Strengths and Limitations of Current Radar Systems for Two Stakeholder Groups in the Southern Plains

Impacts of Phased-Array Radar Data on Forecaster Performance during Severe Hail and Wind Events

“…While both reasons explained the confident and correct decisions made by the control group, the mastery decisions in the experimental group were predominantly explained by the latter reason. As discussed previously, LaDue et al (2010) reported that forecasters expressed a need for faster radar updates in order to observe rapidly evolving weather. The qualitative reasoning provided for mastery decisions suggests that the experimental group's ability to observe storm evolution on a finer temporal scale was enhanced through the use of 1-min radar updates.…”

“…In a survey conducted by LaDue et al (2010), forecasters expressed a need for higher-temporalresolution radar data during rapidly evolving weather events. In particular, forecasters reported that the 4-6-min updates provided by the WSR-88D are insufficient for observing radar precursor signatures of thunderstorms such as downbursts (LaDue et al 2010). Fujita and Wakimoto (1983) define a downburst as, ''A strong downdraft which induces an outburst of damaging winds on or near the ground.''…”

Workshop on Weather Ready Nation: Science Imperatives for Severe Thunderstorm Research

“…Data analyses from scientific field programs, such The Second Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment (Wurman et al, 2012), were designed to shed light on this challenge. Other tornado-warning challenges include limitations due to radar scan time, spatial resolution, and the earth's curvature effect (e.g., LaDue et al 2010). Because tornadoes can develop in tens of seconds to minutes, rapid-adaptative-scan radar technologies such as phased array radar are being explored to improve sampling of rapidly evolving storm structures (Zrnic et al 2007;Heinselman et al 2008).…”

Articles

“…T he most common reasons for operational warning forecasters for not detecting (and thereby not warning) tornadoes prior to touchdown often can be traced to having either too little information available-because of inadequacies in existing technology (e.g., LaDue et al 2010), limited spotter networks, and incomplete conceptual models-or too much information, that is, data overload.…”