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NCEP Service Center Evaluations SPC Steve Weiss/David Bright
Real-Time Parallel Run Subjective Evaluation:
We began ingesting the parallel SREF into N-AWIPS on October 31, and have been processing the test data on a very reliable basis. Our evaluation has consisted of comparing selected SREF products from the 15 member operational and 21 member parallel runs during November that directly relate to severe weather forecasting. During this month, there have been four very active tornado outbreak periods (November 5-6, November 12, November 15, and November 27), and this has allowed us to evaluate the parallel SREF on several strongly forced cool season severe weather days characterized by low CAPE/high shear environments.
We examined a small number of basic and derived SREF-based parameters that are examined routinely by our forecast staff: 2m dew point, surface CAPE, 0-6 km shear, precipitation, combination or joint probabilities of precipitation-CAPE-shear exceedance, and locally generated calibrated thunderstorm and severe thunderstorm probabilities. For the basic parameters, we examined products of probability, mean-spread, max-min, and median/union-intersection.