Map showing observing networks being installed for HMT-West legacy project. Click image for more detail.
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Contact: Allen White
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November 21, 2011
NWS Western Region Science Webinar Conducted on HMT
Topics Covered
- Field Operations for Winter 2011/12
- Legacy Network installations, and
- Recent Developments in Atmospheric River (AR) Science
Highlights
- HMT-West field activities will be focused on unattended equipment this winter, with no need for daily blogs or calls.
- When major events are possible, HMT and Western Region may communicate on key subjects, and some scanning radar operations of the SkyWater C-band radar at Lincoln may occur. Such operations will also allow for testing of unattended scanning radar capabilities being developed by PSD.
- Recordings of training sessions on atmospheric rivers conducted in Fall 2010 will be made available online for use by additional NWS staff
- Study on Tennessee flood of 2010 identified major role of atmospheric river conditions and creates new AR analysis field of interest to Western Region offices (Moore et al., MWR, in press)
- New integrated vapor transport product being developed for implementation on AWIPS
- Analysis of COOP daily rainfall revealed evidence of inland penetration of atmospheric rivers (AR) into areas within the intermountain west
- Analysis of stream flow records in Arizona indicate cool season as primary flood season on a number of watersheds
- The material presented here of inland penetration of ARs follows an NWS Western Region webinar on this topic in October2011 by Jonathan Rutz, a graduate student at University of Utah
- Request to add more wind direction orientations and rain gage couplets to ARO displays
- Since ALPS linux servers are being consumed by AWIPS2 testing at GSD, the desire is to have the HMT forecast models ensemble mean grid available in AWIPS GFE.
- Interest was expressed in potential indicators that could relate to seasonal (ENSO related) to intra-annual (MJO) relationships to frequency of land-falling ARs.
Contributors: Marty Ralph, Chris Smallcomb*, Allen White*, Brian Motta, Dave Reynolds
*Primary Contacts