Steven N. Dickerson
Description
A wet-microburst event on 16 August 1994 at the Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility alerted forecasters from the 45th Weather Squadron (45
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WS), the provider of weather support to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Cape Canaveral Air Station (CCAS), to the challenges of wet-microburst prediction. Although there was no operational impact, this event caused the 45WS to revise their severe thunderstorm forecasting procedures to specifically address microbursts, resulting in the locally developed Microburst-Day Potential Index (MDPI). MDPI provides a several-hour outlook of microburst potential based on the results of the Microburst and Severe Thunderstorm (MIST) project. The 45WS also conducted a preliminary evaluation of the Wind INDEX (WINDEX) for the KSC/CCAS microburst forecast problem. WINDEX provides an estimate of the maximum observed gust speed that can be expected should a microburst occur. This thesis presents an evaluation of MDPI and WINDEX based on microbursts identified by Sanger (1999) in his KSC/CCAS microburst climatology. A new index for assessing microburst potential is also introduced, incorporating both the MDPI and WINDEX parameters. Overall neither the MDPI nor the WINDEX performed particularly well in this application.
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