Thursday, April 7, 2011

This is getting ridiculous, SPC storm reports

Hey folks, I was just going back to look at the monster wind outbreak from Monday across the Gulf Coast and Southern MS/OH Rivery Valleys and noticed how the total number of reports has swelled to 1444!!!! That's toally insane!!! However I also would like to point out how absolutely disgusting the duplicate reports and (should be) non-reports were. Below the map you can see just a simple taste of the last 4 tornado reports. Three of them are the exact same and the final one should not even be a report as its for a "possible funnel cloud"

"0620 9 NW EASTMAN DODGE GA 3229 8329 AT 1992 FRIENDSHIP UMC RD A DOUBLE WIDE TRAILER WAS DESTROYED. 1 OAK TREE UPROOTED. WINDS ESTIMATED AT 130MPH. 1 FATALITY AND 2 INJURIES. TORNADO CLASSIFIED AS AN EF2. (FFC)

0637 3 SE BAILEYS PARK DODGE GA 3228 8332 *** 1 FATAL, 2 INJ *** AT 1992 FRIENDSHIP UMC RD A DOUBLE WIDE TRAILER WAS DESTROYED AROUND 237 AM EDT. 1 OAK TREE UPROOTED. WINDS ESTIMATED AT 130 MPH. 1 FATALITY AND (FFC)


0640 9 NW EASTMAN DODGE GA 3229 8329 *** 1 FATAL, 2 INJ *** AT 1992 FRIENDSHIP UMC RD A DOUBLE WIDE TRAILER WAS DESTROYED. 1 OAK TREE UPROOTED. WINDS ESTIMATED AT 130 MPH. 1 FATALITY AND 2 INJURIES. TORNAD (FFC)


0720 5 NE TALLAHASSEE COML A LEON FL 3060 8431 FUNNEL CLOUD REPORTED ... NOT ON GROUND. 2000 N MERIDIAN RD (TAE)"


We all know that these storm report totals are preliminary and we also all know how bloated these will tend to be on any given event especially with sheriffnadoes ans what not, but this is just ridiculous. Getting slightly annoyed I went to search around the SPC webpage and very quickly came across this statement on the main page:

Note: On March 8, 2011, the SPC removed space/time filtering on incoming National Weather Service (NWS) Local Storm Reports (LSRs). This filtering had been used by SPC in an attempt to reduce duplicate reports and limit artificially inflated initial estimates of severe weather events when many reports arrived for the same event. Space/time filtering is no longer being applied to decoded NWS LSRs and this approach is consistent with NWS storm-based verification methods. However, identical reports should still be removed from SPC logs and should not appear on the preliminary maps and lists.

Now much more annoyed......I take a deep breath put together this post as I wait for the 12z products to come in and wonder how this data gets used for Severe Weather Storm Climatology products (Yes, it really does eventually).

5 comments:

  1. Completely agree and to make matters worse AccuWeather and The Weather Channel are hyping it to possibly be the largest outbreak ever... ridiculous.

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  2. So wait, why did SPC take out the filtering? Was it not filtering properly, and instead taking out too many discrete and unique reports?

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  3. Missed this section first time I read your post Dan, "Now much more annoyed......I take a deep breath put together this post as I wait for the 12z products to come in and wonder how this data gets used for Severe Weather Storm Climatology products (Yes, it really does eventually)."

    I don't think you can compare storm climatology, especially with the number of chasers out on any given day. Just no way to find a correlation between storm reports in the 50s vs today.

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  4. Croix, I agree with you totally! BUT spc uses reports for creating things like:

    http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/online/monthly/newm.html

    or

    http://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/

    or

    http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/torn/fataltorn.html

    The real kick that I see as the prob here is optimized by this statement from the quote I put in the post from SPC's main page: "Space/time filtering is no longer being applied to decoded NWS LSRs and this approach is consistent with NWS storm-based verification methods"

    I love the NWS, but truely hate the NWS at the same time.

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