Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch

00:00:00:07 – 00:00:29:10
Unknown
Okay, great. Well, welcome, to our session here on the advection layer. Precipitable water product. My name is Dan Viscous. Sheldon Cassels. And we’ll be discussing a number of Alaska cases. And I’ll just briefly talk a little bit about the product. And we also have and so, on the line as well. So I’ll, I’ll put this in the framework of the, a product that has been around for quite a while and how it’s evolved and how we’ve gotten where we are with the affected layer Precipitable water product.

00:00:29:11 – 00:00:56:27
Unknown
So the legacy product that was developed before this was the layered Precipitable water product, and it’s analogous to the total Precipitable water product by the time layers. The blended Opw is created from the NOAA microwave Integrated Retrieval System or mirrors soundings. And these four layers are created. It’s produced every three hours and mapped onto a 16 kilometer, grid.

00:00:57:02 – 00:01:36:13
Unknown
And it makes use of seven mirrors, sounding spacecraft that are used on the various satellites that are listed here. It’s not operational, but various operational centers and WFO have been receiving this product. So after this or currently, what we have now is the advocated layer Precipitable water product. And it has several advantage over the former Nonevent it opw product like I just mentioned, instead of the patchwork of times in the former product, all swaps are advocated to a common time and average the affected product has reduced edges between the swaps.

00:01:36:16 – 00:02:06:08
Unknown
Also, there’s higher spatial resolution satellite soundings with improved retrieval methods being used, and that really makes a big difference. We just have a brief example down here at the bottom, but I’ll show a close up here in a minute that that really, shows how much better it is. The GFS model wind forecast from up to nine hours before the target time are, only used to affect the swath to a common time, such as zero three, six hours and, so forth.

00:02:06:08 – 00:02:28:20
Unknown
So that output is available every three hours. And like I said, the resulting imagery is much smoother. And I’ll show a close up of this in a minute. So this clock diagram shows the local time of the, past the polar pass here. So with seven different satellites, you can see the various times here, these are the local times.

00:02:28:20 – 00:02:53:20
Unknown
And when they come over, during those times and hopefully the first thing you can see here is that the times are irregular and they’re not evenly spaced. Like you might see, say, with the geostationary. So you have periods of high sampling and periods of no sampling, which can make, animations, challenging. So it’s a good way to visualize, when these passes will come over.

00:02:53:22 – 00:03:21:21
Unknown
So the strengths of this product, first, it’s easy to interpret. You have animation at regular intervals. It shows a four dimensional structure of the water vapor. Water vapor values are not dependent on the model. Retrieval is done in clouds since it’s a microwave product, which is, different from other methods used with Goes. Also, there’s numerous applications atmospheric rivers, flooding events, convective events.

00:03:21:24 – 00:03:47:00
Unknown
Just looking at, say, short waves like you traditionally would with water vapor imagery, surface boundaries, frontal zones, tropical waves, winter precipitation. And there’s probably some others that we didn’t think of, but there’s many, application of this, some limitations to consider. There’s a number of possible reasons for missing data. For example, there might not be, satellite data.

00:03:47:00 – 00:04:18:12
Unknown
That’s recent enough. You may have precipitating regions that are masked out. But just remember, word of caution. Don’t compare instantaneous radar to the masked out regions. Due to complexities in the advection scheme. High elevation regions, like, some areas, you might be getting a slice of that layer. So it’s it’s not so much, an air as it is a, just something to consider when you’re over high elevation region that you’re looking at a portion of a layer.

00:04:18:14 – 00:04:40:26
Unknown
Also, there’s a lot of, things that have to come into phase. So, missing data is still, an issue in the ingest. So that’s why, it may be missing. There’s a lot of things that have to, come into phase here. In terms of quantitative usage, it’s not intended as a replacement for the blended type product.

00:04:40:26 – 00:05:08:02
Unknown
Uses this in a complementary and supplementary way with the, product. And then finally, it does make use of the GFS for the wins. So obviously if that’s inaccurate, that will have an influence on the ALP CW as well. This is what the domain currently looks like, on a website. And you can see it extends out pretty well into the Pacific and half of Alaska.

00:05:08:03 – 00:05:36:08
Unknown
However, there’s some news, with this, that I’m going to turn it over to John, for a slice to talk about, this, image that he provided with me. Oh. Yeah. Thanks, Dan. Let’s see, we put up an image from today at, 18 UTC. Just a sector that’s moved a little further west, versus and north, which is better for Alaska compared to what we’ve been shown on the website?

00:05:36:11 – 00:05:54:22
Unknown
And these, we create animated GIFs out of these that Sheldon has, done a very good job with. And Dan have done a good job with circulating around, to users. So, I’m going to start, creating these, but, we haven’t been showing this before just because it’s sort of how much can you fit on your screen?

00:05:54:25 – 00:06:13:14
Unknown
Problem. Because we have tropical users that want the eastern Atlantic so and so forth. So, maybe, maybe we’ll start a new, a new sector. That’s that looks, looks like this area, which I think, you know, you can even see today some very nice hints of that tropical moisture moving northwards, up, up towards Alaska.

00:06:13:14 – 00:06:36:16
Unknown
So, I think that’s that’s all I have to say about that. Dan. So, John, this is on the web, but not on a website. Is that correct? Let’s see on well, I think a website is, limited by the, the, the regions that are defined on a WIPs, you know, the supranational. So it should we create the product over this domain.

00:06:36:16 – 00:06:56:00
Unknown
So it should be if you’re interested in somewhere in this domain and you have a map projection, it should be available. Okay. So okay. Because this I get this, screengrab from a while back. So, so it would be further north than my, my screengrab shows. Yeah. That’s right. We can, we can update that after the meeting.

00:06:56:01 – 00:07:19:05
Unknown
It’s, that as far it goes as far north as a as was on the previous image you were just showing. Okay. Well, that’s good news. Okay. Okay. Let me go on to, just, one quick slide that I’ll show here. This is just a comparison. If you’re familiar with the old Opw product and then compare it to the new, LP product.

00:07:19:07 – 00:07:55:00
Unknown
And quite obviously you can see many, improvements there. It’s not just the fact that you have, higher, spatial resolution of the soundings, but also, the algorithm itself has a lot more flexibility, with it. So you can see, just a lot, a lot of improvements with respect to that, especially around precipitating areas like so a quick word on color tables, the legacy product, actually, it looks like this, the one on the over here on the left and the one that’s, updated, I guess within the past year or so.

00:07:55:06 – 00:08:17:22
Unknown
Looks like the one over here. And the difference is it saturates at, 1.5in. Since that, we found that to be the highest end of any layer. That what you will actually observe. And, and we always say, during our training, be, feel free to experiment with the color table based on your area and season. I would imagine that’s, particularly true up in Alaska.

00:08:17:22 – 00:08:46:09
Unknown
So don’t be afraid to experiment with that color table. For what? Best fits your area. Okay? Okay. Okay, okay. First of all, just let me introduce myself briefly. Hopefully, I’m, Sheldon Carlson. He retired. So I did you all just this retired in 2015? I was the operating operational satellite analyst with a specialty, an oyster precipitation analysis.

00:08:46:09 – 00:09:23:00
Unknown
And, I did a lot of consulting with the National Weather Service forecasters throughout the Conus. Yeah, Puerto Rico, but unfortunately, we didn’t do anything for Alaska. It that’s how it originated. And, we were never, I guess, but looking and talking with the forecasters in Alaska, which is unfortunate because, a lot of things we did to help requesters understand how to use satellite data better, and help those forecasters, get a handle on every precipitation event.

00:09:23:03 – 00:09:45:07
Unknown
I started collaborating with researchers in the 1990s and developing improving microwave satellite products. First could assist in my and, then later with no MSU in the latter part of the 1990s and, along with my operational duties, I found some time to work to try and look at applications for the total precip of water.

00:09:45:07 – 00:10:23:21
Unknown
And, little did I know that, there would be an affected layer of the water product, down the road that could also use those same applications that I, developed with others to help forecasters get a handle on analyzing up these, moisture events that could result in heavy precipitation and, localized flooding. About eight years ago, when I was asked by John Foresight to write a recommendation for an effective layer two board of, well, I don’t, I didn’t really know a whole lot about it.

00:10:23:23 – 00:10:59:09
Unknown
But I knew that the anything with layers in the works would be even more helpful to forecasters. So, that was done. And, here we are today with just the objective drops of water product. And, hopefully I’ll be able to show you some cases in which, applications can be used. Possibly you can apply, different wind sets on your, adapted layers to the water product to help you get a better handle on, using the products for every precipitation, flash flooding, even heavy snow.

00:10:59:09 – 00:11:28:18
Unknown
Again. Okay. The first case, I don’t have a, interesting case. I kind of call this the, the highlight case, because it’s a it’s a very classical, atmospheric river case that, I’m sure many of you in Alaska have seen in the eastern Pacific. It’s a north to south oriented moisture called, what we now call atmospheric river.

00:11:28:23 – 00:12:24:00
Unknown
Moisture, very high concentration of high moisture in which, very interested overlay, the upper level or in this case, also the low level winds are blowing parallel, to the the moisture plume or atmospheric river and the four layers. Would you much give us a better idea of the different moisture at the different layers, the atmosphere low, middle, middle to high and very high layers, and we can kind of, either either overlay or draw the average Winslow at that particular layer, to get a handle on moisture transport, which is very important for the generation, ancestors sustaining heavy precipitation when it gets, only in either the

00:12:24:00 – 00:13:03:01
Unknown
northern or eastern edge of the the moisture plume. And, starts interacting with the, the various forcing mechanisms like upper level shortwave, frontal boundaries, moisture convergence, things like that, that really produce the excessive amounts of rain, which happened in this case back last year on, Saturday, October 26th, the 27th period, as you can see, down, in the lower port, where my cursor is, that’s just the total atmospheric moisture it gives you, the moisture, pretty much.

00:13:03:03 – 00:13:26:29
Unknown
But I look at total the water and, is good for the low level moisture. But many things we’ve now learned with this, layer of water. We didn’t know, before the product was available, we only knew about terms of the water being that most exposed to the, moisture in the atmosphere was, in the lower levels below 10,000ft.

00:13:26:29 – 00:13:52:13
Unknown
We thought it was a great product. So we’re looking at low level moisture, but now with the of moisture and being able to see the concentrations of moisture at both 700, 500 and also even at 500 to 300, we also get it an idea of what the moisture is like at those layers. And we found that, it’s the moisture at the middle and high levels.

00:13:52:15 – 00:14:30:02
Unknown
Though you might not think that is very important, can mean the difference between a just an ordinary, normal, heavy precipitation event and an extraordinary. Yeah, even in a storm heavy precipitation event. So, it’s important that these two types of products total for the water and, the layers should have had a product be seen as something that complements and supplement each, in your daily, analyzing the weather and satellite and, with other weather data.

00:14:30:04 – 00:14:52:19
Unknown
Next case is kind of, from December of 2017, which was yeah, I believe it was an unbelievably heavy snow event case for, southern Alaska. In the early part of December of 2017.

00:14:52:22 – 00:15:28:05
Unknown
This was a case where, at all layers of the, the atmosphere broke from the surface to eight 5850 to 700, 700, 500 and 500 to 300. It was at least one moisture plume or atmospheric river that extended from the subtropics all the way up to the coast of southern Alaska. In the case of the low levels, they were actually three that would play, that could be drawn at the surface.

00:15:28:05 – 00:16:01:20
Unknown
They could be layer. We had them all kind of the case. Two of them converged, and the into one plume would extend up to the south through the up southern Alaska coast. Two up to help in the low level at the 850, the 700, there were actually three separate plane. It would all be converging on each other in the Gulf of Alaska and extend up to the coast of the, of the and the coast of Alaska, and then 700 to 500.

00:16:01:20 – 00:16:50:28
Unknown
There were at least two planes converging with each other, with a another one coming in from the west. And, at the even the other levels, there was a very high level moisture from our concentration of high moisture at that very high level, in which all of these moisture plumes that kind of aligned with each other to really make a very, very deep, layer of moisture and, recognized as a, as a satellite signature for, for the potential for excessive amounts of precipitation, which, would it happened, during the next 24 hours, especially, in the, Valdez area, Alaska, where, the Canton Pass, just

00:16:50:28 – 00:17:27:19
Unknown
outside of that Valdez. They had, exceptional amounts of snow, as shown in the, amounts on the, white area. Besides the layered, the the water product and, this just kind of a, is a, kind of a brief summary of, that event with the, Alaska forecast generally recognizing the, moisture, plume with this event, in their, Twitter feed.

00:17:27:21 – 00:18:03:10
Unknown
That, I noticed, from this event. And, also, I did show you the upper levels of the various, layers, to show the sea directory and the moisture transport, the various layers and the extraordinary, inflow that extended from the subtropics all the way to Alaska and then below investors, snowfall rate product that, also was showing the, exceptional amounts of snow rates in, in Southeast Alaska during the time.

00:18:03:12 – 00:18:31:05
Unknown
And, if you had a chance, in Canada, click on, the, the various loops, the beginning development of this again, the middle development and reaching its peak development. I think that’ll give you a, a sense, a very good sense of the, of the motion of the various layers and, and air flow, all these, moisture plumes came together to help produce this exceptional event.

00:18:31:07 – 00:19:11:24
Unknown
Another case, from, December a few days later, December 27th. December was a rather exceptional, month. Yeah. Alaska in the way of heavy precipitation and also very good warm weather conditions. In this particular case, a few days later, they are, at the lowest layers you can see, two, very well pronounced, moisture planes, at the surface for 50 at day 5700, there were actually three, separate moisture planes or analyzed.

00:19:11:27 – 00:19:39:19
Unknown
Pretty much north to south and with the moisture transport exceptional. And even when you get up to 7 to 500, you have, very nice to plume that that comes from the west, across the area. That is why that took effect with the, the easternmost plume that extended from the subtropics all the way up into the southeast part of the West flask.

00:19:39:21 – 00:20:13:01
Unknown
And, even a very exceptionally well stretch. I should claim, at the 500 to 300 millibars and all these moisture plumes, but pretty much aligned with each other. At one point or another that, do, who at this time and would help provide very high moisture transport into Southeast Alaska, where the greatest forcing was to help reduce, an exceptional the potential of that in this case.

00:20:13:04 – 00:21:05:12
Unknown
Yes, you can Alaska, but resulting in 4.15in just for the December night with, pretty good amounts both the day before and the day after. And as you can see, those water vapor very important for, for identifying the, the main high level moisture. But but the clouds can deter you from getting an idea of the moisture at that mid-level better point of the, the it goes, water vapor channel, which is around, 25,000ft and the, the total water product provides you with, very good thermal, atmospheric moisture, in nature and end up pretty much at the lowest stage of, of the atmosphere where most of the moisture is

00:21:05:12 – 00:21:33:21
Unknown
concentrated. But, adding to that idea of what the moisture is at, at different layers of the atmosphere and especially about the higher layers, it provide you with information about whether they said this can be an exceptional or an historic type of precipitation, an event, which, this was at least an exceptional case for, for Southeast Alaska.

00:21:33:24 – 00:22:01:09
Unknown
Another case, had been, the cases for that this particular week. Well, just coming, one after another, there was a warm moisture pulled up for this, the December 11th case. As you can see, the low levels extending from the southeast coast of Alaska all the way down into the depths of the tropics east of Hawaii, with another system coming in behind that, the warmth.

00:22:01:11 – 00:22:34:24
Unknown
Not only can, display extreme water, put it up, giving you some information about what’s going on, and analyzing the moisture now, but, you can kind of watch the motion to the next system comes in and give you an idea of, and let you on top of what you’re going to get. Yeah, well, you’ll get it in a few more days, and, you can go through each layer, at the 850 to 700, they were actually converging moisture points with the easternmost, atmospheric river.

00:22:34:26 – 00:23:20:02
Unknown
That was affecting Southeast Alaska. And, when you get to the severe the 500, there’s also some moisture converging, the two separate moisture coils converging, at around 30 north and then, combined into one atmosphere with, moisture that extends up in the southeast Alaska and, you know, the final 2 to 3 hours, if you can identify, if you have the great color enhancement for, for that particular layer because, the values are going to be much lower, 5 to 3 I but if you can, fine tune your color enhancement, for the highest layers where there’s not as much the water, you can see that same

00:23:20:02 – 00:23:39:04
Unknown
and, and all those, planes, kind of aligned with each other. Well, so let’s give you a note of that. Oh, exceptional. Another event for for that week is going to be, for, in this case, southeast Alaska.

00:23:39:07 – 00:24:01:16
Unknown
In kind of, the last, event for that particular week and, December. What is that? The second system that we saw that helped develop into a very, very healthy, astral plane, not just in the low level. Said Thursday, 50 and 850 to 700, but also at the 700 to 500 and 500 to 300.

00:24:01:23 – 00:24:33:16
Unknown
We are all these moisture planes are aligned with each other at not only, the two lowest layers, but also the, the third, the middle level and even the high level, gives you a very good idea, very good sense of sort of the depth of the moisture, the depth of the moisture transport and, the exceptional, rainfall potential, or in this case, also, some snowfall potential.

00:24:33:18 – 00:24:51:03
Unknown
It’s about to come on the leading edge of the moisture plume where, it meets, the stronger forcing, which in this case was leading off in the Gulf of Alaska and along the, the the Alaska coast.

00:24:51:05 – 00:25:18:26
Unknown
The last example is, a little bit different example, from the, the others. The only difference being that you have a very, very deep, low in the, on eastern Pacific, the south of the Gulf of Alaska, where, and you have a deep enough trough that a lot of tropical moisture has been drawn northward.

00:25:18:28 – 00:25:47:24
Unknown
The, the average wind flow at the layers, blowing parallel to the highest moisture and all that is wrapping back around, the, very strong in a cyclone, which in this case is, the Aleutians and just west to southwest Alaska to help, result in exceptionally deep Easter all the way back into, the cold Bay.

00:25:47:27 – 00:26:13:29
Unknown
Area of, of Alaska and, that’s, even if somebody who’s not real familiar with the, the weather that goes on in Alaska, over two inches of liquid, losing 16.6in of snow in the middle of December, at least to me, is exceptional amount of limitation for, any time of the year, let alone December.

00:26:14:02 – 00:26:39:17
Unknown
And, again, just reinforcing the idea that, sure, you can see that in the moisture at with the TBWA product, which gives you a good sense of the, the low level moisture pockets, those moisture is concentrated in the lowest layers, but the layers of the water product, gives you that, amount and, depth and the alignment of the moisture.

00:26:39:17 – 00:27:03:27
Unknown
Also at the higher layers and, and help you with the fine, the, the event as, just an ordinary precipitation event, or a extraordinary to a store heavy precipitation event. But any questions?

00:27:03:29 – 00:27:17:12
Unknown
Aaron, do you have anything more to say? Sheldon, I think you covered it very nicely. Okay.

00:27:17:14 – 00:27:43:08
Unknown
It okay if, is it, no, I guess, I’m just curious. Does Alaska Region have this in, pretty much all their offices, and their Alex. Yes, we do. And, I was looking at, this way and it does go above, 65. It’s a 70 north. Oh, okay. Great. Update that graphic that I have.

00:27:43:10 – 00:28:08:25
Unknown
So any questions from anybody? Not a question, but a comment, I guess when using these products, as I’ve found, is where if you need all the layers to line up and you can’t anticipate when heavy rain or heavy precipitation will be moving over an area or moving out of an area, it seems like when you lose the 500 to 700 millibar upper levels, but you still have the low level moisture.

00:28:08:25 – 00:28:28:21
Unknown
It seems like you’re using the heavy precipitation values for, reports that the ground. But, so that can help forecasters anticipate when heavy rain is going to move into an area, or then move out of an area that are associated with these atmospheric rivers.

00:28:28:24 – 00:28:55:13
Unknown
I would probably say that, when you start seeing the 700, 500 and 500 to 300, the moisture moving out, that probably is the beginning of the end of the very heavy precipitation. But you still have this, you know, low level moisture that kind of be worked over by that, the low level forcing features or, or upper level features.

00:28:55:13 – 00:29:28:16
Unknown
So, I would think that that, that the heavy precipitation would pretty much be coming to an end, that these exceptional heavy precipitation would be coming to an end once the 700, 500 and 500 to 300 moisture plume and then greatest concentration of moisture has moved going by. But and, you still could have some you know, it all depends on what the forcing feature is with that lingering low level moisture, plume that fits.

00:29:28:18 – 00:30:03:20
Unknown
That’s still, I don’t have to go by it. And before, you know, the the the even the heavy precipitation ends, but probably the exceptional heavy rain, heavy precipitation should be, should be ending once that has a higher level moisture as it’s kind of moved by, to the east. And that is correct. If we see like the when you would see rain rates of, quarter inch to half inch, per hour rain rates is when we have that surely deep moisture going all the way from the surface to, 300.

00:30:03:20 – 00:30:36:12
Unknown
But when that seven, five and 5 or 300 layer starts decoupling from the other two lower levels, we do see the heavier precipitation. Rain rates drop off significantly. Right. And at least over the, the conus sometimes, when you start getting this drier air, the lower the water appearance in the mid and high levels and, and on either the moisture pulls at the lower levels and it could go very high moisture in the low levels.

00:30:36:15 – 00:31:13:22
Unknown
That’s when you could possibly get a tornado or two and that’s, that’s in the Conus. So, yeah, I guess it would be nice if, you know, tornadoes go to occur very often, you know, in the it would be nice to get a case in which there was a, some type of tornado or tornado outbreak in Alaska and, and a, an image of the lakes, the water for that particular time to come up with, maybe a signature, for this product for, for, for the isolated instances that in which a tornado occurred.

00:31:13:22 – 00:31:45:16
Unknown
But, that’s what we’ve also seen in the, in the Conus in the lower 48, that sometimes when that lowered severe water, air, in the high levels, starts coming in behind the that the moisture plume, you possibly could have enough moisture in the low levels to and enough speed to help result in a, in a tornado or or two in a particular area.

00:31:45:18 – 00:32:12:24
Unknown
That is, is like an Anchorage. I have not seen this, this product in our neighborhood yet. Doesn’t mean it’s not there. I’ll be able to check tonight, but it’s up some really good cases and, fresh start on the scene. I’ll just, I’ll just play it up. Yeah. And one of the reasons why, I don’t really have a whole lot of, interior Alaska cases is that, I’ve got you got all these cases, from, dump sites.

00:32:12:27 – 00:32:41:06
Unknown
Great archives, which goes back to, at least, I think April 2016 and, and, in, in the, in the summertime, we usually, shift the, the website, shift the area further east to cover the Atlantic tropical storms and less of the Pacific because of pretty much the Pacific, at least shuts down for the West coast of the United States.

00:32:41:06 – 00:33:07:12
Unknown
But, it’s great that that change been able to create a sector that covers more of Alaska. And I think I’ve learned more about how to use this product for places like, West, central and interior Alaska and even the eastern interior of Alaska. Hopefully we can get, you know, heavy precipitation cases, for those areas.

00:33:07:15 – 00:33:42:10
Unknown
So it’s great at least, for us, where people and, non-Native people will be able to see better up, in the area over all of the last consist of just maybe the south coast of Alaska. But I do have another, another question for you concerning the differences between the regular American DPW and, and the lake or are they, in fact, you were you were talking about how the the two upper level panel seem to make a big difference is the time to take into account the same exact column.

00:33:42:12 – 00:34:13:26
Unknown
Yeah. But, back in the 1990s, when we started the, sorry, the first city, and then we derived the, code of water from, microwave satellite sensors. It was our idea that, you know, most of the, moisture in the atmosphere is below 10,000ft. Once you get above 10,000ft, that, it, you know, the moisture as we know, decreases significantly, as you’re going up in the atmosphere.

00:34:13:26 – 00:34:57:10
Unknown
But we found that, with the layer of water product, there are also atmospheric rivers in the layer, triple water plot. And, if you have a color enhancement that can, show those lowest, values, it it can be very helpful. And, in, in differentiating a storm between, an ordinary heavy precipitation event that, you know, the moisture at the lower layers and that added, deepening moisture that, that you, that you would see in the, the highest layers to the 700 to 500 and 500 to 300 dump.

00:34:57:12 – 00:35:23:22
Unknown
I’m not sure whether it’s, you’ve heard of, Ellicott City, in Maryland, but, they’ve had two exceptional precipitation, events in, in the last two years. They’ve had 200 year flood in the last two years. And, both of them were helped out by a having a moisture plume had to 700 to 500, layer up that added moisture.

00:35:23:22 – 00:36:10:15
Unknown
That helped the lower level plume that was coming from a different direction, helped give that added amount of moisture and helped produced five, six, seven inches of rain in a in a 3 or 4 hour period and, in both cases. So, it’s opened our eyes quite a bit to what, the moisture about that 70 year old bore can do if you, color enhance the moisture amount the right way, to capture those, lower, acceptable order values and, you know, you see more by, by, colorizing the, the, the values, so that, the they mean something and and it

00:36:10:15 – 00:36:24:11
Unknown
gets you over to the idea that, the little hot middle to high level moisture content can be important in, in many cases with these exceptional precipitation events.

00:36:24:13 – 00:36:48:06
Unknown
Yeah. I, I do recall that on the East Coast, let me just got on the phone and realized though, that this, this product show that and, show the moisture plume, all that, all that. Well, but yeah, it’s, it’s pretty good. When I was the cold Bay case, I was, forecasting on on that night, and when it was clear they were getting a bunch of snow, first thing I just go back and say, all right, how could we have seen this coming a little bit better?

00:36:48:06 – 00:37:10:04
Unknown
And the, UW that’s one of the first things that, that I looked at was that the deep layer of moisture plume from the tropics really, really showed out, showed out really well. Right. And in the case of the cold Bay, English cold Bay, it’s a very similar event to an event that they had in New York state.

00:37:10:06 – 00:37:51:10
Unknown
About a year or two ago where you had, moisture, at least three of the four layers all wrapping back around and, and it further being enhanced by crossing, Lake Ontario to produce, a 25 to 30 inch snow event in November of, I believe it was, it’s either 2016 or 2017, not so, the, the the the the events are exceptional even with, these, moisture plumes that, that don’t wrap around each other.

00:37:51:10 – 00:38:16:09
Unknown
But in these cases of, November, December, where you have these big and I say clothing heat and you have enough moisture being drawn out of the tropics that had, 3 or 4 layers and wrapping back or about wrapping back around the cold air, can be a very, very good, satellite signature of an exceptional. So that’s going on.

00:38:16:12 – 00:38:41:03
Unknown
Yeah. This is John Forsythe. I just had a couple comments to make. The first was that. Yeah. Heavy snow is something we haven’t really looked at with this very much. But we think that there’s probably some interesting, applications there. Also, I wanted to mention, what what Sheldon said about seeing these different layers come together, which, Sheldon was really kind of a pioneer and seeing that in the product.

00:38:41:05 – 00:39:01:09
Unknown
We did just, some of our team here just published a paper with, a couple National Weather Service guys, Chris Jethro from Kansas City and Mike Dr.. From Binghamton, New York, and the Journal of Operational Meteorology this past summer. Documenting some other flood cases in the Conus and, how the how the product works.

00:39:01:12 – 00:39:22:27
Unknown
So that’s that’s probably the best reference if you want to, read a little more about it. Right now, I think that came out in June of this year. Otherwise, my other comments are, we’re still doing some research and development on this product to, try to improve it and, validate how well it does, how it compares to the forecast models, those kinds of things.

00:39:22:27 – 00:39:48:20
Unknown
And, we, we we always, our interested in the process of seeing if, if you can get into operations because we’ve gotten a lot of feedback from forecasters about the, the usefulness of it, WPC and, hurricane Center use it very much. So, that process is just getting off the ground. So if you, if that’s something you, you know, you want to go through your channels and say, hey, we like this product.

00:39:48:20 – 00:40:09:14
Unknown
You know, we’d like to see it operational. You know, that’s something we’ve I guess you could say I’m lobbying for. Otherwise, that’s all I had to say. Unless there’s any other questions, I. We appreciate your time. Mike Eggers again. I do have one more question and or and or comment and and using this. Yeah.

00:40:09:14 – 00:40:42:23
Unknown
I didn’t really pull it up as a as a four panel. What? I thought most of this conversation today is just how important 705 hundred and 300, 500, 300 are assessed assessing, how important moisture is. But what usually stands out is, is how those, moisture is usually concentrated in the low levels. So a question I had and maybe a place for further work is or a way that we can get some context to tie this to climatology in a similar way.

00:40:42:26 – 00:41:23:21
Unknown
The, I believe there is a sounding climatology for GW. So you can kind of compare it to where you know where it is, but it’s with, with historical context, even if it’s just, you know, all that well, note numbers straight out of sailing, right? Yeah, that’s a good question. Good. You mentioned that because, I am working right now with actually the Tucson, Arizona, Weather Service office on exactly doing that, we have their, sounding climatology record going back to the 1950s, and we’re deriving the opw from that and going to, look at creating something sort of like the SPC sounding climatology page for total Precipitable water.

00:41:23:21 – 00:41:42:25
Unknown
So, yeah, you’re right. There’s the product is mainly been used sort of in a, sort of a graphical sense or an image that’s, you know, there’s less. Yeah, there’s more there. But, we’d like to get forecasters to understand more of what the, the actual quantitative values, mean and, and how they relate to historical events.

00:41:42:25 – 00:42:02:12
Unknown
So that’s, that’s a good comment. And we are working on that. So this is Aaron in Juneau. Yeah. I would the certificate that I think that would be a great addition to this project where you can really put it in the context of, yes, you have a low level moisture, but how anomalous is that low and moisture or how anomalous is the mid-level moisture?

00:42:02:12 – 00:42:26:04
Unknown
And then when you have those things on top of each other, how anomalous is the total. So you can put all those different little pieces together. You have a lot better idea of what could be impacting your area. Yeah. Yeah. Well, like I said, we’re sort of prototyping that with Tucson right now, but, there’s no reason once we get our whole process sort of worked through that, we couldn’t just use like the Juno sounding or, you know, any all the other Alaskan sounding.

00:42:26:04 – 00:42:54:10
Unknown
So, yeah, that’s we’ll keep in touch about that. Yeah. Please do. Yeah. That would be, very interesting to be a part of. Okay. Thanks. I guess I have one comment on about, Sheldon’s, comment about these different streams coming, coming together. And it seems like that is a key feature where you have these different streams coming together into form one big atmospheric river where you have these little creeks and streams to form the river.

00:42:54:12 – 00:43:32:27
Unknown
You really have added punch, and it’s just like one, one stream where you have these multiple tributaries coming into this one big river where you can have some really, big, principal water values. But it’s, it’s just, it’s it’s one of many things that can, can help result in, an exceptional, precipitation event. As we all know, there are many, many variables in, in, in weather forecasting and, one thing, one weather variable could be bad and you could have, great different moisture streams coming together.

00:43:32:27 – 00:44:01:17
Unknown
And, you still just have kind of an ordinary, normal precipitation event. So, it’s it’s all the weather variables that, that come together, but, and these, with the satellite layer to the water, and the moisture aligning itself and converging itself, and, and, and the only can also if there were exceptional can overwhelm anything else in your weather variable.

00:44:01:18 – 00:44:21:17
Unknown
So, you’re right about the various converging moisture plumes and things like that and, and then more, lining itself up, above the summary millibar layer, to, you know, help with that deep, moisture rain into an area.

00:44:21:19 – 00:44:27:05
Unknown
Any more questions or comments?

00:44:27:08 – 00:44:36:00
Unknown
Okay. Well, thank you, everybody, and have a great day. And I’ll post this, video and I’ll, I’ll send you the URL, Erin, so you can share that with other folks.