Amanda Anderson

The Great Colorado Flood of September 2013

AbstractDuring the second week of September 2013, a seasonally uncharacteristic weather pattern stalled over the Rocky Mountain Front Range region of northern Colorado bringing with it copious amounts of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean. This feed of moisture was funneled toward the east-facing mountain slopes through a series of mesoscale circulation features, resulting in several days of unusually widespread heavy rainfall over steep mountainous terrain. Catastrophic flooding ensued within several Front Range river systems that washed away highways, destroyed towns, isolated communities, necessitated days of airborne evacuations, and resulted in eight fatalities. The impacts from heavy rainfall and flooding were felt over a broad region of northern Colorado leading to 18 counties being designated as federal disaster areas and resulting in damages exceeding

Impacts of Forecaster Involvement on Convective Storm Initiation and Evolution Nowcasting

2 billion (U.S. dollars). This study explores the meteorological and hydrological ingredients...

Quality of Mobile Air Temperature and Atmospheric Pressure Observations from the 2010 Development Test Environment Experiment

AbstractA forecaster-interactive capability was added to an automated convective storm nowcasting system [Auto-Nowcaster (ANC)] to allow forecasters to enhance the performance of 1-h nowcasts of convective storm initiation and evolution produced every 6 min. This Forecaster-Over-The-Loop (FOTL-ANC) system was tested at the National Weather Service Fort Worth–Dallas, Texas, Weather Forecast Office during daily operations from 2005 to 2010. The forecaster’s role was to enter the locations of surface convergence boundaries into the ANC prior to dissemination of nowcasts to the Center Weather Service Unit. Verification of the FOTL-ANC versus ANC (no human) nowcasts was conducted on the convective scale. Categorical verification scores were computed for 30 subdomains within the forecast domain. Special focus was placed on subdomains that included convergence boundaries for evaluation of forecaster involvement and impact on the FOTL-ANC nowcasts. The probability of detection of convective storms increased by 20...

U.S. public preferences for weather and road condition information

The 2010 Development Test Environment Experiment (DTE10) took place from 28 January to 29 March 2010 in the Detroit, Michigan, metropolitan area for the purposes of collecting and evaluating mobile data from vehicles. To examine the quality of these data, over 239 000 air temperature and atmospheric pressure observations were obtained from nine vehicles and were compared with a weather station set up at the testing site.TheobservationsfromthevehicleswerefirstrunthroughtheNCARVehicleDataTranslator (VDT). As part of the VDT, quality-checking (QCh) tests were applied; pass rates from these tests were examined and were stratified by meteorological and nonmeteorological factors. Statistics were then calculated for air temperature and atmospheric pressure in comparison with the weather station, and the effects of different meteorological and nonmeteorological factors on the statistics were examined. Overall, temperature measurements showed consistent agreement with the weather station, and there was little impact from the QCh process or stratifications—a result that demonstrated the feasibility of collecting mobile temperature observations from vehicles. Atmospheric pressure observations were less well matched with surface validation, the degree of which varied with the make and model of vehicle. Therefore, more work must be done to improve the quality of these observations if atmospheric pressure from vehicles is to be useful.

Road weather hazard system

In 2008, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Board on Enterprise Planning (BEP) established the Committee on Mobile Observations to discuss the application and utilization of mobile weather and road condition data in the context of supporting the weather and transportation communities and how these data could be used to improve safety and mobility across the nations surface transportation system. The goal of the committee is to articulate a clear vision for mobile data that captures the immense opportunities for these data to improve road weather services and transportation safety and mobility. The Committee on Mobile Observations is engaged in numerous activities to accomplish its goal, which includes a nationwide survey of the traveling public to obtain better information on their preferences for and interests in obtaining weather and road condition information, their willingness to share vehicle data, and their willingness to pay for enhanced services. This paper outlines the results of the surv...