The Use of AWIPS in a Major Tornado Outbreak May 3rd, 1999

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Severe Weather Warnings and Safety Panel
Discussion Donald W. Burgess Chief, NSSL
Warning Research and Development
Division National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA)
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QUESTION How is NSSL impacted by Severe
Weather? ANSWER NSSL designs radar and
multi-sensor algorithms and Warning Decision
Support Systems.
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Warning Decision Support System
System that converts 11 million bits of Doppler
radar data every 5 minutes into Important
information for forecasters to make warning
decisions
Probability of tornado and damaging winds from
neural network
Table ranking the most severe storms
One hour trend of storm parameters
Detects storms and vortices and forecasts their
movement.
Pop-up table alerting of rapidly growing storms
Time-height trend information from 130 million
data points
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QUESTION What is the one thing NSSL can do to
minimize the impact of Severe Weather? ANSWER
Improve tornado warning lead time. Develop new
technology.
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PHASED ARRAY RADAR
Phased Array Weather Radar Technology
Provides Increased Lead Time to Save Lives and
Property
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Phased Array Radar Support

• U.S. Navy (10M), SPY-1 antenna
• NOAA/NWS - WSR-88D transmitter (1.0M)
• NOAA/OAR (1.0M, TEP)
• Lockheed Martin (1.0M in kind, TEP)
• Oklahoma State Regents (1.0M, TEP)
• U. of Oklahoma (0.5M, TEP)
• FAA (3.0M)
• 10-Year Research Project