It may seem like an easy task for Meteorologists at the National Weather Service to issue Severe Thunderstorm and Tornado Warnings, however there are a lot of things that those folks look at. Still think it’s easy, huh? Well, what if I told you there was a simulator you could play that would test YOUR ability to issue warnings? Well, check this out!
It’s the “Warning Simulator!” Each few minutes you will be given a new radar display with new information. Before we go on, I’ll give you a few clues at the different radar displays you can toggle to and from.
First, REF refers to reflectivity (which in layman’s terms is just rainfall intensity).
SRM/VELO is velocity. Negative numbers indicate the speed of the wind blowing TOWARD the radar site. Positive numbers indicate the speed of the wind blowing AWAY from the radar site.
VIL is “vertically integrated liquid.” The higher the number, the higher chance of seeing large hail. Damaging hail is usually confined to storms displaying a VIL higher than 60.
Good luck! If you’re brave enough, post your score and probablities once your done. Now choose a scenario from the list below. Some of them, you’ll recognize the territory! -ES
| Scenario (Resolution 1024×768) Tornadoes and Severe Thunderstorms sweep across Alabama (Easy) Game play time = 15 min |
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Scenario (Resolution 800×600) Tropical storm and associated severe weather move through the Southeast (Not so easy) Game play time = 25 min |
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Scenario (Resolution 800×600) Springlike supercells move through Georgia the day after New Year’s Day (Not so easy) Game play time = 15 min |
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Scenario (Resolution 800×600) Severe storms strike Chicago in August 2008 Game play time = 10 min |
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Scenario (Resolution 800×600) Quad Cities severe storms Game play time = 13 min |
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Scenario (Resolution 800×600) Rare November severe weather event in central Iowa |
Posted under severe weather, tornado
This post was written by Eric Sorensen on June 10, 2010
Okay, I got 26,915 on the top one — is that any good? I forgot to write down my stats. I got a bunch of them, missed a few, and issued the wrong kind of warning for a bunch of them too (i.e., a Tornado warning for the place that “only” got baseball sized hail but no Tornado).
This could easily be addictive.
Did better on the Chicago area one: 27,895 pts. Issued 5 tornado warnings, only needed 3 (but — I don’t like that the boxes are SQUARE — I think those extra 2 were just to move the box further east) Avg lead time was 3 minutes. I also did some needless SVR warnings on the far western side of the screen, which did look kinda nasty, but I guess nothing happened there.
Ooo this is FUN (of course, NOT FUN if there were actual people’s lives and property at stake … FUN when its JUST a video game)!
Okay — I’m sitting at w*rk playing NWS video games. I gotta GO before I wind up sitting here playing this all night!
306700 on the easy one
Oops, I think I missed some trailing 0’s.
Make that 269150 on the Easy one (BUB still beat me by a mile) and 278950 on the Chicago one!
Just did the Iowa one 389250. Avg lead time is up to 7 minutes on the severes and 5 min on the Tornadoes.
I can see that I am making the same kind of mistakes repeatedly (I’m l-e-a-r-n-i-n-g…), namely I cancel warnings too soon (can’t tell you how many times I canceled a warning & then less than a minute later a Tornado was reported RIGHT where I just canceled the warning) and I’m putting my warning boxes too far to the east (gives “good” lead times, but I also saw a pattern of “missing” actual events by just milimeters to the left).
I could see how you could get a lot better at this with practice.
Okay, am I the only Weather Buff that is obsessing on these?
I love it!!!
So Eric — are you going to post your scores???
405500 on the Central Iowa Tornado Outbreak
281650 for the Chicago storms… I over warned that one…
ooh WiWeatherBuff…. tips and tricks, plus more scenarios…
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ffc/?n=hotseatstart
I haven’t gotten a 400K score, that’s for sure! I’ve been averaging around 300K. Did pretty good with the tropical depression simulator. -ES
Someone should make a whole game out of this with several levels. In high resolution too!
294,200 for Chicago. I wanna do all of them now.
svr issued-24
verified-12
lead time 10 mins
missed 1
tor
issued 6
verified 2
lead 2 mins
pod 93%
far 53%
csi 45%
score 395800 alabama easy one lol
Scenario (Resolution 800×600)
Rare November severe weather event in central Iowa
score 468650
I did not know what POD, FAR and CSI meant so I didn’t know what I was looking at when I was looking at the statistics!
I found this good little paper that explains it (and a few other things too):
http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/25536.pdf
Okay, last comment, I promise (well, maybe…)
One of the things I keep getting dinged on is not warning soon enough.
I am confused about the criteria for a warning.
Obviously if you see a big ol’ hook echo with all kinds of wind shear I suppose NWS would warn.
But I thought that NWS actually waits for ground confirmation of “suspicious echos before issuing a warning.
Obviously on this video game, you get dinged a lot of pts if you do that. You can be watching and watching and watching a cell for several frames. But if you don’t warn before somebody calls in an observation of Hail, Funnel Cloud, whatever, you get dinged really badly for pts.
Is NWS wrong to wait for ground confirmation?
I fail at this.. aha
SVR’s
Issued: 22
Verified: 6
Lead time: 2 mins
Missed: 9
TOR’s
Issued: 8
Verified: 0
Lead time: 0 minutes
Missed: 3
POD: 33%
FAR: 80%
CSI: 14%