Bill has been involved with the National Weather Service Forecast Offices for more than 20 years, most recently serving as the Meteorologist-In-Charge at the Fort Worth Forecast Office. He has also worked in New York City, Lansing, Mich., and Kansas City as well. Bunting is no stranger to Norman, however, as he worked as a forecaster at the Norman Forecast Office from 1990-1993. As the operations chief, Bunting supervises the 22 forecasters, is responsible for the forecasts that leave the office, and generally oversees the forecast office.

Bunting received his bachelor’s degree in meteorology and psychology from The University of Oklahoma in 1984. On returning to Norman Bunting said, “I’ve always admired the Storm Prediction Center’s expertise and innovation in terms of  forecasts they provide, and the opportunity to be a part of this group was one I couldn’t pass up.”

Bunting said he was “very much looking forward to the collaborative opportunities” between the Weather Forecast Office, National Severe Storms Laboratory, and other service branches here in the Norman office.

Bunting is taking over this position from Dave Imy, who retired in December.

NSSL Mesonet vehicle at the Exploratorium

The partnership is the result of a five-year educational grant with NOAA to co-develop interactive exhibits, learning experiences and professional development workshops for the learning institution.

NSSL retired researcher Dave Rust shared his thunderstorm electricity expertise and his skill at creating weather measuring instruments.  Dave pioneered the use of free-flying balloons and mobile laboratories to make observations, significantly advancing thunderstorm science.

Susan Cobb, NSSL meteorologist and science writer, shared her experience that includes forecasting for locations all over the world, and writing about weather science for all audiences. Susan worked with visitors to understand, experience and forecast weather in the San Francisco area and around the world.

Sean Waugh is a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma and an instrumentation specialist working with the NOAA NSSL.  He helped design and build seven Mobile Mesonets, storm research cars outfitted with weather instruments, computers, and communications equipment. Sean gave personal tours of the Mobile Mesonet and focused on ways NSSL collects data to learn more about storms.

The NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory’s mission to improve our knowledge of severe weather and to develop new tools to better forecast and warn of its hazards has endured since its establishment in 1964. The Exploratorium first opened in 1969 and welcomes more than 500,000 visitors each year.

Bright reds, oranges and yellows show tracks of where rotation was strongest as detected by NWS Doppler radars during the April 27, 2011 tornado outbreak.

NSSL has released an image documenting the rotation tracks of the devastating tornadoes on April 27. Bright reds and yellows show more intense circulations.

The image of the rotation tracks was produced by the On Demand Severe Weather Verification System, part of NSSL’s Warning Decision Support System – Integrated Information (WDSS-II) Multi-Radar/Multi Sensor platform. On Demand is a web-based tool that can be used to help confirm when and where severe weather occurred.

On Demand uses data gathered and sorted by WDSS-II to estimate the tracks of rotating storms and where hail fell. The rotation tracks or hail swath data can be overlaid on high-resolution street maps in Google Earth/Maps to pinpoint areas affected by the hazardous weather.

The WDSS-II system receives data in real-time from the nationwide networks of weather radars, satellites, surface observations and lightning detectors. WDSS-II then processes, analyzes and displays the data in a way that is useful to people who need to diagnose severe weather quickly.

The platform is being used by several local American Red Cross chapters, emergency managers and National Weather Service Forecast Offices for disaster assessment and response.

The April 27 Rotation Tracks file is available here for downloading and overlay on Google Earth:  http://ondemand.nssl.noaa.gov/RotationTrack1440min_20110428-085936.kmz

NSSL Field Command Vehicle with Wyoming tornado in the background. Credit: Mike Coniglio

The Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment – 2 data collection began its second year of data collection on May 1 and will be in the field through June 15. VORTEX2 is the largest tornado research project in history to explore how, when and why tornadoes form.

NOAA and the National Science Foundation are sponsoring more than 100 scientists, students and staff from around the world to collect weather data around and under a supercell thunderstorm. VORTEX2 teams are using a fleet of 10 mobile radars and 70 other instruments all equipped with cutting edge communication and computer technologies. Much about tornadoes remains a mystery, and researchers hope this data will help them better understand tornadoes and lead to further improvements in tornado warning skill.

During 2009 operations, the VORTEX2 armada roamed more than 10,000 miles across the southern and central Plains from May 10-June 13. Data were collected on 11 supercells, including one tornadic supercell.

New for 2010 operations will be the addition of the University of Colorado Tempest Unmanned Aerial System – model airplanes designed to fly underneath the storm to collect data. Also, three more mobile radars now have dual-polarization capabilities and the radar scouts and mobile mesonets have been redesigned to make operations more efficient.

VORTEX2 2010 operations can be followed on Facebook, Twitter, and through a blog called V2Talk. More information is available on the web: http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/vortex2.

More information: http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/vortex2

The effort is an international collaboration on the science of winter nowcasting in complex terrain called Science and NOWcasting of Olympic Weather for Vancouver 2010 (SNOW-V10).

The NO-XP radar is positioned near Blaine, Wash. close to the Canadian border but in view of the Cypress Mountain venue where freestyle skiing, snowboard and snowboard halfpipe competitions will take place.  Operations have already started, and will continue through March 22, 2010 with the closing of the Paralympic Games.

NSSL’s researchers also plan to study the collected dual-polarized Doppler radar data to better understand the winter precipitation environment.

SNOW-V10 is a World Weather Research Project of the World Meteorological Organization.  Participants include Environment Canada, University of Basel, Switzerland, Finnish Meteorological Institute, National Center for Atmospheric Research, University of Bonn, Germany, Center for Australian Weather and Climate Research, University of Manitoba, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Science, Vaisala, Weather Decision Technologies, NOAA NESDIS, and NOAA NSSL.

NSSL has provided forecasting support during several Olympic Games including the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Ga., the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Ut., and the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.

Michael Coniglio and Pamela Heinselman

Research scientists studying improvements in tornado forecasting and new radar systems at the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla., Michael C. Coniglio and Pamela L. Heinselman, received presidential commendation when they were awarded the prestigious 2009 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) at a ceremony Jan. 13 at the White House.

The award, which was conferred by President Obama, is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their careers. An award ceremony is planned in Washington, D.C. in the fall.

“It is quite remarkable to have two researchers from NSSL win this prestigious award in one year,” said James Kimpel, National Severe Storms Laboratory Director. “It speaks well for the future of our lab to have these outstanding young people on board.”

Working in the NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed, Coniglio is a key player in collaborations to evaluate experimental numerical weather models and bring that cutting edge research to forecasters, ultimately improving forecasts. This spring he helped set up the Operations Center and joined scientists in the field for VORTEX2, the largest and most ambitious field experiment in history to explore tornadoes.

Mike Coniglio in VORTEX2. Objects in the mirror may be larger than they appear.

Heinselman has led the National Weather Radar Testbed Phased Array Radar Demonstration project for several years. Her research focuses on the use of radar data to improve tornado warning lead times. She has served as a mentor to numerous undergraduate and graduate meteorology students, encouraging the next generation of scientists.

“In honoring these scientists early in their careers, we recognize both their achievements to date and the promise of their continued contributions to the nation,” said Jane Lubchenco, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator. “NOAA takes great pride in these individuals and in its entire complement of stellar science.”

NSSL scientist David Stensrud and former NSSL researcher Erik Rasmussen are past recipients of the honor.

The National Severe Storms Laboratory serves the nation by working to improve the lead time and accuracy of severe weather warnings and forecasts in order to save lives and reduce property damage. NSSL scientists are committed to their mission to understand the causes of severe weather and explore new ways to use weather information to assist National Weather Service forecasters and federal, university, and private sector partners.

Pam Heinselman with student. "It's fun to watch them grow."

The Presidential Early Career Awards embody the high priority the Administration places on producing outstanding scientists and engineers to advance the nation’s goals and contribute to all sectors of the economy. Nine federal departments and agencies join together annually to nominate the most meritorious young scientists and engineers — researchers whose early accomplishments show the greatest promise for strengthening America’s leadership in science and technology and contributing to the awarding agencies’ missions.

The awards, established by President Clinton in February 1996, are coordinated by the Office of Science and Technology Policy within the Executive Office of the President. Awardees are selected on the basis of two criteria: pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology and a commitment to community service as demonstrated through scientific leadership, public education or community outreach. Winning scientists and engineers receive up to a five-year research grant to further their study in support of critical government missions.

The course was a very intensive introduction to the parameterization of physical processes in numerical weather prediction models.

“This is a challenging topic, but one that is becoming more and more important as numerical models are used to study so many aspects of weather and climate,” said Stensrud.

Over 100 graduate students and faculty members attended the two lectures, the first in a series of Short Courses that National Weather Center Scientists will teach at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics during the next couple of years. The lectures are part of a multifaceted effort by the National Weather Center to play a leading role in U.S. interactions with the Chinese Atmospheric Science community.

Stensrud is Chief of the Forecast Research and Development Division of the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory and an Adjunct Professor in the OU School of Meteorology. The Short Course was based on Dave’s recently published book on “Parameterization Schemes: Keys to Understanding Numerical Weather Prediction Models” (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

NSSL is leading CI-FLOW, an interdisciplinary multi-institutional team working to combine existing monitoring technology and new techniques to forecast and warn of coastal storm effects such as heavy rainfall, storm surge, and the subsequent river conditions in coastal North Carolina. CI-FLOW will ultimately provide a total water-level product for any location in the watershed.

For this demonstration, the newly developed CI-FLOW computing environment collected hourly multi-sensor quantitative precipitation estimates from the NSSL Q2 system (nmq.ou.edu) and gridded quantitative precipitation forecast products from NOAA’s Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (HPC). The data was fed into one of two CIFLOW models, the NWS HL-RDHM (Hydrologic Laboratory Research Distributed Hydrologic Model), to generate 10-day forecasts of streamflow from multiple points in the Tar-Pamlico and Neuse River basins.

CI-FLOW also tested NOAA nowCOAST (nowcoast.noaa.gov) CIFLOW visualization capabilities, supported by NOAA Southeastern- Caribbean Regional Team (SECART) funding, to explore how data can be displayed for stakeholder outreach by NOAA SeaGrant and NWS offices as well as internally for science assessments by CI-FLOW team members.

As CIFLOW closes out the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season, CIFLOW partners will continue to leverage a NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) research effort to stabilize the Advanced Circulation model (ADCIRC) grid to accommodate inland rivers and bays in the North Carolina tidal zones. This will allow CIFLOW to complete a demonstration of the CIFLOW coupled model system to produce simulations of total water level for the lower portions of the Tar-Pamlico and Neuse Rivers and coastline of the Pamlico Sound using past storm events including Hurricane Isabel.

More information: http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/ciflow