An Automated Real-time Storm Analysis and Storm Tracking Program (WEATRK)

Book excerpt: The evolution of the WEATRK system is described from the original software obtained under contract in 1977, to the present software configuration. The various portions of the software are discussed with emphasis on the algorithms used to determine storm significance and establish the storm track. Results of the two-year development effort and operational tests show the usefulness of assimilating large amounts of complex data and generating a computer-synthesized product easily used in forecast applications. The error analysis performed on the storm track forecast accuracy suggests that few of the errors encountered are due to meteorological effects but they are largely due to parameters such as beam width, pulse width, antenna rotation rate and rounding errors. The non-meteorological errors appear to average out over large data sets; that is, the longer the storm track the smaller the forecast error. Although the program now uses a three-dimensional analysis, very little analysis is performed on the velocity and variance fields. The usefulness of these fields along with other improvements are considered.