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  Current Deep Thunder Forecast for New York

Clouds and Precipitation at 4 km between Data Points
 


Description

This animation is a visualization of the Deep Thunder forecast for the intermediate-resolution nest at 4 km resolution focused on New York City.  Each time step corresponds to 10 minutes of forecast time.  They show the local terrain as a shaded surface that is colored by contour bands of total precipitation (as rain in inches), following the scale to the upper right, where brown implies no rain (dry) and heavier rainfall is in darker shades of blue.  If the model predicts no precipitation then a similar visualization of humidity will be shown instead.  If areas where precipitation is forecasted are sufficiently cold, then they may be marked with large or small Xs for snow.  The smaller markers imply light snow or flurries.  In animation, areas of precipitation will appear to "paint" the surface blue.  However, the model calculations require some time to "spin-up" the microphysics to enable precipitation.  Therefore, there will typically be no precipitation in the first couple of hours of model results.  Since the precipitation is accumulated through the model run, regions which stop showing changes in color imply that the precipitation has ended.  In some cases when that happens and the temperature is sufficiently cold, snow markers may appear. This implies that wet surfaces may be beginning to freeze. 

The terrain is overlaid with maps of coastlines and state boundaries in blank, county boundaries in light gray and rivers in blue.  Individual landmarks and cities are shown by name.  The terrain map is in a three-dimensional scene with predicted clouds.  The clouds are shown as a translucent white (boundary) surface derived from a threshold of total cloud water density (liquid and ice) where the ratio of that total to the contents of the atmosphere is 0.0001 kg of water per kg of air.  If the model predicts severe weather, such as convective activity that could lead to the formation of thunderstorms, then a translucent cyan surface may be visible within the clouds.  The region within this cyan surface corresponds to where precipitation is forming within the clouds (e.g., rain shafts) and where any storm activity would be the most severe.


Instructions

An animation (compressed as an MPEG-1 video) is shown above with 10 minutes of forecast time between each frame.  Depending on your connection speed and that of your computer, the animation may take a few minutes to load and decompress in your browser.  The progress of that process is shown until it is completed.  When it is completed, the animation will play.  There are VCR-like controls under the animation to enable you to stop playback, play forward or backward, or step through the frames one at a time.  If you are having problems viewing or interacting with this animation, make sure your browser has Java and Javascript enabled.  If you are still having difficulty, you can download the mpeg file directly.
 


More Visualizations of the Current Forecast
 

Learn More about These Forecasts
 

Recent High-Resolution Local Satellite Observations
 

Learn More about Deep Thunder
 

Learn More about how Deep Thunder Visualizes the Data Generated by the Weather Model
 

Current Weather Information and Predictions for New York City (from the National Weather Service)
 

Current Model Results from the National Weather Service
 

Recent High-Resolution Local Radar Observations
 

Evaluation of Recent Forecasts

  
 
  

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