Tropical Jobsheets - Tropical AWIPS Information

  3. Click on the tropical hazard grid you wish to edit, then click MakeHazard from the Hazard drop down menu.

  4. Left click once on each red inland or marine zone you wish to remove. They will change to the default black
      background of the tool. See either Adding Local Zones to a Tropical Watch or Warning. Be careful to not remove
      any NHC-issued zone.

  5. Click Run or Run/Dismiss at the bottom of the tool.

  6. Repeat process for any other tropical hazard from which you wish to clear an area.

  7. In the Hazards drop down menu, click MergeHazards. If you have a Merge Conflict, resolve that before proceeding.

  8. Click on the blue disk to Save the Hazards grid. Click Save Weather Elements.

  9. After the advisory (TCP) is issued by NHC, publish your grids and then create and transmit the TCV, HLS, and/or MWW.

 

Canceling/Ending Tropical Hazards

  1. If coastal zones are part of the hazard, you MUST wait for the NHC TCV to be received, then run the PlotTPCEvents
      tool. Otherwise, proceed to step 2.

  2. In the Hazards drop down menu, click SeparateHazards. A temporary hazard grid will be created for each hazard in
      effect.

  3. Click on the hazard you wish to cancel, then right click and hold for menu.

  4. Drag down to Delete Grid and release mouse button.

  5. Repeat process for any other hazard you wish to end.

  6. In the Hazards drop down menu, click MergeHazards.

  7. Click on the blue disk to Save the Hazards grid. Click Save Weather Elements.

  8. After the advisory (TCP) is issued by NHC, publish your grids and then create and transmit the TCV, HLS, and/or MWW.

 

Creating Wind and the HTI Elements

All tropical WFOs, except GUM and PPG, must create the Hurricane Threats and Impacts elements as they are required elements for running the TCV and HLS. The elements are WindThreat, FloodingRainThreat, TornadoThreat, and, if a coastal site, StormSurgeThreat. The elements can be created prior to issuing the TCV/HLS to have a more complete threat mosaic for customers. If your office is creating the HTI elements outside of active tropical hazards and do NOT want the Expressions of Uncertainty to appear in the point-n-click, do not run the PWS_Procedure. It is not required for the TCWindThreat.

More information can be found via the HTI User Guide.

 

NOTE: You can create the HTI elements prior to TCVs being issued to allow the HTI mosaics to be more complete, especially when your CWA covers parts of states where there are active W/Ws. After the W/Ws are dropped, HTI elements such as FloodingRainThreat and TornadoThreat can be created to convey the ongoing threat. But the WindThreat should be set to None before manually running make_hti.sh. For StormSurgeThreat, if the Storm Surge Watch/Warning was dropped, the threat grid should be limited to none or “Potential for storm surge flooding > 1 ft above ground” (Elevated).

The Wind and WindGust grids also need to match the NHC forecast and be collaborated with your neighboring offices. This is accomplished through the use of the GTCM Procedure.

 

GTCM Procedure

Some keys for effectively creating Wind grids with the NHC-forecast cyclone are:

1. Prior to the arrival of the gridded wind data, collaborate on your background Wind grids using the model which is closest to the NHC forecast as noted in the Storm Collaboration Document. Include all local effects, as needed (about an hour before the hotline call).

The link is the 2022 VTOT GFE Wind demonstration which covers:

• How to identify where you need to be concerned with alternate features
• How to easily remove those bad features
• How to bound the edited grids and interpolate so the GTCM can be run

2.  When the gridded TCM arrives, check the data by viewing in D2D to verify it is the latest information. Then run the GTCM procedure with capping and smoothing values that match your neighboring WFOs as specified in the collaboration document.

 

     a. If gradient winds of greater than 34 kts need to be maintained, the procedure can be run over just the edit area where the cyclone's 34 kt radii track or over a selected time range. 

       b. For multiple cyclones, run over the area/time range applicable for storm 1, then repeat over a different area/time for storm 2. 

3. Tweaks to the resulting output can be made,  but should be very carefully coordinated and should not change the cyclone forecast.

4. Create WindGust grids using the preferred method/procedure (i.e. TC_WindGust) that results in consistent values across CWAs.

5. All offices should strive to complete Wind and subsequent WindGust editing around the same time so the NDFD is updated uniformly. The NDFD only updates twice an hour.

 

WindThreat

The TCWindThreat procedure takes the Wind Speed Probability data along with the Wind grids that result from running the GTCM procedure and generates a WindThreat grid that can be used to guide planning and preparation for the event. The result is not a forecast but what people should reasonably prepare for. Based on the settings chosen, different wind speed probability thresholds are chosen for each of the four possible threat levels. The procedure also takes into account the deterministic wind values in your GFE domain (not just area of responsibility) to account for values that could potentially affect your area.

 

 

Most often, you will now run with Preliminary PWS so you can run this procedure before the advisory is issued. The default/typical setting uses the lowest exceedance probability thresholds from the PWS guidance for each threat level. The thresholds move to higher exceedance levels as you move to Medium and High. Highest uses purely the Wind grids to determine the threat.

The resulting threat is outlined as shown.  

Again, this is to guide planning since it has a safety margin factored in. It is not a forecast, but compliments the forecast. The threat should narrow in on the forecast as the event unfolds.

Run the procedure with values that match your neighbors and make sure to collaborate the output. These grids are mosaicked and used by regional and national customers to assess their risk.

 

StormSurgeThreat

This procedure must be run every advisory regardless of surge threat. 

With the 2023 season, the new TCStormSurgeThreat procedure allows you to view the guidance to determine your time period of concern, highlight that time range in the grid manager, then run using that selected time rather than deal with the timing slider bars. It also allows sites to preconfigure coastal breakpoint segments for forecaster selection rather than relying on hand-drawing edit areas.

The recommended workflow for the first advisory is below:

1.  Choose Show Model Only, with the model of PHISH - Primary (if pSurge is available) or PETSS and 10% exceedance, and click Run.
   1. You will receive an AlertViz message letting you know the model is an advisory behind. This is expected.
      
       
2. Select the InundationTimingGuid element and step through the grids to determine the window of concern. You are looking for non-tidal water rises that indicate the event. 
3. Highlight/select the time range that represents the surge event window. Make sure to keep this time range highlighted throughout the remainder of this process.
   1. If there is no clear end to the event (water levels do not drop below 1 foot in the last grid), make sure to highlight an additional 6 hour time block to account for the fact the guidance is an advisory cycle behind. This will result in no end to the event in the TCV.
4. Next, select: 
   1. Manual under Run Option
   2. Start Fresh under Edit Option
   3. Selected Time under Time Option (ensure time range from step 3 is properly highlighted)
   4. Choose one or more of the breakpoint segments from the choices at the bottom of the interface based on the peak inundation coordinated with SSU
      1. If no edit areas have been preconfigured, hand-draw an area that corresponds to the breakpoint segment of concern from SSU (e.g. Cape Lookout to Cape Hatteras) 
   5. Move the Inundation Height slider bar to correspond to the upper end of the surge range for that coastal segment (if 4-6 feet, choose 6)
   6. Click Run
5. Change Edit Option to Add/Append and repeat steps 4.4 thru 4.6 until all coastal segments are complete. 
6. As a final step, choose Set 3 ft. Cap Outside SS.A/SS.W and Run/Dismiss as a QC step to ensure the InundationMax and StormSurgeThreat are in line with the surge watches or warnings. 

For subsequent advisories after the grids have been created, there are generally 4 scenarios that can occur:

1. No changes: If SSU is not proposing changes to Peak Surge values or areas in a given advisory, use Keep Existing Grids option.

2. Only value change in an existing area or adding new areas: To do this, simply use Manual and Add/Append to add or modify the values in the existing grids. Make sure to highlight the InundationTiming grids that have values and choose Selected Time so the same timing can be included with this update.

3. Small shift in start and/or end time: First run Keep Existing Grids to have the correct InundationTiming grids for the cycle. Then copy the adjacent zero grid to the next grid on the front end to delay the start or conversely copy the value timing grid to the earlier zero to bump up the timing. Same goes for change on the back end. Then run Update InundationMax to make sure all surge grids are in sync. 

4. Multiple changes to area, values, and/or timing: It will be far easier to just start over in this case as if it were the first advisory. So follow the steps above for the first advisory. 

 

NOTE: choosing 1 foot now creates a 1.1 value in the Max and Timing grids for TCV purposes and results in "around 1 foot" wording. 

The resulting StormSurgeThreat grid is based on the InundationMax value at each grid cell.    
                                                 

The StormSurgeThreat grid should never be post-edited directly as it will result in the various surge elements being inconsistent.

 

FloodingRainThreat

The TCFloodingRainThreat procedure will appear as below, with options to run from guidance or Keep Existing Grid. 

 The output for any given grid point is the max value of the Day 1, 2, and 3 Excessive Rainfall Outlook (ERO) Excessive Rainfall Probability (ERP) as shown in the table below. This allows the FloodingRainThreat to match the ERO from WPC.  

 

Collaborate your QPF forecast with WPC and your neighboring WFOs and RFCs and then run the procedure. If needed, collaborate any post-editing that may be needed. These grids are mosaicked and used by regional and national customers to assess their risk. Consider the message you wish to communicate considering the various levels correspond as shown.

 

TornadoThreat

The TornadoThreat procedure uses various SPC guidance grids to generate a threat grid. The final grid is either the highest threat at each grid point after interrogating the SPC probability grids or the previous grid.

 

The TornadoThreat grid is one that will likely need post-editing as the SPC probabilities are not well-calibrated for tropical events. Collectively decide what message you wish to convey and adjust the procedure output to match that according to the threat levels, as shown.

 

Storm Surge Collaboration

If the threat for life-threatening inundation exists, the NHC SSU will initiate the collaborative process that results in the storm surge watch/warning. The upcoming collaboration will be discussed on the hotline call so offices affected can expect the banner below to join the tropical_collaboration1 chatroom in NWSChat and to run CopyNHCProposed to generate an editable grid. If there are multiple storms requiring collaboration, tropical_collaboration2 may be the room for your storm. NHC will announce that on the Hotline call for each storm.

This procedure also creates a difference grid that shows where areas are recommended to be added or removed when compared to the last advisory. Recall that the guidance being used is from the previous advisory. If this is your first advisory with a SS W/W, the procedure will let you know no difference grid could be created.

Decide which areas to leave in the W/W and which areas may need to be removed. Ensure the W/W ends or begins on a zone boundary. Zones which have at least 3% coverage in the SS W/W will automatically be included in your WFO TCV. Also collaborate with your neighboring WFOs on areas being modified. This can be accomplished both via chat and ISC.

Once your edits are complete, save your ProposedSS grid which shares your grid with both SSU and your neighboring WFOs. If SSU has any issues with your edits, that will be noted via chat or possibly a phone call.

Once SSU has approved of all edits, they will finalize the process and notify all WFOs collaboration is complete. This should occur about 30 minutes before advisory. You may receive another banner at this point prompting you to run MergeProposedSS to add the finalized SS W/W to your Hazards grid. If you do not receive the banner, go ahead and run MergeProposedSS so you can finalize your Hazard grids if you are certain the collaborative process is complete.

If you attempt to run MergeProposedSS with unsaved, separated, or locked Hazards, you will be forced to rectify that before running again. You may receive the banner to run MergeProposedSS around advisory time. If you have already run the procedure, ignore that late banner.

 

Creating the Products

When tropical wind or storm surge hazards are in effect for land and/or marine zones, WFOs must issue the TCV and HLS, when land zones are affected, and MWW when marine zones are under threat.

 

NOTE: If your office does NOT want the Expressions of Uncertainty to appear in the point-and-click, do not run the PWS_Procedure if you are not issuing the TCV/HLS. 

TCV

1. Once NHC issues the TCP/Advisory and the TCP is in your database, you can start working on the TCV text product. If hazards are currently separated into temporary hazard grids, finish your edits then click MergeHazards from the Hazards drop down menu. If you have a Merge Conflict, resolve that before proceeding.

2.  Ensure you have the following grids complete:

                         

3. Click on the blue disk to Save your grids. Click Save Weather Elements.

4. On the Products drop down menu, click Publish to Official. Make sure to publish all grids and all times!

5. Under the Products drop down menu, click Formatter Launcher.

6. In the Formatter Launcher window, click Products, then choose Hazard --> Hazard_TCV.

7. Choose the appropriate TCP for your storm. It is critical to choose the correct TCP as it affects the MND header and the ability to run the HLS. As such, you must wait for the current advisory cycle's TCP to store to your text database before running the TCV.

    a. With early WSP and NHC SSU providing surge grid creation guidance, there should no longer be a reason to change the default options for Populate Surge Section and Are WSP grids available?.

8. Click Run.

9. Make sure the output looks correct. If anything looks out of order, correct the necessary grids and re-run the TCV. Do not edit the output.

a. The hazards will have a hazard end time of 000000T0000Z for UFN. This is correct.

10. When you are ready, click Transmit to send the product. Click Transmit again on the transmit window which comes up to actually issue the product.

11. Check NWSChat and the WWA map to ensure your hazards transmitted successfully. This transmit also saves off information which is required to run HLS and will push the HTI graphics to the web.

HLS

1. Before running the HLS, ensure the Situation Overview has already been created by entering WRKHLS in the AFOS Cmd window (the one with Text 1, Text 2, Text 3 and Text 4) and including the overview of the event for this advisory. Save that file so it will be imported when the HLS is run. Do not use any other editor than the text workstation as invisible characters can be introduced which cause the HLS to fail.

2. In the Formatter Launcher window, click Products, then choose HLS (Hurricane Local Statement). 

3. Select the zones you would like to be included in the UGC list for this advisory. This only affects the UGC list. The product will still contain information for the entire CWA. 

 a. If a subset of zones is selected after having all zones in the CWA in the previous HLS, the WWA map will continue to show the other zones and will link to the previous HLS until it "expires" roughly 8 hours from when it was issued.
 

 

4. Make the appropriate selections on the interface. For Step 3, select only the hazards which present a real threat to the CWA and order them according to the impact they will have.  You do not have to choose all of the hazards, but at least one needs to be chosen. For Step 5, Conditions/Ongoing is to be chosen when the CWA is about 6 hours either side of 34 kt winds affecting your CWA.

                                       

5. Click Run.

6. Edit all framing code as appropriate and ensure WRKHLS was properly imported as the Situation Overview. In the Precautionary/Preparedness Actions section, make sure to not only trim down the list but to remove the phase wording intended to help you decide which information to keep.

As edits are made, make sure to leave the general format (e.g. ** around Main Headline, bullet format) as the formatter produced it.

                                       

7. Run Spell Check, correct any valid issues discovered, and click Transmit. Click Transmit again on the transmit window which comes up to actually issue the product.

MWW

1. If marine zones are involved, create and issue the Hazard_MWW as usual.
        a.  If you need to segment the MWW for meteorological reasons (e.g. some zones in TR.A will have 10 ft. seas while others will have 3-5 ft.), you can use the end time to force that separation since the ETN replaces the segmentation ability. When creating Hazards, make one set of zones end one hour before the rest, as shown.

       b.  Only make this change to the end time of the hazard. The end time is always UFN in the VTEC for tropical hazards and one hour difference should not negatively impact the Expressions of Uncertainty in the CWF.