COMMERCE DEPARTMENT AWARDS SILVER MEDAL
TO NATIONAL SEVERE STORMS LABORATORY

The U.S. Department of Commerce has awarded its Silver Medal to the Stormscale Research and Applications Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman for making significant enhancements to the National Weather Service (NWS) warning program through developing, testing and transferring tools from a prototype Warning Decision Support System to NWS operational systems.

Division Manager Mike Eilts and applied research meteorologists Kurt Hondl and J.T. Johnson accepted the award Tuesday (Dec. 7) from Commerce Secretary William Daley at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.

The Secretary grants the Silver Medal -- the Department's second highest honorary award -- to employees who have made contributions of exceptional value in support of overall departmental goals that serve the nation.

“The scientific and engineering achievements of this group have radically advanced the state of the science and significantly impacted the reliability and timeliness of National Weather Service severe weather and tornado warnings,” said National Severe Storms Laboratory Director James Kimpel.

The prototype Warning Decision Support System (WDSS) was developed by National Severe Storms Laboratory researchers using state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, image processing, neural networks, statistical techniques and meteorological knowledge. During four years of tests at more than 14 National Weather Service forecast offices throughout the nation, the WDSS system dramatically helped forecasters produce more timely and reliable warnings. The average lead times for tornado warnings increased from nine to 17 minutes and for severe thunderstorm warnings increased from 16 to 22 minutes. In addition, the probability of detection of tornadoes increased from an average of 58 percent to 68 percent and the false alarm ratio for tornado warnings decreased from 78 percent to 73 percent.

Many of the components of the WDSS have already been transferred to the NEXRAD Doppler radar network. In addition, many of the system’s display concepts are in the process of being transferred to the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System program used in all National Weather Service forecast offices.