1. AN IMPROVED USER INTERFACE FOR VIEWING NWS HOURLY PRECIPITATION GRAPHICS NATIONAL FLOOD WORKSHOP OCT 26, 2010 Bill Lawrence Service Coordination Hydrologist Arkansas Red River Forecast Center Tulsa, OK

2. QPE WEB HISTORY Early 1990s WSR88D produced radar centric QPEs which were later put onto the web

3. QPE WEB HISTORY Mid 1990s ABRFC first RFC to provide mosaiced and QC’d hourly and 24 hourly QPEs gifs/data to web

4. QPE WEB HISTORY Aug 1999 ABRFC added normals and % of normal gifs

5. QPE WEB HISTORY 2003 WGRFC created mosaic of 4 Southern Region RFC QPEs with normals, % of normal,

6. QPE WEB HISTORY Nov 2005 ABRFC created National 24 hour QPE mosaics with archive starting at Jan 1, 2005.

7. QPE WEB HISTORY 2007 AHPS web pages also began producing 24 hour QPE pages

8. QPE WEB HISTORY Late 2007 ABRFC started creating HOURLY mosaics of SR QPEs. Expanded to include 10 of CONUS RFCs

9. QPE WEB HISTORY Oct 2009 Zoom-able (Google maps) hourly QPEs

10. NWS Zoomable Hourly QPE Page http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ridge2/RFC_Precip/

11. WHY USE THESE QPES? BECAUSE THEY ARE MULTISENSOR BEST OF ALL WORLDS

12. WHY USE THESE QPES? BECAUSE THEY ARE AVAILABLE IN SEMI- REALTIME (H+50) AND UPDATED EVERY HOUR!! AND THE RAW DATA IS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD!!

13. WHY USE THESE QPES? Extensive Human Quality Control !!! Results in best QPE available anywhere! Remove AP, bright bands, etc Review every raingage value Try to remove radar artifacts Add “psuedo” gages to raise or lower values in regions Make sure gridded estimates match Co-op and Cocorahs observers on 24 hour basis Use hydro-meteorological knowledge

14. QPE WEB COMMENTS “Reliable, valid, and best available!” “The only improvement I can think of is more frequent updates….” “In a time when products and services are being cut back in many areas, its nice to have dependable useful products available.” “Please continue to make this product available” “Tax dollars bringing useful information to taxpayers” “I find it very useful and would hate to be without it” “This is a spectacular service. Thank you for providing it. As a county engineer it is a great!!! resource…” “Timeliness is excellent”

15. Wheat Crop Update/Harvest information To support personal decision making, re outdoor activities As an agricultural producer, it is useful for irrigation timing, crop moisture Where to go on my field operations after a rain event Teacher – Forecast discussion in class When to plant trees, seeds on my property and when to visit areas like National Parks for camping and hiking. Routes to use based on area flood plains; short trips vs long trips It is a tool we use at this WalMart to plan on keeping accidents down and a better shopping experience for the customers QPE WEB How is it Currently Used ?

16. Make ONE webpage that allows users seamless selection of data ranging from one hour up to multiple years and allows zooming down to street level Allow user to select the time periods of data to view, not just default time periods Allow late updates from RFCs (no time limit) to automatically update on web Allow easy download of image/raw data of both QPEs and NORMALs in shapefiles, kmz, gifs, etc. Include data from AK, HI, PR & Western RFCS QPE WEB What can we improve?

17. Operational Encourage RFCs to review and correct QPE differences along RFC borders when appropriate! COORDINATION! Continue to refine the science of QPE to allow ever increasing reliability and availability of QPEs Provide solid support for upkeep and maintenance of future NWS QPE webpages & archive as well as operational NWS folks to answer questions that arise from the users of the data QPE WEB What can we improve?

18. QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION ITEMS?