A Multiscale Observational Case Study of the Development of an Isolated High Plains Tornadic Supercell

On 21 May 1995, a strong tornado developed with an isolated supercell in southwestern Nebraska. Largescale conditions were not supportive of a tornadic thunderstorm outbreak; however, evidence suggests significant mesoscale enhancements produced a local environment favorable for strong tornado formation. This case study illustrates the importance of ‘‘situation awareness’’ and illustrates how mesoscale enhancements must be anticipated by forecasters in order to properly assess rapidly changing atmospheric conditions

The Nebraska Mesonet: Technical Overview of an Automated State Weather Network

The Nebraska Mesonet was established in 1981 as one of the nation’s first automated state weather networks. ‘‘Automated’’ is defined by the nature of the observations being made and recorded by machine, as opposed to observations made and recorded manually. At the time of inception, the five observing locations were geared toward servicing agricultural production applications. The Nebraska Mesonet has grown to 69 stations (as of 2018) and is now a multipurpose environmental observing network under the Nebraska State Climate Office (NSCO). The network is composed of environmental observation stations, sited using best practices for mesoscale and microscale environment situations. Precise observations are acquired using highquality instrumentation, following manufacturer recommendations for calibrations and maintenance. Calibrations are performed in the NSCO calibration laboratory. Uses for the data include but are not limited to water management, drought monitoring, energy production, health, environmental research, animal management, and crop pest management. This paper provides a technical overview and history of the network, outlining current practices for station siting, maintenance, data quality assurance, and data utility

Localizing Climate Assessment Tools

Reliance on nationally produced normalized climatological products that are, within themselves, reliant upon observations that are geographically static and long term, places a burden on local climate services for providing consistently current climate updates. Within the need for current normalized climate data is the potential use for normalized extremes climatologies to provide automated quality control ranges for locally implemented weather networks. In this study, three questions are explored with the goal of increasing capacity of locally produced climate services: Can a locally normalized climatology be created that exhibits acceptable agreement with nationally produced normalized climatological products, yet provides the potential to be adapted for more frequent generation and alternative time periods? Can a locally produced normalized climatology be created for the purpose of assessing the viability of observations from a local weather network, such as the Nebraska Mesonet, providing a value-added first-pass quality control test? Does a reference grid of a locally produced climatology provide any quality control advantage over simply comparing near real-time automated observations, such as from the Nebraska Mesonet to external sourced manual observations, such as nationally maintained and quality-controlled collectives? Using nationally recognized official climate data, local climatologies were prepared and compared to national data sets for validation of process and utility for use as a quality control tool for local observations and local climatological data sets for climate services. The locally normalized climatology was found to show high correlation and is adaptable to time frame and periodicity. The normalized climatology illustrates success in providing a first pass automated quality control test for a local weather network. Furthermore, the reference grid is shown to be advantageous from a quality control perspective when compared to observations from neighboring nationally maintained datasets. Additional advantages of locally normalized climatologies are the generation of descriptive climate products to augment and enhance local climate services

The Nebraska Mesonet: Technical Overview of an Automated State Weather Network

The Nebraska Mesonet was established in 1981 as one of the nation’s first automated state weather networks. ‘‘Automated’’ is defined by the nature of the observations being made and recorded by machine, as opposed to observations made and recorded manually. At the time of inception, the five observing locations were geared toward servicing agricultural production applications. The Nebraska Mesonet has grown to 69 stations (as of 2018) and is now a multipurpose environmental observing network under the Nebraska State Climate Office (NSCO). The network is composed of environmental observation stations, sited using best practices for mesoscale and microscale environment situations. Precise observations are acquired using highquality instrumentation, following manufacturer recommendations for calibrations and maintenance. Calibrations are performed in the NSCO calibration laboratory. Uses for the data include but are not limited to water management, drought monitoring, energy production, health, environmental research, animal management, and crop pest management. This paper provides a technical overview and history of the network, outlining current practices for station siting, maintenance, data quality assurance, and data utility