Category Archives: news and events

Simultaneous tornado and flash flood events, or TORFFs (Nielsen et al. 2015), present a complex threat to members of the public as well as a difficult communication challenge for safety messaging. These challenges are primarily due to the contradictory nature of the recommended actions for both threats; for tornadoes, the suggested protective action is to…

Prior to 2008, <10% of the mobile phone market had a smartphone, and this was even after the release of the Apple iPhone (https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Blog/US-Smartphone-Penetration-Surpassed-80-Percent-in-2016). By 2019, 81% of Americans owned a smartphone (https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/#:~:text=Mobile%20phone%20ownership%20over%20time%20%20%20,%20%2081%25%20%2059%20more%20rows%20). This explosion of technology brought about many changes to the way most people live. Phone calls and text messages had already brought…

Forecasting convection initiation (CI) has advanced greatly during the past decade through the use of high-resolution satellite observations and model output. One of the primary CI products used in forecast operations is based on GOES-16 visible and infrared imagery along with GLM lightning flash detections to determine the location of growing ice-containing cumulus clouds that…