SKYWARN SNAPSHOT - SPRING 2024
NWS Tucson Skywarn Newsletter
Welcome: Spring 2024
Welcome to our Spring 2024 Spotter Snapshot. We're excited to be back into our communities this Spring to provide Spotter training. This is a great opportunity for a refresher and to meet your fellow Skywarn Spotters. We hope you enjoy this edition of the Spotter Snapshot and look forward to seeing you this Spring.
Winter Review, Climate, and Drought Update
By: John Glueck, Senior Meteorologist
A strong El Niño was present and peaked during the 2023-24 Winter season (December through February). El Niño tends to bring above normal precipitation to southeast Arizona which occurred for most of southeast Arizona this past Winter season.
The four-panel graphic to the right shows precipitation broken down by the winter months and the season as a whole. Green to blue depicts above normal precipitation while yellow to red depicts below normal precipitation. You will notice that near the Arizona/New Mexico border (circled area) below normal precipitation was present for the entire Winter.
There were two low elevation snow events during Winter 2023-24. The first one occurred on January 7th with the second one occurring on February 10th.
The map to the right shows estimated snowfall for Winter 2023-24 across southeast Arizona
Thanks to a wetter than normal winter for most of southeast Arizona, there was improvement in drought conditions west of the Safford to Sierra Vista line. Unfortunately the winter precipitation was not enough to make a dent in Extreme drought conditions near/along the Arizona/New Mexico border.
Satellite/GLM Tools for Monsoon
By: Alex Edwards, Lead Meteorologist
Meteorologists with the National Weather Service have a number of tools at their disposal for detecting and tracking impactful weather. Weather satellites have long been part of this toolbox, and with recent technological improvements they have become an increasingly important part of forecast and warning operations. Two new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) were launched in 2016 and 2022 as GOES-16 and GOES-18, providing new capabilities in weather monitoring, atmospheric measurements, and lightning tracking. Together GOES-16 and GOES-18 watch more than half the globe, from the west coast of Africa to New Zealand.
A major improvement from the previous version of GOES is the introduction of 5 minute and 1 minute updating imagery, compared to the previous generation which had image latency of up to 15 minutes. Additionally the spatial resolution doubled, improving from 1.0 km to 0.5 km per pixel. This new capability allows forecasters to see minute by minute changes of developing hazards and their small-scale features. Forecasters can now see building thunderstorms before a lightning strike occurs, low clouds approaching an airport at night, and the spreading of a wildfire towards a town.
GOES-16/18 also added the capability for forecasters to better differentiate between cloud types (and subsequently a rough estimate of altitude). Since water droplets and ice crystals reflect energy differently, GOES is able to use a combination of wavelength measurements in order to display a cloud’s composition of water versus ice. Shown to the right is a comparison of the traditional grayscale of the visible channel versus the color enhanced product displayed by GOES-16/18, and how forecasters can pick out different cloud features using this product.
GOES-16/18 also came with the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), an unprecedented capability to detect lightning from space. The GLM is an optical sensor which allows it to detect lightning both day and night down to an individual thunderstorm level in near real time. Forecasters are able to use this up to the minute data to track thunderstorm evolution and intensity, many times before signs of intensity or severity are detected by radar. This allows for increased lead time for hazardous thunderstorms or better detection in areas of poor radar coverage. Shown is GLM displayed with radar imagery over and off the coast of southern Texas.
IMET/Fire Weather Program
By: Gary Zell, IMET
There have been some personnel changes at NWS Tucson in the Fire Weather and IMET Programs since our last newsletter. Carl Cerniglia (Fire Weather Program Manager) has retired and Jeremy Michael (IMET) has moved to another National Weather Service office. Gary Zell has moved into Carl’s position as the Program Manager for NWS Tucson while also remaining an IMET. Kevin Strongman is spinning up as an Incident Meteorologist trainee and Kiera (Kei) Malarkey hopes to spin up as an IMET trainee in the next couple years with additional NWS training. Gary, Kevin and Kei make up the Fire Weather Team at NWS Tucson.
NWS Tucson Fire Weather Program
The objective of the Fire Weather Program is to provide fire weather and other products and decision support services to the fire, land management and emergency response community for the protection of life and property and promotion of firefighter and emergency responder safety. Some of the products disseminated by NWS Tucson include; the daily Fire Weather Forecast, Spot Forecasts, Fire Weather Watches and Red Flag Warnings, 30-90 Day Outlooks and Fire Season Outlooks. NWS forecasters help on-scene fire management teams obtain and interpret weather information and how weather may affect their operations during critical fire situations. This could be done over the phone, virtually through Google Meet or Microsoft Teams, or by having an Incident Meteorologist (IMET) deployed. Fire weather team members also assist in teaching the weather portions of fire related courses hosted by partner agencies.
For more information on NWS Tucson Fire Weather products, please visit our webpage at:
Incident Meteorologist (IMET) Program
Nationwide, the NWS employs a group of approximately 100 Incident Meteorologists (IMETs) that deploy across the country to provide weather support and specialized forecasts for large-scale incidents and the Incident Management Teams (IMTs) that support these incidents. While the majority of IMET deployments are to support wildfire operations, IMETs have been deployed to hurricanes, hazmat situations, prescribed fires (Rx Burns) and more. IMETs assist in fire crew safety, provide tactical support to the fire management team and provide weather forecasts to the Fire Behavior Analyst (FBAN) and fire crews. Special training in microscale forecasting, fire behavior and fire operations makes IMETs an integral part of fire management teams.
IMETs travel with an All-Hazards Meteorological Response System Kit, or AMRS Kit for short. This kit includes, but is not limited to; a computer and printer, weather belt toolkit and Kestrel,
an upper-air and inflation kit with radiosondes and weather balloons, and power adapters including inverters for use in vehicles. The AMRS Kit enables IMETs to provide meteorological support at the fire command centers, even when those centers are located in remote locations which is often the case for wildfires. IMET’s can launch weather balloons to look at wind speed and directional changes with height, the current moisture content, temperature changes and inversion layers to assess a more complete picture of the atmosphere over the fire environment. This data helps Incident Meteorologists develop highly specialized forecasts that are then utilized by the Operations Chiefs and Air Operations to formulate a strategy for daily operations. IMETs can also order Incident Remote Automatic Weather Stations (IRAWS) that can be set up in strategic areas around the fire to supplement local observations to get a more complete picture of how the local weather is impacted by nearby complex terrain.
For a more detailed look at the NWS IMET program:
2024 Fire Season Outlook
With a strong El Niño pattern in place this winter, near normal to below normal temperatures have occurred across all of southeast Arizona and much of the area has experienced above normal precipitation since Jan 1st, 2024 (the exception being a small portion of Graham and Pinal counties).
Near normal temperatures and above normal precipitation has resulted in a lessening of the drought conditions across portions of southern Arizona, especially across western Pima County. However, moderate to severe drought still persists across a good portion of southern Arizona.
The Fire Season Outlook (April through June) is leaning towards above normal temperatures and below normal precipitation. A transition from El Niño to ENSO-neutral is likely by April-June 2024 (79% chance), with increasing odds of La Niña developing in June-August 2024 (55% chance).
Significant Wildland Fire Potential is expected to be near normal during April and May (the outlook for June has not been released yet). Reviews of past years with a flip from an El Niño to near or into a La Niña in less than six months reveal a cool and wet pattern for the southwest due to a nearby jet stream well into the spring months. This year could see cooler temperatures into April, with above normal precipitation for the southwest through March and perhaps lingering into April.
Increased Collaboration with University of Arizona Students
By: Gigi Giralte, Pathways Intern
Over the past year, NWS Tucson has been increasing their collaboration with the University of Arizona Hydrology and Atmospheric Science (HAS) Department. This has included various tours and workshops, having student volunteers in the office, and classroom involvement with simulations.
Over the next couple of years, we're hoping to continue to increase our engagement with the HAS Department and their students. Our goal is to help prepare students for the workforce whether that be in the National Weather Service or other industries in the field.
NWS Tucson is proud to have five student volunteers in our office in addition to one Pathways student. We also have a student from ASU working with us virtually! Keep reading to learn about each of them and what projects they are currently working on at/for our office!
Steven Billington
My name is Steven Billington and I am a student at the University of Arizona. I am majoring in atmospheric sciences and I am a junior undergrad. I am working on a project that involves looking at hail and wind reports along with different reflectivities and hail products. I will then make graphs to check for correlations between reflectivity values and hail size/wind speed. This project aims to improve decision making when it comes to issuing severe weather warnings.
Jessi Moeschl
My name is Jessi and I am a senior undergraduate Atmospheric Science student at the University of Arizona originally from Phoenix, Arizona. I have been working on a project with Tom Dang to create new graphics that breakdown the statistics of the two main impacts of El Nino, temperature and precipitation anomalies, in a new visually and appealing way.
Gigi Giralte
Hi there, my name is Gigi Giralte and I am currently a senior undergrad studying Atmospheric Science at the University of Arizona. I am originally from Zionsville, IN, and I joined NWS Tucson as a Pathways Student Intern in June of 2022. Since then, I've worked on lots of projects to help better our office including both this Spring Spotter Newsletter and the Fall Spotter Newsletter back in November! I've helped launch weather balloons, aid in operational tasks, improve our social media graphics, and work on various onboarding projects for new meteorologists.
Dylan Girone
I am originally from Mukwonago, Wisconsin and I currently attend the University of Arizona as an undergraduate student with majors in Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences as well as Mathematics. I am set to graduate this spring but I intend to stay at the University of Arizona to pursue an M.S. in Atmospheric Sciences. With the National Weather Service, I have been helping develop in-house, training and forecasting products related to weather model outputs. These products should help forecasters better understand ensemble statistics and their relative impacts.
Claire Acke
My name is Claire Acke and I was born and raised in Tucson! I am in my second year of my Masters program in Atmospheric Sciences creating downscale climate models. My undergraduate research included analysis of hurricane rapid intensification. With the National Weather Service, I have been working to create a way to find out important and interesting historical weather information using gridded data.
Brandolyn Baeza
I'm Brandolyn Baeza and I am a 3rd year (junior) atmospheric science student at the University of Arizona from Casa Grande, Arizona. With my time at the Tucson NWS office, I've had two different projects. My first project was to update the tropical storms list that made significant impacts in Arizona. My second project has been helping Service Hydrologist Erin Boyle with creating more accessible climate normals using gauges throughout the NWS Tucson office service area and GIS online, similar to that of WFO Puerto Rico.
Leigh Contino
My name is Leigh Contino, and I am currently living in Phoenix, Arizona. I am a senior undergraduate student at Arizona State University, set to graduate this spring with a degree in Geography (Meteorology-Climatology) and a certificate in GIS. I'm currently working on a GIS-based project with the NWS relating heat risk and social vulnerability in a multivariate map. Our goal in this project is to create a tool that can generate map layouts for cities across the western US. This will allow NWS offices that wish to look at their own cities' most vulnerable areas to easily access a map of that data during specific days of the year.
Spring/Monsoon Outlook
By: Glenn Lader, Lead Meteorologist
After a strong El Niño episode this winter, a transition to a neutral state is expected in the Spring. By the monsoon, as the sea surface temperature in the equatorial Pacific Ocean is expected to cool more, there is a ~70% chance of La Niña July through September.
As we enter the climatologically drier Spring period, the storm track shifts north and any lingering effects of El Niño wane, the trends lean towards odds slightly tilting to drier than normal conditions this Spring. Meanwhile, odds tilt slightly towards above normal temperatures in the Spring.
The official forecast calls for equal chances of above normal, near normal or below normal precipitation for the monsoon. While La Niña tends to be helpful for our monsoon precipitation, it would still be in its early stages and it's still several months away, so we need to keep monitoring to see how it develops. Check back for the latest forecast updates over the next few months. Meanwhile, the temperature outlook leans towards above normal temperatures for the summer period.
Spotter Program Notes
By: Glenn Lader, Lead Meteorologist
NWS Tucson is excited to return to in-person Skywarn Training this Spring!
Our schedule has now been released .
We will be in a community near you, so this is a great opportunity to come out, get a refresher and interact with the NWS Tucson team and your fellow Skywarn Spotters.
We will also be hosting a couple of virtual training sessions, if that is your preference.
Please continue to keep your information up to date. You will occasionally receive an email from our system verifying your Skywarn Spotter status. You must acknowledge receipt when this message comes into your email, otherwise you will eventually be dropped from our Skywarn Spotter list.
Thank you for reading! Stay tuned for our next Skywarn Snapshot Newsletter!
