PARISE News
83% OF TORNADO LEAD TIMES EXCEED 14-MIN IN PARISE 2012
12 NWS forecasters participated in the 2012 PARISE, which ran for six weeks during June – August. The experiment's goal was to test whether rapid, adaptive sampling with the phased array radar at the National Weather Radar Testbed increases NWS forecasters’ ability to effectively cope with tough tornado warning cases. Each forecaster worked four cases ranging from 18 – 52 min in length. Tornadoes were reported in 2 of the 4 cases, which allows us to examine how rapid-scan data may help forecasters discern between tornadic and non-tornadic supercells, and the impact of the data on false alarms.
Preliminary results (image below) show that during the experiment 83% of tornado lead times exceeded the 14-min national average tornado lead time; 69% of tornado lead times exceeded 18-min. The average and median lead time across forecasters was 21 min. Polygon Probability of Detection values, defined as the average percent of tornado paths warned, were all 75% or higher. All False Alarm Ratios were 0.5 or lower.
