According to NOAA, Hurricane Ian became the 15th Billion-Dollar disaster in 2022. Landfall impacts from Ian are still being felt, as residents of the Florida coast begin rebuilding their homes where severe flooding and damage took place. Though devastating, Hurricane Ian spurred a newfound interest in forecast and risk communication in the media, and provided…
Floods are among the most costly and deadly natural disasters that occur in the United States, coming in second to heat events. On average, approximately 100 people in the U.S. perish each year due to flooding. Reliable observations of flooding and inundation spanning larger extents are key in advancing the National Water Model (NWM) capability.…
As the climate continues to change and the frequency, severity, and impacts of wildfires increase, the importance of wildfire prediction and detection becomes even more critical. It then becomes essential to improve fire weather and smoke & air quality forecast accuracies in current operational models. This involves taking advantage of recent advancements in wind and…
The last several hurricane seasons have been active with records being set for the number of tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic basin. These record-breaking seasons underscore the importance of accurate hurricane forecasting. Imperative to increased forecasting skill for hurricanes is the development of the Hurricane Forecast Analysis System or HAFS. To accelerate improvements…
The process by which observational data is brought into models is called data assimilation (DA). The Joint Effort for Data assimilation Integration (JEDI) is the next generation, unified DA framework under collaborative development between NOAA and cross-agency partners through the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA). JEDI will allow for a faster development and…
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…
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…
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…
The Observations Program at the Weather Program Office has partnered with WindBorne Systems, Inc. to fund the development of an advanced weather balloon. This technology offers a low cost platform enabling collection of surface to stratosphere weather data in lesser-sampled regions. Long Range Sampling and Dynamic Altitude Control With an average flight time of 7…
WPO works in coordination with the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) in Norman, Oklahoma to award projects that explore and refine novel predictors of tornadoes, and to improve the communication of tornado forecasts and risk to tornadoes in the U.S. This year competition award total* for the 4 selected projects equals $1.36 M in grants.…