EAGER: Progressive Derecho Initiation and Propagation in Specific Physical Corridors as Determined by Mesoscale D-PSI Vectors

Derechos are one of the atmosphere’s most destructive phenomena. These windstorms are associated with a rapidly moving, massive and growing group of thunderstorms that can last for 10 or more hours and travel well over 600 miles. They are typically accompanied by wind gusts of more than 65 mph as well as damaging lightning, flooding rain, large hail, and even small tornados.

They adversely impact agriculture, transportation, and urban safety. A recent derecho in the midwestern U.S. resulted in more than 11 billion dollars of property damage and several fatalities from wind gusts greater than 140 mph. Presently, we do not often predict the intensity, location, and duration of the most devastating derechos nor do we consistently differentiate between the strong and weak derechos only hours in advance.

This project will create new technology based on scientific theories and computer visualizations in 4 dimensions to improve the prediction of this damaging phenomenon. The new technology will be available to operational government and private weather forecasters in the form of computer-generated predictions of the atmospheric conditions that are most likely to create derechos.

This will potentially enable more accurate prediction of derechos farther in advance than we presently can do thus saving lives and reducing property damage.

Presently, operational computer predictions of derechos suffer from a lack of proper synthesis of the precursor physical environment to derecho genesis and motion. The research approach to be undertaken synthesizes many more of the physical conditions that are likely to create long lasting and devastating derechos than has been done before. The larger scale organization of the strong thunderstorms that comprise derechos is the result of the jet stream and unique atmospheric frontal systems that are most likely to occur during extreme heat waves.

The theory to be tested represents a unique synthesis of physical processes not previously applied to derechos in either the operational or research environments. Also, the complexity of these physics requires innovative 4-dimensional computer visualization techniques so that operational weather forecasters can understand the many nonlinear processes that have to properly phase to produce derechos.

The goal is to substantially improve the reliability of the synthesis of operational computational fluid model predictions of a favorable derecho environment for forecasters and thus extend for the public the lead time of warnings of these devastating windstorms.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.