From jhorel@met.utah.edu Thu Aug 9 09:17:01 2001 Delivered-To: jhorel@met.utah.edu X-Sender: jhorel/pop.met.utah.edu@localhost Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2001 09:18:33 -0600 To: jhorel@met.utah.edu From: John Horel Subject: Mime-Version: 1.0 Weather Support to the 2002 Olympic Winter Games . 1. Introduction The 2002 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games will be held in Salt Lake City,UT, during Feb-Mar 2002. Weather can markedly affect nearly all Games activities in various ways, so a weather support system has been developed to provide the needed weather information to the athletes,officials,spectators, and the staff managing the operation of the Games. Planning for the weather support system began in 1995,shortly after selection of Salt Lake City (SLC) by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the site for the 2002 Games.Early plans for this weather support system were done largely by Prof.John Horel(U of Utah) and Dr. Larry Dunn(NWS)..Further development of the system has involved many people at SLOC, NWS,U.of Utah, and the private sector group associated with the KSL,the local NBC affiliate in SLC. 2. Weather Effects on Games Activities Nearly every Winter Games activity can be affected by weather in some way. These effects include delays in sporting events by adverse weather such as heavy snowfalls,strong winds,low visibility due to fog or snow, avalanches, and even winter lightning at the outdoor venues. Road transportation of spectators from their domiciles in the Wasatch valley to the outdoor venues east of the Wasatch mountain range is adversely affected by snow and ice-covered mountain roads. Aviation transportation will involve flying helicopters in hazardous winter weather in mountainous terrain. The safety,health and comfort of spectators who are outdoors for several hours is related to weather events such as extreme wind chills,avalanches,heavy snow & ice on roads and at the outdoor venues, air pollution episodes in the Salt Lake valley,and infrequent lightning at some of the venues. Still other activities affected by weather include snowmaking, construction of outdoor facilities, flags and pennants, outdoor ceremonies such as the Opening and Closing,Medal Awards,city Celebrations,operation of parking lots at venues, and security operations involving the dispersion of toxic gases or biological agents that are released accidently or on purpose by terrorists. 3. Weather Support Required A broad range of weather support activities will be needed to meet the diverse requirements of the Winter Games. These will include area-wide forecasts and warnings, road corridor forecasts for the mountain roads from the Salt Lake valley to the mountain venues east of the Wasatch Mountains, highly detailed venue forecasts for the five outdoor venues, observations of actual weather conditions during sports events at the venues to become part of the official record, climate information for planners among the officials,coaches,media and others, and consultant advice on a wide variety of applications such as snowmaking,construction, ceremonies, and dispersion of gases or airborne agents. Area-wide forecasts and the road corridor forecasts will be issued twice daily, in the early morning and the late afternoon.Warnings and updated forecasts will be issued at any time that weather conditions warrant. Detailed venue forecasts are required for each hour on the first day and three-hourly forecasts for the following two days.These detailed forecasts are made for extremely small areas such as ski jumps,downhill courses, mogul and acrobatic ski runs, bobsleigh and luge tracks, and snowboard facilities-all at specific times for each sports event at each venue. Official weather observations are started one hour before each outdoor event begins and continued at 15 minute intervals throughout the event. 4. Organization,Functions, and Staffing The organization of the weather support group for the 2002 Winter Games is composed of components from the public,private and academic sectors. To the best of our knowledge, this is a unique weather support organization for all Olympics games held to date in any country.The public sector is represented by the National Weather Service, the private sector by KSL, and the academic sector by the U. of Utah. One of our most pressing concerns in using this three-component structure is to assure close coordination among the three groups to ensure that consistent forecasts are issued to the athletes,officials,spectators, and staff managing the Games. The NWS team will issue the area-wide forecasts and warnings, and also the road corridor forecasts, in accord with their main mission to protect public lives and property. The KSL team will provide the detailed venue forecasts.The U. of Utah will provide online weather data from 250 + sites in northern Utah,high resolution analyses and forecasts run operationally during the Games, and 20+ student Weather Aides who to monitor the official weather observations. More detailed discussions of the roles to be played by each sector follow in sections 5-7. The staff during the planning stages consists of 52 professional meteorologists and other professionals, most of them not full-time, plus 20+ volunteer Weather Aides. During the Games,the operational staff will be about 25 professionals and 20+ weather aides.The Weather Operations Center at the NWS office in SLC will be open 24 hours every day of the Games,and it will be staffed by both the NWS and the KSL team. The KSL venue forecasters will be on site from about 4:00 am to 6:00 pm on every event day at their venue. The Weather Aides will be on venue from about 6:00 am to 6:00 pm on every event day at their venue. The U of Utah team will be at work about 16 hours per day throughout the Games,with different people on duty at different hours of the day in order to perform the required tasks. . 5. NWS Team Role The NWS role in support of the 2002 Winter Games is to provide to provide public forecasts and warnings to protect lives and property,in accord with its mission. The NWS will issue forecasts and warnings at least twice daily,with updates as needed by changing weather conditions. In addition, the Weather Operations Center (WOC) for the 2002 Winter Games was established at the NWS Salt Lake City Weather Forecast Office (WFO). The WOC, located in the WFO conference room, is staffed by NWS forecasters who were brought in to augment the normal WFO staff and by members of the KSL team. Six NWS forecasters from locations other than SLC were selected, with four forecasters assigned to the WOC at a given time during the Games. Both NWS and KSL forecasters were supplied with full data sets and data interrogation capabilities by adding two AWIPS (Advanced Weather Information and Processing Systems) workstations to the WOC. The additional NWS forecasters were responsible for coordinating these warnings and forecasts with the KSL forecast team as well as forecasters at the Aviation Security Operations Center (ASOC) at Hill AFB. In addition to this key coordination role, the NWS forecasters issued a Hazardous Winter Weather Potential product twice each day that focused on each of the primary transportation corridors connecting the urban Wasatch Front with the mountainous outdoor venues. This product included expected weather, wind, temperature, wind chill,and precipitation type and amount along transportation routes, park and ride lots, and other public areas with large concentrations of people outdoors. Another product included forecasts of weather, wind, temperature, and snowfall amount for the avalanche starting zones that tower over one of the highways leading to the venues. The Utah Department of Transportation used this forecast as part of their avalanche control operations. The NWS forecasters also handled the numerous media inquiries that would have otherwise inundated the WFO staff. In addition to routine dissemination, all NWS products were also inserted into a protected communications system operated by the Utah Olympic Public Safety Command (UOPSC) which was a consortium of local, state, and federal security and safety agencies. The WOC operated an anonymous FTP server that gave all local television media access to the venue forecasts being produced by the KSL forecast team. The NWS also set up and operated AWIPS servers to feed data to the outdoor venues where it was viewed on a system known as FXNET. This PC-based system was designed by NOAA's Forecast Systems Laboratory as a vehicle to allow meteorologists to look at the full AWIPS data set on a lower-cost platform fed by narrow-bandwidth communications. Dedicated communications lines were installed by SLOC between the AWIPS servers at NWS Western Region Headquarters and the outdoor venues. In this way, the KSL venue forecasters had access to all the same data sets as the NWS/KSL forecast teams at the WOC, including the special data sets produced by the University of Utah Meteorology Department and special runs by the National Center for Environmental Prediction of high resolution version of the ETA model that included MesoWest data in the initialization. A communications line and FXNET system were also installed at the ASOC at Hill AFB so that their aviation forecasters would also have access to the same data set as all other weather group forecasters,thereby promoting full coordination of the forecasts. 6. KSL Team Role A team of 13 private sector meteorologists has the responsibility of providing detailed microscale weather forecasts for the five outdoor locations. These forecasts will be primarily used by the athletes, sports managers, team captains, venue managers, Olympic officials and the on-site spectators. Four members will work out of the Weather Operations Center located at the National Weather Service's Forecast Office while seven other members will be at the five mountain venues. The Weather Operations Center has the responsibility to "funnel" the overall weather picture down to a mesoscale level. Each morning a map briefing will be conducted between the venue forecasters and the WOC and ASOC forecasters. Mesoscale forecasts will be sent to each venue by the WOC where the venue forecasters will take the forecast to the microscale level. Briefings will be given routinely 2-3 times a day at the venues but more often if needed. One of the forecasters at the Weather Operations Center will be a Nowcast Specialist, coordinating satellite and radar information with each venue forecaster. The KSL team director and venue manager will give briefings to Olympic and SLOC officials in Salt Lake City at least twice each day and also will provide weather briefings at the Olympic Media Center. The venue forecast team has been assembled since 1999 and has two winters of on-site forecast experience for pre-Olympic and World Cup testing and training events. Two dress rehearsals have also been held. The venue forecasters will have on-site access to the latest weather observations, graphics and model data via a T-1 phone line and a high end PC using FX-Net software. This software was developed by NOAA's Forecast Systems Laboratory at Boulder, Colorado and lets the field forecaster have access to the same data as that in the WOC,ASOC and NWS forecast office. The venue forecasters have been testing the software for the last two winters and report great utility and satisfaction. In addition to using the suite of NWS forecast models the team will use the University of Utah's MM5 model both for the ETA and the AVN. The MM5 develops MOS equations for each of the venues as well as time-height cross sections. All of this data is also available to each forecaster via FX-Net. In addition, the University of Utah is providing volunteer weather aides who will take special weather observations at the venue sites, disseminate data and forecasts, and assist the forecasters as needed. FORECASTS The outdoor venues are all located within 32 miles of downtown Salt Lake City, Utah. While Salt Lake City is on the west side of the Wasatch Mountains all the outdoor venues are on the east side of the mountains. These venues vary in elevation from 9273' at the top of the Men's Downhill at Snowbasin to 5473' at the Cross Country course at Soldier Hollow. There are tremendous variations in the weather and climate at these venues. Snowbasin, for example, averages 77" of snowfall during February at the top of the mountain while Soldier Hollow averages only 19" during the same time. Winds can howl at 60 mph over the ridge tops while at the base of the mountain the winds can be less than 10 mph. Weather forecasts for these venues will routinely be issued three times daily at 6:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m., and 6:00 p.m.. Updates will be issued as often as needed. For the first 13 hours of each forecast the predictions will be hourly, then 3 hourly out to 60 hours. Parameters will include: Sky cover, precipitation type and amount, air temperature, wind direction, wind speed, wind gusts, wind chill, visibility, humidity, and snow temperature. Values will be given in both metric and English. The Salt Lake Organizing Committee will disseminate these and other forecasts via the Internet,commercial TV and radio, the SLOC web page,and the SLOC public radio. STAFF The venue forecast team was assembled by Mark Eubank of KSL television in Salt Lake City. It is made up of 13 meteorologists who either live or have lived in the Salt Lake City area for many years. This team has a combined Utah forecast experience of 247 years. The team comes from six private forecasting companies and from retired National Weather Service meteorologists. The private companies include: WeatherCycles, Inc.; WeatherBank, Inc.; WeatherFacts, Inc.; Meteorological Solutions, Inc.; EM-Assist; and Alta Forecasting. The retired NWS forecasters are: Richard Augulis, former NWS Central Region Director; Edward Carle; John Conlin, Jr.; and Dean Jackman, all from SLC. 7. Univ. of Utah Team Role 7.1 ( input from John Horel) 7.2 Lake-effect snowstorms Lake-effect snowstorms produced by the Great Salt Lake represent a major winter-season forecast challenge for Utah meteorologists and a concern for Winter Games logistics. Such snowstorms frequently produce snowfalls of 10-30 cm along the densely populated Wasatch Front, and have contributed to lowland storm total accumulations of as much as 130 cm (Carpenter 1993; Slemmer 1998; Steenburgh et al. 2000). Installation of the National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) radar at Promontory Point (KMTX) in 1994, and subsequent development and expansion of the MesoWest cooperative networks (see accompanying article by Horel et al. 2002), provided an opportunity for rapid progress in the understanding of Great Salt Lake Effect snowstorms prior to the Olympics. Improved understanding benefits not only Olympic forecasts, but other weather prediction activities over northern Utah, including public forecasts and warnings by the NWS and avalanche prediction by the Utah Department of Transportation and Utah Avalanche Center. Steenburgh et al. (2000), Steenburgh and Onton (2001), and Onton and Steenburgh (2001) described the large-scale characteristics and mesoscale structure of Great Salt Lake-effect snowstorms. These studies have shown that although the Great Salt Lake is relatively small in scale compared to the Great Lakes, and is surrounded by dramatic vertical relief, it is capable of inducing thermally driven circulations and, in some cases, banded precipitation structures (e.g., mid-lake bands) similar to those observed in lake-effect regions of the eastern United States and Canada. They also found that GSL-effect precipitation usually develops at night, is most organized and intense at night and during the early morning hours, and weakens or dissipates during the afternoon. These characteristics appear to be related to the modulation of lake/land breezes and overlake convergence/divergence by the diurnal cycle, and their identification has proven valuable for operational short-range weather prediction. Unique aspects of GSL-effect snowstorms, such as local orographic effects and water vapor flux reduction (compared to fresh water) by lake's hypersaline content, have also been described, with the impact of the latter incorporated into the CIRP real-time mesoscale modeling system. Efforts to improve the prediction of Great Salt Lake-effect snowstorms have also included the installation of MesoWest observing sites over and around the Great Salt Lake, including two sites that provide real-time lake temperature observations (Gunnison and Hat Islands). Prior to the installation of these stations, real-time lake-temperature observations were not available to operational forecasters who typically used the 7-day mean temperature at SLC as an estimate for lake temperature (Carpenter 1993). Derived products for monitoring lake-effect events have also been developed (e.g., Fig. XX). Finally, mesoscale modeling systems at NCEP (the mesoEta) and CIRP (see section 2) have provided forecasters with numerical model guidance capable of producing Great Salt Lake-effect snowstorms, although the skill and utility of these modeling systems has yet to be validated. 7.3 Real-time mesoscale modeling CIRP mesoscale modeling activities for the 2002 Winter Olympics have involved providing twice-daily real-time model guidance to Olympic and NWS forecasters at the Salt Lake and Elko Forecast Offices for more than three years prior to the games. These activities have allowed for validation and hands-on use of the modeling system by Olympic forecasters, the development of MOS equations that provide point-specific forecasts for Olympic venues and other weather sensitive locations, and development of a legacy system that impacts forecasts by NWS and other Intermountain weather forecasters prior to and after the Olympics. The modeling system is based on the non-hydrostatic Penn State/NCAR MM5 version 3 (Grell et al. 1995). Since July 1998, the modeling system (hereafter the CIRP-MM5) has featured an outer domain with 36-km grid spacing that covers the western United States and a nested domain with 12-km grid spacing that covers Utah and portions of adjacent states (Fig. XX). An additional nest, with 4-k grid spacing, was added during summer 2001 and used by Olympic forecasters for several months prior to the Winter Games. Initial and lateral boundary conditions are provided by the NCEP Eta model, although a second simulation is run, but available at a later time, using the NCEP Avn model. Beginning in summer 2001, a terrain-adapted version of the University of Oklahoma ARPS Data Assimilation System (ADAS) was used to incorporate MesoWest observations into the near-surface initial conditions. Prior to September 2000, the CIRP-MM5 was run on an SGI Origin 2000 (using 16 195- Mhz R10000 processors) maintained by the University of Utah Center for High Performance Computing (CHPC). Since September 2000, it has run on a CHPC-maintained Linux cluster. Using 16 1.3-GHz Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Athlon processors, a 36-h forecast with all three domains requires 90 min to complete. As a result, 0000 UTC (1200 UTC) model output is typically available to forecasters by 0400 (1600 UTC). Hourly model output is converted to netCDF and ingested into NWS AWIPS systems at the NWS Western Region Headquarters and Salt Lake City Forecast Office. The latter will be the site of the Olympic Weather Operations Center. Forecasters at outdoor Olympic venues access model output using FX-NET. Model products can also be accessed by Olympic forecasters and the public at http://www.met.utah.edu/jimsteen/mm5). MM5-based model output statistics (MM5-MOS) provide hourly forecasts of temperature, dewpoint, wind speed, and wind direction at the outdoor venues and other weather sensitive locations (Fig. XX). At venues with substantial variability in surface weather conditions, MM5- MOS is available for multiple observing sites. MM5-MOS was used by Olympic forecasters during test events held in winter 2000-2001, and was upgraded during summer 2001 using a three-year period of observations and forecasts. MM5-MOS can be accessed from the web page above. 8. Legacies Legacies are an important part of all activities in the 2002 Winter Games. The weather support group will leave the following legacies: more sensors at the outdoor venues and at other key forecast points; an improved Wasatch area digital data base in the MesoWest data base which is online; improved forecast tools such as the MM5 MOS; and a better understanding of winter weather in complex terrain,especially in the Wasatch mountains, from both research programs such as IPEX and the forecasting experience gained during the Winter Games. These legacies surely will improve winter forecasts in the Salt Lake City area for many years to come. And they will provide a strong basis to extend the findings to other areas of complex terrain. Managers of snow removal crews in mountain areas will have better forecasts on how best to use their crews The general public will also benefit greatly from improved forecasts as a result of the overall weather support effort for the 2002 Winter Games. ___________________________________ John Horel. Professor Phone: (801) 581-7091 Fax: (801) 581-4362 email: jhorel@met.utah.edu Office: 480(483) INSCC NOAA Cooperative Institute for Regional Prediction Department of Meteorology University of Utah 135 South 1460 East Rm 819 Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0110