Advanced Storm-Based Warnings Training

Instructions

NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) first implemented Storm-Based Warnings (SBWs) on October 1, 2007. SBWs (also known as threat-based or polygon warnings) were designed to depict the specific meteorological or hydrometeorological threat areas for severe weather warnings. This includes all tornado, severe, flash flooding, and marine warnings. Since the implementation of SBWs began, many lessons were learned and best practices developed that were not covered in the original SBW Training Course. These best practices fall into one of the three following categories:

1. Internal operational practices,
2. External practices (dissemination practices which include education), and
3. The role of management (to ensure best practices are transferred to operations).

To help training NWS warning forecasters on these updated practices, the Advanced Storm-Based Warnings Training Course was developed and focuses primarily on the first category listed above.

Course Completion Steps

1. Students must complete ALL Advanced SBW Course lessons in the LMS.
2. Students must pass the Final Course Test in the LMS

Contents of Advanced Storm-Based Warning Course

The Advanced SBW Course is composed of:

1. A recorded module presenting operational best practices and
2. A series of "Tales from the Field" case studies that present particularly difficult SBW issues.

Advanced Storm-Based Warnings Best Practices - This training to discuss critical issues identified during the initial period of storm-based warning implementation. These topics include warning polygon size, call-to-action statements, anticipation of storm (or threat) movement to increase warning lead time, and improving collaboration between WFOs for storms crossing county warning area (CWA) boundaries. This presentation takes approximately 30 minutes to complete.

• Best Practices Presentation (30 min)
  (26.5 MB ZIP file)

Pathcasts in Severe Local Storm Warnings - This training, authored by Kevin Scharfenburg (NWS Severe Storms Services Coordinator in the Office of Climate, Water, and Weather Services) discusses the types of pathcasts in WarnGen and the sources of error in pathcasts. These error sources include AWIPS WarnGen map location uncertainties, differences between radar signatures and associated damage paths, and uncertainties in storm evolution. This presentation takes approximately 20 minutes to complete.

• Pathcasts Presentation (20 min)
  (6.28 MB ZIP file)

Stories from the Field - These brief reports highlight important details from event post-mortems submitted from various WFOs. While we reformatted and edited the content somewhat, these presentations explain the office's experiences, the products they issued, and how they would do things differently in the future. They reflect the viewpoint and opinions of each office (not those of other WFOs, WDTB, or Regional and National NWS Headquarters). Stories were presented by:

• Charleston, SC
• Rapid City, SD
• Salt Lake City, UT
• Taunton, MA
• Caribou, ME

Acknowledgements

WDTB would like to thank the following people who provided assistance in developing the Advanced SBW training course:

• Frank Alsheimer (CHS)
• Stan Czyzyk (LAS)
• Joe Dellicarpini (BOX)
• John Ferree (OCWWS)
• Randy Graham (SLC)
• Jeff Medlin (MOB)
• Steve Parker (BOI)
• Kevin Scharfenberg (OCWWS)
• John Wetenkamp (UNR)