Update from NCEP on Data Outage

NCEP has informed us that the data center where they distribute the raw model data via ftp service which we obtain much of the pre-proccessed data will be back on-line tomorrow January 8th at 14Z.   At that time we expect most of the affected processes to return.

The GFS, HRRR and NAM which are processed off NOAAPORT and other sources, that are unaffected by these systems are linked here.

http://namp.wright-weather.com/namp.php

http://hp2.wright-weather.com/avn.shtml

http://hrrr.wright-weather.com/hrrr.php

 

NCEP Model Data Outage

NCEP has been a experiencing gridded model data distribution outage for the past 24 hours. The site used for dissemination of raw model data has been offline since 18z 1/5/22.  Many of our production suites are dependent on these raw output sources.  As such, they will remain unavailable until NOAA returns their systems into service. We are awaiting a time of restoration.

 

GFS Upgrade v16 Scheduled for March 17th

 

** GFS Upgrade has been completed **

NCEP/NOAA is scheduling the GFS to be upgraded on/about March 17th.   We do not expect any significant issues migrating from the current operational version to the new version, however there  may be some delays or minor issues during the changeover.

The new version of the GFS provides higher vertical resolution with more layers added above the tropopause, the horizontal resolution remains the same.  Numerous changes have been made which will cause the GFS output being about 20 minutes slower than the current operational version, while consuming about 4x the amount of supercomputing processing power.

Having reviewed the statistical skill scores of the GFSv16  there is very slight improvement, but there were some negatives, such a significant right bias in tropical cyclone tracks and a much lower CAPE value then the previous GFS, which was already negatively biased.

So be aware of these items when using the new GFS.  CAPE values will tend to be suppressed, which will make other severe convective parameters appear less intense (SCP,STP,EHI) and Tropical cyclones forecast skill was not improved ( GFS v16 to GFS v15), as noted in the active 2020 season.

Here is the GFSv16 Evaluation Page:
https://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/users/meg/gfsv16/
Here is the Service Change Notice:
https://www.weather.gov/media/notification/pdf2/scn21-20gfs_v16.0.pdf

Day of Week Issue on Some Model Maps

The day of the week stopped appearing in some of the model maps starting on 1/1/2021 due to an issue with GRIB.  We are working on implementing a fix to this unexpected problem.  Some maps will display a “???” for the day of the week for until the bug fix is implemented. It may be a few weeks until the code is tested and implemented.

Severe Weather Outbreak Likely Friday/Friday Night Across Southern Plains / Midwest

Severe Weather Outbreak Likely Friday Afternoon/Night Midwest – Southern Plains

As an upper level low begins to move eastward, the strong core of the mid and upper level winds will rotate around the upper low. An increasingly favorable kinematic environment for supercells and potentially strong tornadoes will develop from Central Illinois/Central Indiana through Southern Missouri into Eastern/Central Oklahoma and  Northern/Western Arkansas.

The area at greatest risk for strong tornadoes is from Central/Eastern Oklahoma through Southern Missouri into Central Illinois.  Although there will likely be AM storms, some severe, the storms that will develop Friday afternoon and move into Ohio-Valley during the overnight hours are the ones that pose the greatest risk for that area. Boundaries from earlier convection in the day will likely focus localized helicities values over 400 m^2^s which will enhance the tornado potential with storms that develop in non-linear modes. Bulk Richardson Shear values favor supercell storm modes across these areas, at least initially.

Other storms will likely form further south across Oklahoma where the instability will become extreme with surface capes over 5000 and shear values in excess of 40kts. CIN will drop below 25 j/kg by afternoon and supercells should form with the aid of an approaching shortwave. With LCL’s AOB 1000 meters, tornadoes are quite likely, especially across Northeastern OK.

The Maximum Updraft Helicity product from the 4km WRF/ARW has been consistently generating strong supercells across OK, MO, IL Friday Afternoon & Evening.

1 Hour Max Updraft Helicity. Indicate Rotating storms develop late.

Max 1 Hour Updraft Helicity from WRF-ARW

WRF-4KM Simulated Radar 23Z Friday

0-6 KM Shear Increase as Mid-Level Jet Works into the Region

High Surface Dewpoints work northward into IL/IN feeding storms.

Surface CAPE is quite high.

Surface Low over MN and Secondary Low over SW OK will help back Low Level  Winds.

Supercell Composite Parameter indicates likelihood of rotating storms from OK northeastward into IL.

Significant Tornado Parameter indicates risk of strong tornadoes.

0-1Km Helicity 00Z

0-1km Helicity 03Z

250mb RRQ of Jet will enhance Vertical Motion

Upper Level Low will move Eastward with cold pool and wind max

St. Louis, MO Forecast Sounding for Friday Evening.  Small Cap, but supportive of Supercells and possible tornadoes

GFS Forecast Sounding for Springfield, IL for 00Z. Again kinematics and thermodynamics supportive of supercells and tornadoes.

Extreme Instability at Oklahoma City per the GFS Forecast Sounding

-Mike Dross

Remarkable radar data from the El Reno EF5 Tornado.

The May 31st EF5 El Reno Tornado that killed several storm researchers was sampled by ground based mobile X-band doppler radar (RaxPol) with very high resolution and found extreme wind speeds of almost 300 mph and rare satellite tornadoes. Other conventional fixed based NWS and FAA radars also captured remarkably  high velocities and signatures.

Below is the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar from Oklahoma City (TDWR). A C-Band Radar with a high resolution receiver  (250 meter resolution data displayed) and it appears to capture an apparent reflectivity minimum in the center of the tornado at the *exact* same time that the RaxPol indicated the same feature in the tornado. This is quite remarkable considering the distance from the radar is 26 miles. This reflectivity minimum is likely caused by descending air within the tornado and centrifuging of debris and precipitation in this case.


This is the RaxPol image from the exact same time as the TDWR image above.

RaxPol Mobile Doppler Dual Polarization Radar

The National Weather Service WSR-88D in Norman, OK recorded some of the fastest winds I am ever aware of. I am quite sure these winds are legitimate.  Below is a screen shot of  the tornado at 23:24Z

NWS KTLX Radar indicating maximum winds of 224 mph.

 

El Reno Tornado before it became extremely large and wrapped totally in rain. Courtesy of  Justin Drake @JustonStrmRider

Tornado wind speed as it relates to force and damage potential: A case for an expansion of the EF scale?

With mobile Doppler radar units that have become available in the past 20 years that have extremely high resolution, we have been able to discover tornadic wind speeds in a few of the sampled tornadoes that have approached or in one case exceeded 300 mph. The recent El Reno tornado on May 31st, 2013 was another example of one of these.

Since the force of the wind does not grow linearly, rather it is squared (wind speed^2), these extreme wind speeds over 200 mph can cause unbelievable destruction. Since the kinetic energy is in the same arena as a small nuclear bomb, should one of these  ”Super Twisters” hit a densely populated urban environment the destruction would be exponential compared to a lower category tornado.  I created a graph to try to visually demonstrate the energy release or damage potential of the 2013 El Reno tornado as compared to just a few other recent tornadoes that have had good NWS storm surveys and tornadoes that had mobile Doppler radar measurements. There is a cluster of  Super Tornadoes in the upper right hand portion of the graph that illustrates how much more destruction they can create than an EF3 or EF4 tornado if they encounter buildings, cars or people.

I think it also illustrates that there is a huge range in the EF5 scale. Maybe now that we have entered the era of reliable remote sensing and we know there are tornadoes with wind speeds near or even above 300mph and the energy release is so much greater than a 201 mph EF5 tornado, the idea should be at least entertained about adding an additional(s) EF categorie(s) to account for these rare, but extremely violent tornadoes given the their potential destruction and design limits required to survive them.

Click graph for larger image

 

Severe Weather Likely Wednesday Into Thursday Ohio Valley into the Mid-Atlantic/Far Southern New England

An anomalously strong late spring upper level trough will develop along the Eastern U.S. Coast by Friday.  Two shortwaves, one ejecting out of the southern stream over California, will at least partially phase with a second shortwave that drops southward into the Great Lakes  on Thursday.  These will combine to strengthen a surface low that will traverse from Iowa eastward to the New Jersey Coast.

Wednesday
A two-day event is expected as severe convection will likely generate near the surface low Wednesday afternoon across Illinois and Indiana where the best forcing will exist, however further east across Ohio and West Virginia additional severe storms may develop with the aid of warm air advection and a mid level wind max in the northwest flow, during the afternoon. If discrete convection develops across Ohio/Western West Virginia  on Wednesday afternoon there could be supercells and possibly strong tornadoes, given the favorable shear and other parameters. This is well ahead of the main forcing of the the surface low back to the west.

Wednesday Night
Intense convection is expected to develop across Illinois and Indiana and track eastward during the overnight hours. As the surface low deepens, warm air advection will continue to help destabilize the atmosphere near the warm front which is likely to be near Northern Ohio into Western Pennsylvania . A greater risk of significant tornadoes exist along this boundary. Just north of the warm front elevated convection may produce large hail and damaging winds.

Additional storms may develop further southward into Southern Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Thursday
As the upper level shortwaves begin to phase, per the NAM.  The surface low is expected to slow somewhat and should allow for some destabilzation across the eastern portion of Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey during the afternoon.

Wind fields will support supercells and possible tornadoes from Central Pennsylvania to  New Jersey southward into the Carolinas .  The best parameters for significant tornadoes on Thursday will exist near the warm front across Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware & into New Jersey.

*All of this is highly dependent on surface heating and interaction with prior convective outflow boundaries, none of which the models can properly resolve at this time range. 

Below are some of the products used to create the outlook. 

 

 

NAM Forecast Sounding for Columbus, OH Wednseday Evening.

If convection can initiate and overcome the convective inhibition across eastern Ohio Wednesday afternoon, the environmental conditions are favorable for discrete supercells and tornadoes.

Forecast Sounding for Baltimore, MD for Thursday Afternoon at 2PM EDT
NAM Sounding would support severe storms and possible tornadoes.

Updated: ATL Tornado on 88D?

Did the 88D at FFC capture a Tornado ?  Dual Pole data may have picked up some debris.  Survey may tell later today.  Here is a screen shot I took last night while the event was unfolding. The velocity data was not very compelling, but in the previous 3 volume scans there were much better indications of a circulation.

Click images for much larger view

Update: I pulled the archive data from last night. Here are previous volume scans. You can see the progression of the development of the CC min & other radar data.

Another Tornado Debris Signature Caught on WSR-88D: Near Raleigh, NC

An apparent brief touch down of a tornado in Central North Carolina yesterday evening was detected by the Raleigh, NC WSR-88D Radar. The RDA was fairly close to the storm with the 0.5 degree beam altitude only around 1390 feet.

While the NWS survey has not yet been completed,  it appears this will very likely be an EF0 or EF1 tornado, based on the damage reported, photos and radar data.

Update 2:10 PM EDT: NWS just confirmed EF0 with 85mph winds.  Path length 1.25 miles / 150 yards wide
https://twitter.com/NWSRaleigh/status/347413698903683072
https://twitter.com/NWSRaleigh/status/347414519649296386 

The 22:31:59Z volume scan had a small, but defined TVS with gate to gate shear of ~81kts (+57/-24) and a well defined hook echo. It also developed a significant correlation coefficient minimum which was co-located with a reflectivity maximum in the hook where the TVS was also centered.

All of this convinced me, that there was indeed a tornado on the ground and in progress.   I quickly put together a “tweet” and sent it out at 22:36Z indicating that we now had a tornado on the ground.

https://twitter.com/Wright_Weather/status/347120537417420802

I also submitted something to the effect,  on RAH NWSChat,  about a possible debris ball developing on radar.

Shortly there after we started receiving verification of damage and sightings of the tornado.

https://nwschat.weather.gov/lsr/#RAH/201306182218/201306182315/0100

This is another example of how useful the Dual Polarization data can be when looking for Tornado Debris Signatures. Even for locating relatively “weak” tornadoes. Looking at the dual polarization data, it appears the “debris” was lofted to an altitude of around 2600 feet. My thinking is that much of this “debris” is likely tree leaves & foliage from the wooded areas where the tornado crossed, as well as, some other materials.

Click images to enlarge

Next Volume Scan shows "Debris Ball" with reflectivity maxium and correlation coefficient minimum, but velocity couplet weakening indicating tornado dissipating.

Photos of the wall cloud ( Credit: WRAL)

Damage to a home in Youngsville, NC

Why the differences between the ECMWF & GFS for the Nor-Easter next week? Has to do with phasing of the streams

 

The numerical models historically have had a very difficult time trying to predict cut-off lows across the Southwestern U.S. that eject and try to phase with northern stream energy.

This is the case now, in regards to next weeks, all important holiday week forecast. The GFS Operational has consistently forecast a strong Nor-Easter with inland snow and a mixture/rain near the coastal areas & major metros in the Northeast.

The GFS Ensembles have trended in favor of the GFS operational, recently. The ECMWF operational is moving a much weaker system more off-shore with less of an impact.  The differences between the two can be seen by examining the upper air charts (500mb) and see how the models handle the northern and southern streams (height/vorticity).

The ensembles will be the most useful guidance over the next day or so as we try to get a handle on the likelihood that the streams will phase and to what extent.  Until then, I would be very leery of anyone telling you they know which solution is correct or what exactly is going to happen. These patterns are very complex and historically very challenging for the models to accurately simulate at these time ranges (4-5 days out).

 

 

GFS Ensemble 500mb Height & Vorticity 12z Wed

GFS Ensemble  SFC Pressure & Precip 00Z Thu.

 

 

 

 

 


ECMWF 850 00Z THU                                                                                 GFS 850 00Z THU

Notice the large differences. The GFS develops a huge cyclone over the Northeast while the ECMWF does not, because the ECMWF does not completely phase the two streams.

-Mike Dross

11/22/13  -8:30PM


 

Severe weather outbreak possible Saturday for E-TX/AR/MS/AL

Quite a bit of uncertainty, but the latest data suggest the potential for severe thunderstorms and possible tornadoes across Eastern Texas and the Deep South Saturday as a strong, negatively tilted, shortwave ejects across Texas.  Stay tuned over the next couple of days if you live in this area.

 

Update: 12/20/13 12:40AM EST
After reviewing the 00Z model guidance, it appears that the instability will be somewhat limited on Saturday, due to clouds and marginal lapse rates.  Severe thunderstorms with damaging winds are likely to develop across East Texas during the morning and spread quickly eastward during the day. 0-6Km shear vectors are large and 0-1km helicity values will be locally high,  so some low-top supercells are likely, including the risk of a few tornadoes. But given the expected limited instability, SFC CAPE <1000, a widespread outbreak of tornadic supercells seems unlikely.  The threat of damaging winds is high however, as the low level jet increase to over 70kts during morning and early afternoon.

850 Wind Late Saturday morning near 80 Knots
-Mike

(more…)

Hardware Upgrades for Our North Carolina Data Center

The GFS Model will be upgraded from ~27KM to ~13KM this summer. The High Resolution Rapid Refresh Model (HRRR) will become operational later this year.   Power Point Link (NCEP) 

In preparation for these and other expected increases in weather processing volume, we have been adding additional computing hardware to handle this data increase.  Using redundant Enterprise HP Proliant hardware in a 24/7 staffed SAS-70 Tier 1 Data Center, ensures we will be ready to handle the next generation of weather data. Below is an image of a few of the servers & equipment that deliver Wright-Weather.com products to you.

Significant amounts of freezing rain likely across the New York City area tonight and early Wednesday

2/5/14 1:45 Z

Freezing rain will moving into the populated region of New Jersey and New York City around midnight (2/5/14) and will persist until around noon Wednesday.  Temperatures in the New York city metro area are expected to remain near or slightly below freezing the duration of the event. Just northwest and west of the downtown area, slightly colder surface temperatures are likely.

Total precipitation amounts of 1.00-1.25″ is expected. A significant amount of drip loss will occur due to the heavy precipitation rate and the small air temperature delta to freezing point.  Where temperatures are likely closer to 29 or 30 degrees just west and northwest of the city, ice accretion amounts of 1/4″ to as much as 1/2″ are possible and could lead to a significant amount of power outages, if ice accretion amounts surpass 1/3″.

 

New SREF Accumulated Winter Precipitation Products

New Short Range Ensemble Forecast (SREF)  Mean Accumulated Winter Precipitation have been added.  They are:

Snow
Snow change from previous run (dProg/dt)
Ice Pellets (Sleet)
Freezing Rain

They can be found in the drop down menu on the SREF model page under “Forecast Parameter (Mean)” 

http://vmcluster.wright-weather.com/sref.shtml

Here is an example.  Freezing Rain Accumulation across the Southeast. 

 

 

Major Winter Storm To Impact Southeast Then East Coast.

A strong winter storm will bring a variety of winter weather to the Southeastern U.S. as an upper level low develops across the mid-south, in combination with a cold air damming event.  A strong coastal low will strengthen and move up along and just off the Eastern seaboard and bring heavy precipitation to the Mid-Atlantic and into the Northeast

WRF Hourly Winter Radar through Wednesday Evening

NAM 4km 60hr Winter Radar

Damaging Ice Storm Likely Across Georgia, South Carolina

A zone of of prolonged freezing rain will extended the I-20 corridor from Atlanta to Augusta to Columbia, SC.  Model freezing rain liquid equivalent totals in this area exceed 2 inches. While drip loss will be relatively high with accretion efficiencies likely only being in the 30-40% range due to the high precipitation rates and the temperatures likely remaining close to the freezing point, this still yields  radial ice accretion amounts of .50-75″ which would cause widespread electrical distribution disruptions and tree damage.

Here are the latest Freezing Rain Graphics.

A Risk of Severe Thunderstorms With A Tornado Possible Across Central / Eastern NC/VA Friday Afternoon – Evening

An upper level shortwave will move through the Mid-Atlantic region Friday evening. Ahead of this shortwave, conditions will for a short  period of time, become favorable for severe weather across Central and Eastern portions of the Carolinas and Virginia.

Thunderstorms will likely develop by mid day across the central portions of the region and move eastward and intensify under a strong mid-level flow. Moderate helicity and bulk-shear values along with surface CAPE in excess of 1500 will support the potential for supercell development. Low LCL levels will also increase the risk of tornadoes in the strongest supercells.    Trends in mid-level wind strength and instability should be monitored for an increase in the severe weather risk assessment.

 

-Mike
4/24/14 3:00 PM EDT

 

 

 

Numerous Severe Thunderstorms Expected Across the Ohio-Valley Wednesday Afternoon & Evening

A slow moving cold front across the lower Great Lakes will provide the low level convergence, combined with favorable instability & shear to ignite numerous severe thunderstorms Wednesday afternoon across the Ohio-Valley. Supercells will be a likely storm mode as bulk shear values will be in excess of 45 knots. In addition, 0-3km helicity values will be over 200, so there is a chance for an isolated tornado in the strongest supercells, although conditions are not ideal for tornado development.  Large hail and damaging winds are the primary hazards.  Supercells may evolve into a linear or bow echo configuration by late afternoon or evening.

Storms will likely diminish and weaken as they move east-southeastward into Central Kentucky Wednesday night where the low-level theta-e values will be significantly less, resulting in much less instability.

WRF ARW/NMMB Hires East are now being upgraded to CONUS sectors

NCEP has recently upgraded the WRF-ARW/NMM  Hires windows for the Eastern U.S.  to  a CONUS ARW and NMMB  ~4km  WRF runs.  They are run at 00Z and 12z and produce hourly output out to 48 hours at roughly 5km.

We are in the process of making the necessary changes within our software and systems to accommodate the increase in files sizes and processing requirements to handle the larger domains.  We should have these new data sets available and finalized later this week.  Look for them where the old WRF-ARW/WRF-NMM EAST model pages were located.

Here is the NCEP technical bulletin describing all the changes to the model & physics in the upgrade.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/os/notification/tin14-16hiresw_aaa.txt

Added ECMWF 500mb Winds

Added the ECMWF 500mb winds to the ECMWF regular resolution graphics. These can be useful in projecting the mid-level winds that can aid in organized severe thunderstorm development. These can be found in the drop down menu, as well as, the individual time frames. These are available for the Northern Hemisphere at the moment, but will include all sectors soon.

http://hp2.wright-weather.com/ecmwf.shtml

An Outbreak of Severe Storms Expected Across The Mid-West/Ohio-Valley This Weekend

A spring like cold front will move through the Mid-West and combine favorable wind shear with strong instability  Saturday into Sunday afternoon and will likely produce widespread severe thunderstorms with large hail, damaging winds with the possibility of a few tornadoes.

An unseasonably strong upper level short wave will drop southward into the Ohio-Valley on Sunday and will increase the mid and upper level flow across the region.  Favorable instability, bulk shear & moderate helicity will support organized severe thunderstorms beginning on Saturday across IA/MO/IL/IN.  The threat shifts eastward on Sunday into IN/OH/KY/TN/WV.  A tornado threat exist along the quasi-stationary front across northern IN/OH and a conditional threat also exist within the low level theta-e advection zone across eastern Ohio/Kentucky & West Virgina where 0-1KM EHI’s & 0-1Km bulk shear are highest.

Should be an active 48 hour period.  Additional severe storms are likely into Monday across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

 

 

Regional Outbreak of Severe Storms with Possible Tornadoes Expected Sunday Night into Monday Morning Across North Texas into Oklahoma

A strong upper level low pressure system will move out of the Rockies into the Southern Plains tonight. This will intensify a surface low pressure system over Western Oklahoma that will move eastward through Oklahoma during the morning on Monday.

Returning Gulf of Mexico moisture across Central and Eastern Texas with dewpoints in the middle 60s to middle 70s will continue to advect northward overnight.  Showers and thunderstorms are expected to develop across Central & Eastern Texas later this evening, ahead of a cold front that will sweep into North Central Texas around midnight. A triple point region will develop and move near the Red River with other smaller mesoscale boundaries south of the warm front where convection will develop.  A strong line of convection is expected to develop along the cold front as it moves east of the dry line region around 4-5Z.  Storms will likely become severe as they intensify under a strong 60-70kt cyclonic mid-level jet.

Parameters suggest all modes of severe convection are possible. Linear convection is likely to be the most predominant mode, with embedded line echo wave patterns (LEWP’S) with severe wind gusts, but embedded & discrete supercells are also quite likely given the high shear values, very high 0-3km helicities. Bulk Richardson Numbers also favor some discrete supercells along and south of I-20.

With the low lifted condensation levels, very high 0-1km helicities, shear values and moderate instability.  Some tornadoes are quite possible with the stronger mesocylones.

The region at most risk of supercells is south of the Red River in Texas with an enhanced risk of tornadoes along and south of I-20 where the combination of helicities, shear, CAPE and upper forcing will be maximized.  South of Waco, convective inhibition values will likely be too high to allow for much activity, but if a cell develops may be severe/tornadic.

The severe threat works eastward across Northeast Texas into Arkansas ans Louisiana during the day on Monday.

 

NCEP Data Delivery Problems

NCEP’s servers which we receive some of our model data have been degraded the past 24 hours. Some products will be delayed or possibly incomplete.

Model products which receive via satellite will be on time, which are not affected by the NCEP data servers/network issue.

The GFS NOAAPORT link is:

http://hp2.wright-weather.com/avn.shtml

The NAM NOAAPORT link is:


http://hp2.wright-weather.com/eta.shtml

 

The latest message sounds encouraging from NCEP. So hopefully any delays will be short-lived:

 

THE NCEP SUPPORT FOLKS HAVE BROUGHT THE PRIMARY FTP SERVER BACK
UP..FINAL CHECKOUTS HAVE BEEN PERFORMED ON THE PRIMARY FTP SERVER
AND IT HAS BEEN PLACED BACK IN SERVICE AT 0400Z..A PRELIMINARY
CHECK OF FTPPRD AND NOMADS INDICATED THAT DATA IS UP TO
DATE..QUEUES ARE BLEEDIND DOWN..SOME DATA MAYBE STUCK IN QUEUE
BUT FOR THE MOST PART DATA APPEARS TO BE UP TO DATE.. THANKS FOR
YOUR ON-GOING PATIENCE WITH THIS ISSUE TODAY.

SHRUELL/SDM/NCO/NCEP

Major GFS Upgrade 1/14/15

The GFS model will be upgraded tomorrow, 1/14/15. It is under going a major upgrade. The below PowerPoint link will explain in detail the model physics and initialization changes that have been made, as well as, the effect on model performance.

GFS_implementation_Q1FY15_review_v3

This is a major change to the model and there will likely be new biases and features that we didn’t see in the old GFS due to the higher model resolution. The model is now running at about 13km (near the equator).

We now have several HP DL380 server’s clustered to handle the higher resolution GFS, as well as, HRRR data.

We will have the GFS data in 2 different resolutions. The standard 0.5 degree which have been displaying for years now and soon we will have  surface and other 2D fields  0.25 degree.

Look for the higher resolution data in the coming days. The new GFS based model data at 0.5 degrees will begin tomorrow (01/14/15) however, unless NCEP decides to delay the implementation.

New GFS 13km Products

The upgraded GFS model went live today. Over the next several days we will be tuning our systems to optimize how we process the new GFS output.  The are a number of new variables and higher resolution fields available.  We want to make the best use of our resources.  You may notice some slight changes in the model graphics or timing of the products for a few days as we make changes in how we process this data.

We are currently working hard to bring on much higher resolution GFS products on our new Linux servers that we just setup.  We hope to have the new GFS products available soon for our customers.

Thank you for your patience as we continue increasing our computing capacity and product offering here at Wright-Weather.com

Ice Storm Across Arkansas Monday

Freezing rain mixed with sleet, locally heavy at times, with embedded elevated convection will continue through the overnight into the morning hours across Arkansas and will produce around 1.00-1.25″ of liquid equivalent precipitation. Much of this will fall in the form of freezing rain across Central Arkansas into Western Tennessee. Ice accretion of 3/8″ to as much 5/8″ of an inch are likely before the precipitation finally ends around noon local time. [18Z].

Ice accretion amounts of 1/2″-5/8″ will bring down large branches and some trees. These can fall on power-lines and disrupt electrical service.  They can also fall on pedestrians and cars. Ice accretion of this amount can cause widespread disruption of power in urban areas and create life threatening hazards with extended loss of power and falling large limbs/trees.

The area in and around Little Rock, AR  is at risk of widespread power outages if the forecast trends continue and ice accretion amounts exceeds 1/2″ later today.

Below.. the total precipitation that will fall as freezing rain as depicted by the HRRR through 22Z. Actual ice accretion will be less due to drip loss.

 

Click for the latest Little Rock, AR Regional Winter Radar. Updated Every 5 Mins.

Severe Weather & Tornado Outbreak Increasingly Likely Saturday From The Lower Ohio Valleys into Mid South

A potent mix of thermodynamic and kinetic forces will become colocated across the lower Ohio and Tennessee Valleys on Saturday to create conditions favorable for destructive, powerful supercells and potentially violent tornadoes.

A very powerful jet stream will work across this very unstable airmass with winds at the 200mb level in excess of 150 mph, as depicted by the NWP guidance. It is very rare to have winds of this strength/a jet stream/ directly across the convective layer and will add significantly deep layer shear aiding in ageostrophic imbalances helping to promote mesoscale ascent.  Typically, the mid latitude jet is well removed of the warm/buoyant air mass and rarely directly overlaps.  This could be one of the more unique events and we need to watch this very closely given the kinetic forcing in the upper levels of the troposphere in this upcoming event.

Guidance at this time suggests an early round of showers and non-severe thunderstorms will move through the Mid-South during the early morning hours, followed by partial mid-day clearing allowing for solar insolation and destabilization in the Ohio, Tennessee-Valleys. How these lead convective elements ultimately play out will likely define mesoscale outflow boundaries that will determine where supercells and tornadoes develop later in the day.

This midday-afternoon destabilization combined with a rapidly strengthening wind field at all levels will increase the severe weather risk as a strong upper level (300-200 mb) jet streak punches into the region during the afternoon with a jet wind maximum of nearly 150+ mph closely collocated with the storms

Convection with supercells and the risk for strong to violent tornadoes will develop in association with this powerful  jet/shortwave from the Ohio-Valley southward into Mississippi/Alabama and spread eastward.

The area at highest risk of tornadoes appears to me from Southern Illinois, Southern Indiana,  across Kentucky, Tennessee southward into Central Mississippi and Alabama.  The strongest tornadoes would likely occur in Southern Illinois, Southern Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee closest to the best 0-1km shear maximum, 0-1km SRH and lowest LCL’s. The tornado risk may spread into western Georgia.

Forecasters and those living in these regions should closely monitor developments and SPC outlooks over the next few days.

On to the maps….

 

Significant Hardware Upgrades to Wright-Weather.com This Week. Possible Interruptions

We are pleased to announce that we have made a major investment in new hardware and will be deploying a number of new Dell Enterprise Servers over the next several days.

These new servers will increase our computational processing capacity by 561% and our disk storage system will increase by over 600% .  Also,  our internal network backbone will increase by 10x.  We are also moving to a solid state storage array which will allow us to process data much faster than we have been able to in the past.

We are moving these new servers into a data center with some of the best peering and fastest internet connectivity available, which will result in a extremely responsive user experience for our customers.

As we make this transition off some of our older hardware to the new servers at the new location, there may be some temporary interruptions in some of the model data and other graphics for a brief time. We will be doing everything we can to prevent any delays in model production or interruptions to any of the products we generate.

As we get all the servers and systems fully migrated over  in the coming weeks, look for many more new and exciting products from Wright-Weather.com in the coming months.

If you have any questions or see any issues with the site, please do not hesitate to contact us at support at wright-weather.com

Mike Dross
President / Meteorologist
Wright-Weather.com

 

New Servers in the New Data Center Coming On-Line

We have been busy working the past 2 weeks installing new Dell hardware and configuring our systems in a new data center.  Here are a couple of  pictures of the progress. We installed 6 new Dell Servers and will have the HP servers installed next week.

We will be switching from the backup GFS processing to the new server cluster this week and will continue migrating much of the current infrastructure over to the new data center.

We appreciate your patience as we switch over to this new hardware and new data center.

Widespread, Multi-state Outbreak of Severe Weather likely Wednesday into Thursday.

Parameters favorable for widespread severe storms from the Gulf Coast northward into the Mississippi and  Ohio Valleys.  The Ohio and Tennessee Valleys are at the highest risk for widespread damaging winds. Supercells, with a few violent tornadoes are quite likely as well.

Here is a breakdown of the likelihood of severe weather in a given area, starting Wednesday morning continuing through Thursday Morning.

Update: 12/24/15

Here are the SPC Storm Reports for the Event:

 

Outbreak of Supercells & Tornadoes from North Carolina Northward into Maryland This Afternoon

Conditions favorable for supercells and tornadoes this afternoon will develop across Central and Eastern North Carolina into Western Virginia.  Extremely favorable shear and strong mid-level winds will combine with afternoon heating, to allow destabilization to occur at the time of frontal passage. A broken line of supercells should form by mid to late afternoon across Central North Carolina northward into Western Virginia, These cells will move rapidly northeastward beneath a 100+ knt mid-level jet.   The cells will be capable of producing violent tornadoes as they continue into the evening hours. Straight line winds of 75 mph are also possible in bowing segments or in rear flank down drafts.  There will be a considerable amount of dry air aloft which will limit the coverage of storms, but will aid the formation of the tornadoes, combined with a low lcl.

 

 

NAM-4km Severe Weather Fields Fixed

Some of the NAM-4km Severe Weather Fields were not being updated due to a bug in the code. This has been fixed. Some of the fields that have been fixed are:

Supercell Composite Parameter
Significant Tornado Parameter
Updraft Helicity Swath

Click on the link below to go to the NAM 4km which is update 4x per day.

http://nam.wright-weather.com/nam.php

A New GFS Developmental Model Is Being Tested in Parallel at NCEP. Should provide better forecasts this year.

NCEP has been running a new version of the GFS for a number of weeks in parallel. Some important changes ahead with the new version, which will likely go into production in May.

The current GFS uses an initialization method called 3DVar, which is an older method of initialization and essentially takes a snapshot of the atmosphere when the model is started.

The new version being tested and will likely be put into production this spring will utilize a more modern method of initialization called 4D-Ensemble-Variation.  It is basically a separate model that runs constantly tracking in real-time, changes in the atmosphere so when the GFS run starts it has a much better initialization, in theory.

Verification numbers support 4DEnsVar being a much better solution.  The ECMWF has used 4DEnsVar for quite sometime.  The CMC Global model and the UKMET and even the Navy NAVGEM have  been using a version of the 4DVar for a while now.  This will bring the GFS up to par with the other global models in terms of initialization schemes.  The 4Dvar and 4DEnsVar are quite computationally expensive and up until recently NCEP didn’t have the computing resources to implement 4DEnsVar.  4DEnsVar is somewhat less computationally expensive, while providing most of the benefits of traditional 4Dvar.

More information about the ongoing GFS parallel testing can be found from this technical note from NCEP released today, with many links to various NCEP sites that have output and statistics from the new GFS developmental model.

http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/gmb/noor/4dGFS/synergy%20announcementjan08.htm 

 

Mike Dross

 

 

GFS Spring 2016 Upgrade Completed Today

The GFS Spring 2016 upgrade was completed today as of 12Z. This was the long awaited upgrade that included the 4DVar inclusion.

For more details on the all the changes to the GFS model see the NCEP technical attachment. In short there should be some improvement in the model performance, but overall there will not be a significant leap in model accuracy with this one upgrade.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/os/notification/tin16-11gfs_gdasaaa.htm

HWRF Upgraded for 2016. Invest 97L Available

NCEP has significantly upgraded the HWRF this year in time for the heart of the 2016 tropical season.

I have updated the code to process the new higher resolution HWRF data which is double the resolution of the older model output.

Invest 97L is now available along with other systems being monitored in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Check the Tropical Products menu on the home page, under “Site Navigation” for the name of the tropical system with word HWRF appended to it.

Upgraded the Single Site Radar Products

Upgraded the processors and software on the radar server to handle NEXRAD 2 minute and TDWR 1 minute frequency, lowest level reflectivity and velocity scans from all 160+ sites.

This is a significant temporal increase in resolution from the 6 minute updates we originally received from the NEXRAD and TDWR radars.

The new imagery is now available for all sites.

 

HRRR & RAP Models Upgraded Today

The HRRR and RAP Models were both upgraded today.  Many changes to the internal physics where introduced which should improve the forecast accuracy of both models.

More details can be found here in a technical notice from NCEP.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/notification/tin16-26rap_hrrrr.htm

The HRRR model was increased to 18 hours on the Wright-Weather site.
The RAP model will be increased to 21 hours from 18 hours later this week.

http://hrrr.wright-weather.com/hrrr.php

 

 

Scheduled System Maintenance – Updated 9/15/16

Update 9/15/16  8:15 AM EDT

The Storage Area Network rebuild is complete as of  this morning.  The HRRR and NAM Surface are back on-line and will be updating as usual.   We appreciate your patience as we went through is period maintenance on the systems.

Update 9/14/16 11:30AM EDT

Work continues rebuilding the Storage Area Network.  Unforeseen problems with the new hardware  have delayed getting the systems back on-line. We hope that the new parts that arrived this morning will resolve this and the network and disk subsystems should be back up later today.

Update: 9/13/16  3:30 AM EDT

Work continues rebuilding the storage array.  Problems were encountered and have delayed getting all the virtual machines back on-line. We do anticipate all the servers to be operational later today.

Update Monday 9/12/16 12:15 PM EDT

A problem was discovered with the NAM. It is being corrected and the 12Z run is being run and should be available around 17:30Z

NAM – NOAAPORT is available. 

Update: Monday 9/12/16  10:00 AM EDT

Work continues on the Storage Area Network.  We expect the HRRR and NAM Surface Products to be off-line for much of the afternoon today.  The GFS-Hi-res may be off-line for a brief period of time as well, however the GFS -NOAAPORT  will remain on-line.

We apologize for these interruptions of service, but due to a bug in the disk controller firmware, which caused a corruption of the data on our SAN. We are having to off load all our data and rebuild our SAN. This is allowing us to also upgrade the SAN to an all SSD SAN which will be much faster.

Thank you for your patience.

 


On Saturday (9/10/16) afternoon we will be upgrading our high speed storage area network. In doing so, we will be forced to move some running servers off-line for a period of time this weekend. A few of the operational products will likely be impacted for several hours while the hardware is being upgraded.

We expect the following to be off-line for up to 12 hours.

HRRR
NAM Surface Products
We will update the site once all the products are full restored.

If there is a major weather event this weekend, we will postpone the hardware maintenance.

RAP/RUC Model Extended to 21 Hours

The RAP model (Formely RUC) was increased to 21 hours from 18 hours in run length.  It runs every hour and is completed around 20 minutes past the hour. HH+1:20

The HRRR and RAP models were both upgraded last month.

Details on the Physic changes are as follows:

Technical Implementation Notice 16-26 Amended
National Weather Service Headquarters Washington DC
1047 AM EDT Tue Aug 23 2016

To: Subscribers:
 -NOAA Weather Wire Service
 -Emergency Managers Weather Information Network
 -NOAAPORT
 Other NWS Partners, Users and Employees

From: Tim McClung
 Portfolio Manager
 Office of Science and Technology Integration

Subject: Amended: Upgrade to the Rapid Refresh (RAP) and the
 High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) Analysis and
 Forecast System Effective August 23, 2016

Amended to change the date from "future" to August 23 for select
products under the NOAAPORT changes section below.

Effective on or about Tuesday, August 23, 2016, beginning with
the 1200 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) run, the National
Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) will implement
Version 3 of the Rapid Refresh (RAP) and Version 2 of the High-
Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) systems.

Major Changes:

A major change to the RAP will be an expanded computational
domain which will now include Hawaii. This expansion will
facilitate future NCEP plans for ensemble systems and, in time,
improve the initialization of Short Range Ensemble Forecast
(SREF) members that use the RAP for initial conditions.

Analysis Changes:

Both the RAP and HRRR will use an updated version of the
Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) analysis code.
Refinements are made to the GSI to improve the assimilation of
surface observations, soil moisture adjustment, and three-
dimensional cloud and precipitation hydrometeors. In addition,
the HRRR will start using the ensemble/hybrid data assimilation;
it is already used in the RAP, but the weighting of the ensemble-
based component in the RAP will increase from 0.50 to 0.75. In
addition, while the RAP already cycles land-surface states, this
cycling is being introduced into the HRRR. In HRRR Version 1, all
runs are independent.

Other analysis changes include:

-Assimilating radial wind and mesonet data
-Applying PBL-based pseudo-innovations for 2-meter temperatures
(already used for 2-meter dew points)
-Changing the cloud-hydrometeor assimilation to avoid METAR-based
cloud building when satellite data shows clear skies at all times
of day (currently used just in daytime)
-Introducing direct use of 2-meter temperature and dew point
model diagnostics in the GSI.

Specific to the HRRR, the application of radar reflectivity data
in the GSI to direct specification of 3-dimensional hydrometeors
is increased to apply to a broader range of weather conditions,
including warm-season events with reflectivity up to 28 dBZ.

Changes to Model:

- The RAP and HRRR will both begin using WRF version 3.6.1; both
will continue to use the ARW core.
- The MYNN planetary boundary layer scheme is being updated to
include the effects of subgrid-scale clouds. The mixing length
formulation in the boundary layer scheme and thermal roughness in
the surface layer are being changed.
- The 9-level RUC land-surface model is being updated to add a
mosaic approach for fractional snow cover, improve the fluxes
from snow cover, and modify the wilting point for cropland use.
- Major updates are being made to the Thompson microphysics
scheme, including making it aerosol-aware with use of an ice-
friendly and water-friendly aerosol field.
- Shortwave and longwave radiation have been changed to use the
RRTMG (RRTM global) scheme that includes the effects of aerosols
and boundary layer subgrid-scale clouds.
- The WRF-ARW diagnostics for 2-meter temperature and dew point
are being improved.
- The convective scheme in the RAP is changed from the Grell 3-D
scheme to the scale-aware Grell-Freitas scheme. The HRRR, at 3 km
horizontal resolution, explicitly resolves convection and does
not use a convective scheme.

Many of these changes to the data assimilation, land-surface
model, boundary layer scheme, microphysics, radiation, and (in
the RAP only) convective scheme are designed to mitigate the low-
level warm, dry bias in the RAP and HRRR, most notable during
afternoons in the warm season. Significant reduction of these
biases has been evident in extensive testing.

Outbreak of Severe Storms With Damaging Winds Increasingly Likely Monday/Monday Night From Gulf States to Ohio Valley

…Outbreak of Storms with Widespread Wind Damage Increasingly Likely…

Monday morning thunderstorms are expected to develop across Eastern Texas northward into Arkansas and Missouri, as a very strong upper level short wave rotates around a deepening full latitude trough.

These storms will expand rapidly northeastward during the day as line or broken line across the Deep South and spread into the Tennessee and Ohio-Valleys during the evening into the overnight hours. Damaging convective wind gusts are quite possible across a large area from the Gulf Coast region into Lower Michigan.

Model guidance has converged on a solution with extremely strong winds at all levels of the atmosphere,  combined with very strong upward vertical forcing across the Deep South northward into the Ohio Valley.  Marginal instability, the limiting factor, will likely be overcome by the extremely strong forcing associated with negatively tilted shortwave with  80+knt 850mb/ 110+knt 500mb/ 175knt 200mb  jets.

A widespread wind damage event is becoming increasing likely and may extend from the Deep South northward through the Ohio Valley into Monday night.

Tornadoes are also possible give the extreme low level wind shear, helicity and forcing.
The severe weather threat is likely to continue across the Southeast on Tuesday.

Additional model data will need to be evaluated closely for the Monday/Tuesday time frame. Any significant increase/decrease in instability will change the risk of this outlook.

Some associated graphics from the 00Z/26 NAM indicating the kinematic & thermal forcing expected with this event.

 

Added Wind Gusts to WRF-ARW/NMM 4km CONUS

Added Wind Gusts to WRF-ARW/NMM CONUS.

http://hp6.wright-weather.com/eastnmm.shtml

Also as a side note. NCEP is planning to upgrade the NAM model in January 2017 and the NAM CONUS spatial resolution is going to improve to 3km from 4km. Also there will be physics changes that will result in a small improvement in the model.

We wwill post an update when this upgrade is completed.

 

 

 

NAM 3KM CONUS Parallel Available

The NAM CONUS Nest (NAM v4 ) is being upgraded to a 3km resolution and the parallel run is now available at Wright-Weather.com

In addition to higher spatial resolution, going from 4km to now 3km, the parallel version is now available hourly to 60 hours. The current operational version only provides hourly data to 36 hours.

The parallel data will be made available until at least February 1st when the NAM v4 is expected to become the operational NAM model. If in testing problems arise, it may get delayed, going operational, extending the parallel testing period.

Here is the link to the parallel NAM 3km CONUS model.

http://namp.wright-weather.com/namp.php

 

 

 

GFS v14 Parallel Now Available

The next operational version of the GFS model v14.0 is currently in evaluation and available on Wright-Weather.com.

Here is the link.  It updates  at 00/06/12/18Z and comes  out a couple hours later than the Operational GFS.

http://gfsp.wright-weather.com/gfsp.shtml

FROM NCEP/EMC

Changes and associated expected benefits of the GDAS/GFS model upgrade include:

Changes to assimilation:

  • Introduction of Near-Surface Sea Temperature (NSST) describing near surface oceanic vertical temperature structure due to diurnal warming and sub-layer cooling physical processes. SST, satellite data assimilation and weather forecasting will be improved by using advanced GSI data assimilation techniques to analyze SST together with atmospheric analysis variables.

 

Changes to observations:

  • Radiances

–     Include Megha-Tropiques SAPHIR radiance assimilation

–     Monitor GPM/GMI radiance assimilation

–     Changes to land surface type specification for CRTM

–     AVHRR radiance and in situ (buoys & ships) sea water temperature observations are added to analyze SST

 

  • SATWND observation changes

–     Assimilate VIIRS winds

–     Log-Normal wind QC for winds

–     Assimilate GOES clear-air water vapor winds

 

  • Other changes

–     Assimilate extra GNSS-RO observations

–     Fix cloud water increment bug

–     Readiness for CrIS Full Resolution Data and add/extend RARS and DBNET capability (JPSS, GOESR)

Forecast model:

 

  • NEMS software superstructure and infrastructure
  • SST diurnal variability is resolved with the NSST model.
  • Land surface changes

–     IGBP 20-type 1 km land classification

–     STASGO 19-type 1 km soil classification

–     MODIS-based snow free albedo

–     MODIS-based maximum snow albedo

–     Diurnal albedo treatment

–     Unify snow cover, albedo between radiation and land surface model

–     Increase ground heat flux under deep snow

  • Stability parameter constraint in the Monin-Obukov similarity theory to prevent land surface and atmosphere from fully decoupling leading to excessive cooling of 2m temperature during sunset.  Modification of the roughness-length formulation in the surface layer.
  • Changes to cumulus convection

–     Scale-aware, aerosol-aware

–     Rain conversion rate decreases with decreasing air temperature above freezing level

–     Convective adjustment time in deep convection proportional to convective turn-over time with CAPE approaching zero after adjustment time

–     Cloud base mass flux in shallow convection as a function of mean updraft velocity

–     Convection trigger condition to suppress the unrealistic summertime spotty precipitation over high mountains.

–     Convective cloudiness enhanced by suspended cloud condensate in updraft

  • Rayleigh damping applied to model layers above 2 hPa reduced by 50%.

Surface reference pressure for the two-time-level semi-implicit semi-Lagrangian

  • scheme changed from 800 hPa to 1000 hPa.

Changes in the land surface and stability parameter should reduce a near surface wintertime cold bias, a rapid temperature drop during sunset and reduce a blockiness apparent in some near-surface fields.  Some nighttime warm biases were introduced.  Changes in convection should reduce a positive bias in light amounts of precipitation and unrealistic summertime spotty precipitation over high mountains and increase skill in forecasting precipitation.  NSST is expected to improve tropical forecasts and may affect mid-latitude oceanic storms.  Reducing Rayleigh damping improved wind and temperature forecast in the upper stratosphere. Applying the revised reference pressure reduced model computational noise in the upper atmosphere.

 

 

Risk for strong tornadoes across portions of SC/GA/FL on Sunday

An extremely strong  upper level vort max will move into the Gulf and develop an unusually deep low pressure system across the Western Carolinas Sunday night.

Conditions just ahead of the cold front, along/south of the warm front will become extremely favorable for supercells to develop as 0-1 km helicity will be well above 500 and 0-6km shear will be over 60kts.  STP values are over 8.  There is also an an enormous amount of atmospheric lift as the left front exit region of the 300mb jet moves across the area, which is causing the surface low to deepen so quickly.

This is an extremely unusual system to bring this much instability and shear to an area this far south. Only once every decade or more does this region experience such extreme parameters.

The potential exist for long track and violent tornadoes exist across North Florida into into Eastern South Carolina Sunday afternoon.

I am attaching a few charts to illustrate the extreme nature of the tornadic environment today.  Those forecasting in this area be mindful of the rare nature of the parameters involved this afternoon.

 

NAM Model Upgraded Today – 3/21/2017

The NAM (North American) model was upgraded this morning.  There are many new updates to the model (see the NCEP TIN link for details), one of the important changes is with the NAM CONUS NEST.  It was upgraded from the 4km to 3km horizontal resolution along with a number of physics changes.

The NAM 3Km NEST has been available at Wright Weather for a couple of months running in parallel while NCEP evaluated its output.

Here are the links to the NAM model.

NAM 12KM Model
http://vmcluster.wright-weather.com/mesoeta.shtml

NAM 3km CONUS Nest
http://nam.wright-weather.com/nam.php

NAM 3km CONUS Nest (Classic)  /w upper air products.
http://www.wright-weather.com/nam-conus/nam-conus.php
Available at 18Z today.

Here is the NCEP TIN outlining some of the changes to the model.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/os/notification/tin16-41nam_updatesaab.htm

 

Digital Storm Total Precipitation – Dual Pole Corrected

WSR-88D Digital Storm Total Precipitation has been added to all single site radars.

This product differs from the traditional Storm Total Precipiation product.

  • More color resolution
  • Uses Dual Pole data to improve ZR relationship to better estimate precipitation amounts.

This is available under the NEXRAD Radars, under the navigation menu  ”Precipitation Estimates”

Here is a link to the Houston, Texas Digital Storm Total Precipitation. 

Upgrading to GOES 16 Satellite

We will be upgrading our system from GOES 13 to GOES 16 over the next couple of days.  There may be some  interruptions in a few of the satellite products as we make this major upgrade.

The new GOES 16 satellite image will offer 60x the amount of data that the previous GOES 13 satellite provided.

Some of the improvements are noted below

  • 1km visible imagery now increased to 500 meters
  • 4km infrared Imagery increased to 2km.
  • 15 minute CONUS now increased to 5 minutes
  • 1 minute updating mesoscale sectors
  • 15 minute Full Disk scans at 6km.

Wright Weather Upgrading to New Facility This Saturday – Temp Outage

This Saturday -  12/22/2018  around 10AM EST our Data Center provider will be relocating our equipment into a new facility with faster and more diverse internet carriers. This new facility also has more power and satellite receiving capabilities.

This relocation will allow us to continue to expand the growing number of servers needed to process the rapid increase in meteorological data.

Around 10 AM Wright Weather will be unavailable during this transition to the new facility (about 2 miles).  We expect to have all services restored within a few hours.

Expect a disruption in the 12/22/18 12Z Model cycle output and possibly the 12/22/18 18Z Model cycles. We expect to be fully operational by the 00Z model cycle.

We appreciate your patience as we continue to grow.

 

Tornado Passes Very Close to the Columbus, MS AFB 88D

A strong tornado passed very close to the Columbus, MS 88D tonight.  Winds were measured by the 88D up to 163 mph around 250 feet. Several other scans measured winds into the 140′s.  A debris ball and correlation co-efficient dropout indicated debris.  It’s pretty unusual to have a strong tornado so close to an 88D. But it has happened a few times in the past 30 years.

Also of note is a smaller satellite vorticie/tornado just northwest of the RDA.  It had winds to 90 mph.

 

Significant Hail Parameter Added to NAM

Added the Significant Hail Parameter to the NAM-12km model.  SHIP is similar to the STP & SCP. Values above 1.0 are correlated with large hail events.  Here is more info on this product.

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/mesoanalysis/help/help_sigh.html

 

National NAM Significant Hail Parameter Loops

http://vmcluster.wright-weather.com/cgi-bin/fcst.cgi?eho=84&inc=3&type5=&type=sfc&type4=us&type2=ship&type3=

** NOAA Planning Data Distribution Outage for 1/21/21- 1/22/21 **

NOAA is taking down its primary data distribution site https://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov for a power upgrade from 1-21-2021-1-22-2022.  This will impact some of the model graphics/analytic creation on Wright Weather. We utilize the NOMADS for a good deal of our model data sourcing.  During this outage there will be an interruption of some graphics/analytics we deliver.

Here is the message from NOAA.

https://www.weather.gov/media/notification/pdf2/scn20-118nomads_outageaaac.pdf

 

Update: 1/22 15Z   Outage continues.  NOAA planned a 19 hour outage, but 24+ hours in the outage continues. Latest message indicates that it will be up later today.  Expect next run of the GFS available will be the 18Z.

Update: 1/23 18Z  NCEP has restored most of the NOMADS system but there are some missing data and is still not fully functional, so some updates on Wright Weather will will be delayed or missing until NCEP has their site completely restored.

 

NCEP Server Down Once Again Causing Model Interruptions

NCEP once again, has encountered system problems and stopped dissemination of model data through the primary external model data interfaces we rely on (NOMADS).   This is the longest outage to date, that has continued since Thursday of last week.  They stopped working on it over the weekend (So much for 24/7 support for the weather community).

Will try to find a work around if they can’t find a fix a today but all of our code has been developed to work with the NOMADS system.