STORMTIPE-95: Results from a Convective Storm Forecast Experiment

Abstract

During the spring of 1995, an operational forecast experiment using a three-dimensional cloud model was carried out for the north Texas region. Gridpoint soundings were obtained from the daily operational numerical weather prediction models run at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, and these soundings were then used to initialize a limited-domain cloud-resolving model in an attempt to predict convective storm type and morphology in a timely manner. The results indicate that this type of convective forecast may be useful in the operational environment, despite several limitations associated with this methodology. One interesting result from the experiment is that while the gridpoint soundings obtained from the NCEP models generally overforecast instability and vertical wind shear, the resulting convective storm evolution and morphology in the cloud model was often similar to that of the observed storms. Therefore the ?overforecast? of mesoscale environment?s instability and vertical wind shear still resulted in a thunderstorm-scale forecast that provided useful information to operational forecasters.