, because my interests are varied. I like to get around and see many different types of talks. You just never know when inspiration might strike or when you might learn a new technique, a new way of thinking about a problem by getting out of your comfort zone.

This time after realizing that almost every session I wanted to sit in on had competing sessions I was interested in, I folded. I became a speaker and networker rather than a viewer. Though I did my fair share of live tweeting when I was a viewer. So go ahead and check the tweets if you missed it.

How soon is too soon?

One of the issues that has come up more and more recently is: "You cant forecast that 10 days out!"

So when can you forecast what, and when should you do it? After all, the atmosphere is not perfectly predictable, there is uncertainty in knowing the current state of the atmosphere and uncertainty contained within the equations and parameterizations that we use to approximate the behavior of the atmosphere.