1. LPFS 2009 Scope of Work Rick Luettich Jason Fleming Robert Weaver February 19, 2009

2. LPFS Overall Goals To provide reliable, timely, accurate guidance for storm surge in southern Louisiana To provide accurate estimates of high water marks and areas of inundation immediately after landfall

3. LPFS Overview Automated software system for storm surge guidance in SE LA; written around ADCIRC Uses NHC Official Forecast Generates 5-storm ensemble (consensus, 20% stronger, 20% slower, veer right, veer left)‏ Post process results for south shore of Lake Pontchartrain and West Bank (Harvey Canal)‏ Autogenerated output includes hydrograph and wind speed plots

4. 2008 Season Retrospective

5. Hurricane Zeus: Preseason Drill Created and ran 20 forecast tracks Made Google maps of each Provided hydrographs of LP and West Bank Summary spreadsheet for coastal parishes

6. Hurricane Zeus: Preseason Drill Type and scope of output broader than anticipated Sapphire (ERDC supercomputer) reboot‏ Drill held 13 May; COE pleased with the output we provided (too much information in hindsight)‏ Hurricane Zeus drill was picked up by media  Humid City blog: “Corps Cutting it Close at Floodgates This Year”  Baton Rouge Advocate “Corps Tests System of Storm Protection”

7. Hurricane Dolly

8. 7/20: Dolly formed in Western Caribbean; Corps' internal forecaster Bill Frederick indicated Dolly not a threat to MVD; LPFS activated at UNC 7/21: Corps Directive: Only activate LPFS on Sapphire when Frederick forecasts MVD impacts 7/21: Dolly made 1 st landfall in Mexico; we were added to Frederick's forecast email list

9. Hurricane Dolly 7/22 Frederick forecast MVD impacts of 3 ft surge west of Morgan City (outside target area)‏ Preparations made to run on Sapphire‏ Final landfall 7/23 on South Padre (TX) as Cat 1 LPFS ran at UNC from 7/20 to 7/24 and reliably produced surge guidance for 15 advisories (no impact predicted for target area)‏

10. Tropical Storm Edouard

11. Tropical Storm Edouard, 3 August

12. TS Edouard forms just off the coast of LA We activated at ERDC (in standard queue) with backup at UNC (Lake Pontchartrain only)‏ We request dedicated queue on ERDC machine ERDC computer experienced power fluctuations causing network failure Bill Fredericks forecasts 2-3 ft surge in coastal LA

13. Tropical Storm Edouard, 4 August Request for dedicated queue on ERDC computer temporarily denied pending higher authorization; subsequently granted LPFS ran from 8/3 to 8/4, producing surge guidance for 5 advisories at ERDC and 8 at UNC; worst case predictions were ½ foot surge, winds 8- 10 kts TS Edouard made landfall near Port Aurthur, TX

14. Tropical Storm Fay

15. Tropical Storm Fay, 15 August

16. TS Fay forms over Dominican Republic LPFS activated on ERDC computer, as well as LONI computer as backup, and UNC computer (as tertiary backup)‏ Dedicated queue requested on ERDC computer, and granted LPFS running on all platforms – no significant impact predicted

17. Tropical Storm Fay, 17 August

18. Tropical Storm Fay 8/17: Bill Fredericks forecasted no MVD impacts, will continue to monitor; Captain Royston indicated no further updates are necessary 8/18: Request made for surge guidance based on the latest track from the GFS model instead of official forecast; 1 st landfall in Florida Keys 8/18: We begin the “ALT Fay” series of guidance using manually developed forecast tracks based on guidance from meteorological models

19. Tropical Storm Fay GFS based guidance: no significant impact 8/19 2nd landfall near Naples FL ERDC opens up additional computer 8/20 Surge guidance requested based on BAMM model instead

20. Tropical Storm Fay, Met Guidance

21. Tropical Storm ALT Fay, 20 August

22. Tropical Storm Fay, August 21 3 rd Landfall, near Daytona Guidance based on BAMM model indicated 3-6 ft surge along eastern coast of SE LA Guidance requested for NGFDL track with fwd speed of 8 mph and 80 kt max wind; results indicated 5 ft surge on south shore of Lake Pont. Sapphire (ERDC machine) down for emergency maintenance; UNC machine down all September

23. Tropical Storm Fay, 22 August Sapphire rebooted, removed from service for emergency maintenance, then rebooted again Request made for guidance based on 6 day run of NGFDL using 60kt and 80kt max winds Lake Pontchartrain runs available quickly, West Bank runs require much more time Contour plot of surge guidance used to estimate surge in IHNC Fay re-emerged into Gulf

24. Tropical Storm Fay, 22 August

25. Tropical Storm Fay, 23 August 4 th (and final) Landfall near Carrabelle on FL panhandle (dissipated inland following day)‏ Last sets of official results indicated no significant impacts in target area LPFS ran from 8/15 to 8/23 and provided guidance for 19 advisories from ERDC; 35 advisories at UNC (Lake Pontchartrain only)‏ Also produced custom guidance for 5 tracks from 3 advisories based on met. model guidance

26. Hurricane Gustav

27. Hurricane Gustav, 25 August Formed west of the Windward islands and rapidly strengthened from disturbance to hurricane Bill Frederick issued wait-and-see forecast

28. Hurricane Gustav 26 August We request LPFS Activation at ERDC at 0800; EOC elects to hold off dedicated queue request Bill Frederick forecast is northern Gulf coast We make request for increase from 160 CPUs to 640 CPUs on Sapphire to speed West Bank results 2100 Official request made to activate LPFS on Sapphire with “more power”

29. Hurricane Gustav 27 August Media and private citizens requests for information made directly to LPFS Team at UNC, appealing for release of results All inquiries forwarded to COE; LPFS results to be made available only to Heath Jones and Nancy LPFS Activated on Sapphire using standard queue, dedicated queue access scheduled to begin on 28th Need for 640 CPUs reiterated to MSRC MSRC requests justification for more CPUs; eventually grants 640 CPUs for Gustav only

30. Hurricane Gustav 28 August LPFS running in dedicated queue on 640 processors Contour plots of High Water Marks in Google Earth format provided in addition to hydrographs Clarification requested for storm parameters: pressure, windspeed, Rmax, lat/lon at landfall, etc Ensemble redefined for custom Rmax and custom tracks (e.g., veer east by 1 degree only)‏

31. Hurricane Gustav, 29 August

32. Hurricane Gustav 29 August 3 of 4 LPFS storm tracks failed on Sapphire for the 5am EDT advisory cycle LPFS guidance indicates 4ft/40kts in Lake Pontchartrain and 10 ft/45kts on West Bank Bill Frederick issues estimates of 14-20ft on eastern shore and 4-9 ft on northern Gulf coast

33. Hurricane Gustav 29 August

37. Hurricane Gustav 30 August Overnight advisory cycle failed on Sapphire (node failure)‏ Additional custom adjustments to Rmax for ensemble storms were requested 5 additional output stations were requested beyond the original 2 (Lake Pontchartrain and Harvey Canal) for a total of 7 Had to rewrite backend post processing code

38. Hurricane Gustav 30 August

39. Hurricane Gustav 31 August Run failures on Sapphire became more and more frequent ADCIRC runs performed on LONI hardware used to advise Corps LONI runs used much larger grid, were available much less frequently

40. Hurricane Gustav, Landfall Shape file of high water marks were requested, looking at hindcast First time LPFS results have been been used by emergency responders after landfall LPFS ran from 8/25 to 9/2 and produced guidance from 11 advisories with 2 output stations, and 3 advisories for expanded list of 7 output stations

41. September 2 nd

42. Hurricane Ike

43. Formed September 1 List of output stations expanded to 23 Additional outputs of wind model requested at 0, 3, 6, and 9 hours Request made for adjustments to hydrographs and contour plots 640 CPUs requested on Sapphire and Jade (approved)‏

44. Hurricane Ike Problems continued on Sapphire Post processing code for 23 stations pushed the limits of our plotting code Ike trended west, out of the target zone for the LPFS grid Full sl15 grid was run on LONI to provide output for whole LA coast Outputs consisted of contour plots of High Water Marks

45. 2008 Season Summary Very active season for the Gulf Broadest participation in the surge guidance process to date Tremendous effort by all involved to overcome challenges and provide best guidance New technical requirements evolved as the season went on

46. 2009 Changes and Enhancements Reliability Flexibility Coverage Timeliness Accuracy

47. Reliability Limit the number of in-season changes  any change may introduce/reveal bugs (incl. hardware)‏  in-season changes make rigorous testing more difficult  LPFS2009 will be more flexible reducing the need for late changes Implement structured testing  run forecasts in test mode  test mode carefully designed to cover all possible situations

48. Flexibility 2008 experience indicated the need for  swappable bathymetry input files (mesh)‏  reconfigurable storm ensemble  seamless modification of station output Changes will be made such that  ADCIRC input files easily swapped  number and character of storms in ensemble may be dynamically modified, advisory-by-advisory  number and location of output stations dynamically modifiable

49. Coverage Geography  Beyond Lake Pontchartrain, beyond West Bank  2009 will fully cover Louisiana coastline Time span  Early stages What if only model guidance is available? 2009 will cover pre-official forecast period  Late stages After storm has made landfall, hurricane forecast uncertainty disappears, surge guidance accuracy is maximized 2009 will advise after landfall for emergency responders

50. Timeliness Fast turnaround of results will require greater processing power 640 CPUs on sapphire produced a result in 1 hour (per storm in the ensemble)‏ Therefore, 3-storm ensemble will require 1920 CPUs to produce results in one hour We will request a dedicated reservation of 1920 CPUs for the 2009 season

51. Accuracy Pleased with the accuracy of our surge guidance in 2008 season Detailed comparison of measured data and surge guidance is still ongoing Enhanced accuracy in 2009 season via  use of most up-to-date bathymetry  transition to asymmetric vortex wind model

52. Conclusions Broad participation has provided a tremendous boost to the guidance process The efforts, frustrations and successes of the 2008 season have informed the development of LPFS The 2009 season will build on past experiences to provide the most reliable, timely and accurate surge guidance available