I attended the College of DuPage Severe Weather Symposium held from November 5-7 in Downers Grove, IL.
Some background: the College of DuPage has the longest running, organized storm chase class which just passed its twentieth chase season. Other courses offered at the college provide beginning students of meteorology a “leg up” by providing valuable hands on experience. The program is headed up by professor Paul Sirvakta. Paul is a genuinely nice guy and great facilitator which is why the program is such a success.
Many of you may know that Missouri State University offered a similar (at least logistically) chase class this past June ‘09. It is safe to say that the framework, it not the actual seed for the idea, came from the College of DuPage program.
One of promoted items of the symposium was an early look at the results of the massive project Vortex 2 field study of tornadoes which occurred this past spring. Spring 2009 wasn’t a great year for tornadoes incidentally (I’ll have some exact figures in another post). In fact. during the six weeks of Vortex 2 operation, only one tornado was intercepted! But it was probed and measured by more radars and meteorological instrumentation than any tornado in history! While it wasn’t touched on much at the conference, there were other supercells in which data was collected that did not produce a tornado. These so-called “null sets” might prove valuable too in that one of goals of project Vortex is to figure out why some supercells which really look like they should produce a tornado do not.
Another way of putting this is to talk about false alarms. The National Weather Service would really like to reduce, to as small a number as possible, the number of tornado warnings issued for which a tornado never forms. I remember well a night several seasons ago when a tornado warning was issued for Springfield and Greene County during the “prime time” evening hours. With sirens blaring, KOLR and KSFX provided continuous coverage of this storm as it passed into the warning area for about 30 minutes. As you might have already guessed, a tornado never developed. Oh, and that 30 minutes of coverage just happen to overlap exactly with a show, maybe you’ve heard of it, called “American Idol”!
While there are many other factors which go into the warning decision process which will affect how many false alarms occur, a better understanding of tornadogenesis is certainly a very important first step.
The speakers were all fantastic. Some were principle investigators with Vortex 2 namely Markowski, Rasmussen, Richardson and Wurman. Others provided great insight on understanding storm structure and forecasting severe storms.
Perhaps the most unexpected and surprising topic of conversation centered around the increasing role of computer models in forecasting and the very real possibility that their continued refinement and improvement may lead to the demise of the human forecaster! In fact, there was an obvious tone that this was inevitable and that it was just a matter of time before it came to pass. Many suggested ways to stay relevant as a forecaster.
While I can see a day of perhaps a reduced role of humans in forecasting, I can tell you from personal experience that the computer models have a LONG way to go before they can replace human forecasters, especially those with experience or during times of active or severe weather.
I’ll likely have a few more updates as soon as I get a hold of some of the presentations.
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