Forecasters in room looking at weather radar on multiple monitors

The 2023 Spring Experiment

At the height of the spring severe weather season, the NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed hosts multiple real-time, forecasting, and warning experiments to evaluate the operational utility of new science, technology, and products. NOAA NSSL, the NOAA National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center  and the NOAA NWS Norman Forecast Office lead the effort. The Spring Experiments are a unique opportunity…

Ice storm damage in central Oklahoma. Image Credit NOAA NSSL & Casey Tarp.

The 2022-23 Winter Weather Experiment

In support of the ongoing mission to improve National Weather Service (NWS) products and services for winter weather, the Hydrometeorology Testbed (HMT) within the Weather Prediction Center (WPC) will conduct 12th annual Winter Weather Experiment (WWE) during the 2022-2023 winter season. The WWE provides an immersive collaborative research to operations (R2O) experience bringing together members…

woman with teal umbrella walking down a snowy street.

Advancing Probabilistic Prediction of High-Impact Winter Storms through Ensemble NWP and Post-Processing

The Weather Program Office is working with the University of Utah to improve snowstorm prediction capabilities for forecasts 48 hours to 7 days in advance using techniques and advanced ensemble numerical modeling. Researchers are developing and testing new snow-to-liquid-ratio (SLR) algorithms to improve snowfall forecasts derived from numerical modeling systems, and evaluating and improving methods…

Bill Lapenta

Researchers and Forecasters Team Up to Improve Forecasts in the New Hurricane and Ocean Testbed

After a year and a half of concerted effort between NOAA’s National Hurricane Center (NHC), Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), and other NOAA offices, including the Weather Program Office, the Hurricane and Ocean Testbed (HOT) has been successfully re-named (from the Joint Hurricane Testbed) and re-launched in the newly designed William M. Lapenta Laboratory, named in…

2021 Saildrone Hurricane wing-3853

Saildrones Track Hurricanes to Gather Data for Forecast Improvement

In partnership with NOAA, Saildrone Inc. is deploying seven ocean drones to collect data from hurricanes during the 2022 hurricane season with the goal of improving hurricane forecasting.  For the first year, two saildrones will track hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. One of the biggest challenges to hurricane forecasting is predicting rapid intensification, when hurricane…