The Evolution of Severe Thunderstorm Criteria within the Weather Service

Galway, Joseph G.

doi:10.1175/1520-0434(1989)004<0585:teostc>2.0.co;2

Cited by 39 publications

(35 citation statements)

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“…For example, in the United States, a severe thunderstorm is defined as a storm producing lightning/ thunder and large hail and greater], and/or a tornado (e.g., Galway 1989). Thunderstorm intensity might also be expressed by the incurred damages, although the damage depends on where the storm occurred and the full extent of the damage may not always be known or represented with the available reports (e.g., Speheger et al 2002;Trapp et al 2006;Doswell et al 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Daily Cloud-to-Ground Lightning Flash Density in the Contiguous United States and Finland

2011

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A method is developed to quantify thunderstorm intensity according to cloud-to-ground lightning flashes (hereafter ground flashes) determined by a lightning-location sensor network. The method is based on the ground flash density N D per thunderstorm day (ground flashes per square kilometer per thunderstorm day) calculated on 20 km 3 20 km fixed squares. Because the square size roughly corresponds to the area covered by a typical thunderstorm, the flash density for one square defines a unit thunderstorm for the purposes of this study. This method is tested with ground flash data obtained from two nationwide lightning-location systems: the National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) in the contiguous United States and the portion of the Nordic Lightning Information System (NORDLIS) in Finland. The distribution of daily ground flash density N D is computed for all of Finland and four 800 000 km 2 regions in the United States (identified as western, central, eastern, and Florida). Although Finland and all four U.S. regions have median values of N D of 0.01-0.03 flashes per square kilometer per thunderstorm day-indicating that most thunderstorms produce relatively few ground flashes regardless of geographical region-the most intense 1% of the storms (as measured by the 99th percentiles of the N D distributions within each region) show much larger differences among regions. For example, the most intense 1% of the N D distributions is 1.3 flashes per square kilometer per thunderstorm day in the central U.S. region, but only 0.2 flashes per square kilometer per thunderstorm day in Finland. The spatial distribution of the most intense 1% of the N D distributions illustrates that the most intense thunderstorm days occur in the central United States and upper Midwest, which differs from the maxima of the average annual flash density N A and the number of thunderstorm days T D , both of which occur in Florida and along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. This method for using N D to quantify thunderstorm intensity is applicable to any region as long as the detection efficiency of the lightning-location network is high enough or known. This method can also be employed in operational forecasting to provide a quantitative measure of the lightning intensity of thunderstorms relative to climatology.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Daily Cloud-to-Ground Lightning Flash Density in the Contiguous United States and Finland

2011

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“…As recalled by Galway (1992), Fawbush and Miller continued 1952). Although the forecasts were distributed only to air force weather offices, their existence and success became known to the public and especially to the local media, which lauded the efforts of the air force while criticizing the Weather Bureau for its inaction to forecast this weather event.…”

Section: Status Of Severe Storm Research/tornado Forecasting Inmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…In Table 1, we summarize contributions to severe storms forecasting that were in existence by the late 1940s. Details related to the entries in this table can be found by reference to the more comprehensive historical papers by Galway (1984Galway ( , 1985aGalway ( ,b, 1989 and Schaefer (1986).…”

Section: Status Of Severe Storm Research/tornado Forecasting Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Architect Of Severe Storm Forecasting: Colonel Robert C. Miller

Lewis¹,

Maddox²,

Crisp³

2006

Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc.

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“…Table 1-4 show the warning criteria for Canada circa 1995. Canada is a very big country covering many different weather climatologies and therefore is illustrative of the variation of the severe weather thresholds (see also Galway, 1989). For example, Newfoundland on the east coast of Canada is a very windy location and hence strong winds are a common occurrence and the people have adapted to their environment and therefore it has the highest wind threshold in Canada.…”

Section: Severe Weather Definitionmentioning

confidence: 99%