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Welcome to the RTMA/URMA VLab community!

The purpose of this community is to facilitate feedback and discussion on the RTMA/URMA system. 

Meeting notes are available under the Google Drive Folder linked above.

To learn more about our next upgrade, see the asset publication below.

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You can post to the precip issues forum by sending an email to qpe.rtma.urma.feedback.vlab@noaa.gov.  For all other issues, you can post by sending an email to rtma.feedback.vlab@noaa.gov.  Please note that you must have a user account to post to the forum.  If you do not have an account, please contact matthew.t.morris@noaa.gov.

We recently added the ability for NWS Regional or WFO personnel to request that stations be removed from the analysis.  To access this, click on the "Station Reject Lists and Requests" tab.

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December 2017 Implementation Summary

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Overview of upgrade scheduled for December 2017. Note that this was originally scheduled for October 2017, but has been pushed back due to technical issues.

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[aor-rtma] RTMA/URMA Wind Speed Analysis Update

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Ted Ryan, modified 4 Years ago.

[aor-rtma] RTMA/URMA Wind Speed Analysis Update

Youngling Posts: 11 Join Date: 1/4/16 Recent Posts
We had our first strong gradient wind event last night since the RTMA upgrade.  I would say the new analysis method of considering the source of the wind reports has made a remarkable improvement.  This analysis is almost spot on with the METAR wind speed reports. 

image.png

image.png

But...that's because it tossed virtually every mesonet report, leaving pretty much only METAR sites. 

image.png

It appears that many good 2m or 3m site reports were rejected with a PREP QC error.  The BG and OB values look like it should have accepted it.  What does that mean?  
image.png

We also had some mesonet sites that aren't mounted at 2m and report good winds. Those good winds got tossed because they well exceeded what a 2m wind should have been. 

Here's one that's actually near 10 m (left) just a couple miles from a METAR (right).
image.png image.png

These good sites will have to all be changed manually, correct?

Is there a way to develop a running list of mesonet sites with a high wind speed bias nationally?  That would make tracking down and finding the well sighted sites a little easier and we can investigate if it's a 5m or 10m site.  As you can see it's kind of like finding a needle in a haystack with so many sites - most of which are sited low or are bad/rejected.

Thanks for your work on getting the low wind speed corrected and your help with these remaining issues.


Ted
--


Ted Ryan
Science and Operations Officer
National Weather Service Forecast Office
Fort Worth, Texas
817-429-2631 x224

 

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MM
Matthew Morris, modified 4 Years ago.

RE: [aor-rtma] RTMA/URMA Wind Speed Analysis Update

Youngling Posts: 169 Join Date: 12/6/17 Recent Posts
Hi Ted,

The "REJECT - PREPQC (-101)" flag often means that a station has been flagged on the SDM reject list, which is the case for E2612.

We received a request on December 11, 2018 to blacklist the majority of those stations from the FWD WFO. I'll follow up with you separately to identify how you may wish to proceed, as some of these stations could be turned back on and used more effectively with the new v2.8 upgrade in place.

The wind sensor heights used in v2.8 are specified by provider/subprovider with no option to override these values based upon metadata from individual stations.  We hope to address this deficiency in the upcoming 3D-RTMA system (FY2023 timeframe).

Lastly, an automated observation quality control package is under development for the 3D-RTMA system.  We are also exploring a new bias correction scheme for wind speed observations.  Together, these improvements should allow for generation of bias stats by station.

Thanks,
Matt

On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 11:31 AM VLab Notifications <VLab.Notifications@noaa.gov> wrote:
We had our first strong gradient wind event last night since the RTMA upgrade.  I would say the new analysis method of considering the source of the wind reports has made a remarkable improvement.  This analysis is almost spot on with the METAR wind speed reports. 

image.png

image.png

But...that's because it tossed virtually every mesonet report, leaving pretty much only METAR sites. 

image.png

It appears that many good 2m or 3m site reports were rejected with a PREP QC error.  The BG and OB values look like it should have accepted it.  What does that mean?  
image.png

We also had some mesonet sites that aren't mounted at 2m and report good winds. Those good winds got tossed because they well exceeded what a 2m wind should have been. 

Here's one that's actually near 10 m (left) just a couple miles from a METAR (right).
image.png image.png

These good sites will have to all be changed manually, correct?

Is there a way to develop a running list of mesonet sites with a high wind speed bias nationally?  That would make tracking down and finding the well sighted sites a little easier and we can investigate if it's a 5m or 10m site.  As you can see it's kind of like finding a needle in a haystack with so many sites - most of which are sited low or are bad/rejected.

Thanks for your work on getting the low wind speed corrected and your help with these remaining issues.


Ted
--


Ted Ryan
Science and Operations Officer
National Weather Service Forecast Office
Fort Worth, Texas
817-429-2631 x224

 


--
Ted Ryan RTMA/URMA Discussion Group Virtual Lab Forum http://vlab.noaa.gov/web/715073/home/-/message_boards/view_message/11979328VLab.Notifications@noaa.gov


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