Examination of the National Weather Service Severe Local Storm Warning Program and Proposed Improvements

摘要

The National Weather Service uses verification algorithms to evaluate the quality of its severe local storm watch and warning service. With the increased emphasis in recent years on verification many weather service offices have taken steps to better their statistics. Some have developed improved warning techniques, others have developed post-storm survey procedures. Problems that can result, such as an unrepresentative severe local storm climatology and misleading verification statistics are discussed. Stratification of severe local storm events by intensity prior to using these data in verification of watches/warnings provides a more realistic measure of the effectiveness of the warning service. Examples of resulting statistics and possible applications are presented.