Testbeds
NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed
Collaboration between NSSL and the local operational forecasting community dates back to the 1980s when the Experimental Forecast Facility was created jointly by NSSL, the Norman National Weather Service Forecast Office, and the WSR-88D Radar Operations Center. Scientists and forecasters at this facility focused on developing new applications from operational data sets and transferring new technologies from research into forecast operations. They played a central role in data collection and forecasting for multiple field programs in the late 80s and early 90s.
Local Collaborative activities were re-invigorated
in the mid-90s when the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) transferred their operations
from Kansas City to the NSSL building in Norman. The NSSL and SPC conducted
a winter-weather forecasting experiment in 1997 and inaugurated the SPC/NSSL
Spring Program 
in
2000. This program features annual Spring Experiments in
which numerous experimental forecasting strategies have been explored, including
investigations of new physical processes representations in numerical models,
ensemble approaches to numerical modeling, and applications of high resolution
model predictions in routine severe-weather forecasts.
The success of these efforts has inspired the formation of the NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT), a broader organization that promotes collaboration between researchers and practitioners in multiple areas. While the annual Spring Program continues to emphasize forecast improvements on time scales from a few hours to a few days, new activities in the HWT focus on shorter-timescale forecasting challenges. For example, NSSL's Severe Weather Warning Applications and Technology Transfer (SWAT) team and the NWS Norman WFO are currently designing strategies to improve short-term forecasts and warnings within the framework of the HWT.
2007 SPC/NSSL Spring Experiment Home Page
NEW! 2007 Spring Experiment Image Gallery
