NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed
The NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed is a joint project of the National Weather Service and the National Severe Storms Laboratory. The HWT provides a conceptual framework and a physical space to foster collaboration between research and operations to test and evaluate emerging technologies and science for NWS operations. The HWT’s flagship experiment, the Spring Forecasting Experiment (SFE), was borne from the “Spring Program” which, for over two decades, has been used to test and evaluate new forecast models, techniques, and products to support NWS Storm Prediction Center forecast operations.
In addition to the SFE, the HWT supports numerous experiments, activities, and focus groups designed to test and evaluate new applications, techniques, and products to support NWS Weather Forecast Office severe convective weather forecast and warning operations. We not only engage NWS forecasters but also external partners, such as emergency managers and broadcast meteorologists, to ensure that new products and technologies will provide the maximum possible benefit to society.
We're watching it happen; this is not a case study that happened last year. It gives [participants] a real-time environment. Case studies have their place, but really, you have to be able to use the system in real time. A case study, you've got days to assimilate the data; real time you've got minutes.—Lori Schultz, Univ. of Alabama