STORMTIPE-95 - RESULTS FROM A CONVECTIVE STORM FORECAST EXPERIMENT

During the spring of 1995, an operational forecast experiment using a three-dimensional cloud model was carried out for the north Texas regi on. Gridpoint soundings were obtained from the daily operational numer ical weather prediction models run at the National Centers for Environ mental Prediction, and these soundings were then used to initialize a limited-domain cloud-resolving model in an attempt to predict convecti ve storm type and morphology in a timely manner. The results indicate that this type of convective forecast may be useful in the operational environment, despite several limitations associated with this methodo logy. One interesting result from the experiment is that while the gri dpoint soundings obtained from the NCEP models generally overforecast instability and vertical wind shear, the resulting convective storm ev olution and morphology in the cloud model was often similar to that of the observed storms. Therefore the ''overforecast'' of mesoscale envi ronment's instability and vertical wind shear still resulted in a thun derstorm-scale forecast that provided useful information to operationa l forecasters.