National Severe Weather Workshop

Saturday - 3/9/08

11:00am
Today's sessions were very good and covered many things. The one that stood out for me was "Special Needs in a Disaster" by Cindy Daniel, National Disability Director for Department of Homeland Security and FEMA. She talked about the special needs of disabled people during a disaster and all the things you have to think about to take care of them in a crisis.

Not everyone can get in a car and evacuate the area and some require special transportation or medical needs. Also the need to accommodate animals, both as pets and assisted living animals such as seeing eye dogs. The big question is what to do with them during a disaster. You can't just leave them because they are needed by the disabled person. A real question and problem to think about.

I sat thru a presentation by Dr. Chuck Doswell on Storm Chasers: The Good, The Stupid, and the Irresponsible. As usual Chuck was wild to listen to. He did say MOST chasers are responsible but unfortunately there are irresponsible chasers out there making the good ones look bad. In Doswell's opinion, the Storm Chasers shows on TV now showing are not doing the community any good.

Today's sessions were held at the National Weather Center. This place is amazing place and well made to handle a direct hit from a tornado. Inside the center is this really cool globe. There are four projectors around the globe and they project onto this 360 degree globe. A computer takes all the four images and stitches them together so they can be viewed on a 360 degree globe hanging from the ceiling. Virtual Globe Video

Friday - 3/7/08

5:00pm
What a wild day this was. I just finished up the 2 day disaster called "The Scenario". What a great training scenario this was. There were a lot of informative presentations this year. I will try to update the highlights here. The first one is about the scenario that played out over two days.

The main goals of the scenario were:
1. Work with severe weather event
2. Develop understanding/empathy for partners in the public warning process
3. Apply knowledge gained here to help improve the warning process between NWS/SPC, Emergency Mmgt, Media, and the public.

The scenario this year was based on a tornadic supercell near Austin, TX in Nov. 2001. This was a real event that happened with some additional facets thrown in, such as packing a football stadium with 80K people and a tornado bearing down on them.

With had a tornadic supercell approaching the Austin, TX area from the southwest following the I-35 interstate right into downtown of Austin. There were numerous things to watch with this storm. Many warnings were issued: Flash Flood Warning, Tornado watch issued by the SPC and later 4 Tornado warnings issued by the San Antonio WFO office.

One of the problems was, as most people know, during a Tornado warning you are supposed to go to your basement for cover, but with this scenario, basements were being flooded by the heavy rains so that was a real problem. You couldn't tell people to take cover in their basements because they were flooded. Also, the county roads were closed due to flooding around the Texas football stadium so when the stadium was evacuated people were stuck in their cars and county roads with no where to go with a tornado bearing down on them. A real problem in forecasting warnings, working with emergency mgmt people on what to do and how to warn the public with the local media. A great training scenario and it gives one a lot to think about when put in the shoes of the NWS/SPC and Emergency Mgmt people.

Outcome of the real event that happened on Nov 15, 2001:
1. 16 tornadoes that day
2. 7 people died due to the flooding and 3 people injured due to tornadoes
3. Austin airport hit by two tornadoes
4. 12 inches of rain fell in the Austin area

7:00am
This is a great conference! We spent 3 hours yesterday afternoon setting up for a severe weather event, its called "The Scenario". It's a 2 day scenario played out from a real severe weather event in history. This year's scenario is based on a tornado event in San Antonio, TX.

We spent 3 hours on Thursday setting up all the information and today we go live, meaning they start the radar and other groups. There are 3 groups in this scenario, NWS/SPC group, Emergency Mgmt, and TV Media. We all work together to simulate a real severe weather event.

When it goes live (today) it is real wild and fast-paced event. We play it out as if this was real and our calls for warnings has lives on the line. It's a great training event for showing how NWS/SPC and Emergency Mgmt and TV media work together during a severe weather event.

Thursday - 3/6/08

The workshop has started with lots of great information. This morning I sat thru some great sessions:
1. SPC Mesoanalysis and Forecasting Tools
2. Satellite Applications for hazard forecasting
3. New Radar features and capabilities
4. WSR-88D radar as a flood forecasting tool

The new radar features session was always great, taught by Kevin Kloesel of Univ. of Ok. What a wild presenter he is but extremely knowledgeable and an expert in Radar operations and capabilities. They are using new CASA radar in 4 sites around Oklahoma City to cover the areas the 88D radar doesn't cover, mainly at lower levels or tilts. The CASA radars are overlapping so they can do dual Doppler functions. The clarity is amazing.

The NWS will be updating the 88D radars around the country to the new dual polarization radars within 2-4 years. The Phased Array radar, which is amazing to see, will take about 10-15 years before it's in place around the county. The biggest thing they are learning now and trying to figure out is how to present the radar images to the user in a meaningful manner. Normally we are use to seeing new volume scans every 5-6 minutes, but with CASA and Phased Array Radar (PAR) the volume scans are less than a minute. That is a lot of information to throw at the forecaster when analyzing the radar image.

Ok, back to the workshop, more information to come, so stay tuned.

Wednesday - 3/5/08

Well, I am off to Norman, Oklahoma today for the National Severe Weather Workshop for 3 days of training. This is a really cool workshop as it is sponsored and put together by the National Weather Service and Storm Prediction Center.

I will try to update every day information from the workshop and if I am lucky some pictures and maybe video of the different sessions from now till Saturday.

If you would like to see pictures of the National Weather Center, also located in Norman you can see them here http://www.tracymnweather.com/NWC.htm