The Operational Use of a High Speed Interactive Radar Data Processing System - RDPS Part II : Application in Real Time Severe Thunderstorm Detection and Forecasting

A prototype Radar Data Processing System has been in use at the Centre Meteorologique du Quebec (CMQ) during the summer of 1988. This system allows real-time reception and processing of full volumetric data from the McGill University radar at 5 minutes intervals for use by operational meteorologists, thus providing them with a powerful tool to analyse and display radar data in multiple ways and to produce short-term forecasts. The capabilities of the system allow an in-depth determination of thunderstorm structure and evolution, resulting in a better diagnosis of thunderstorm severity in an operational setting. Users are able to study horizontal and vertical cross-sections (as well as many other products) through a thunderstorm in real time in order to determine whether or not typical features associated with severe thunderstorms are present. The system also allows fast animation of radar echoes, enabling the easy recognition of typical severe storm behaviour such as storm propagation to the right of the mean propagation direction and new cell growth in a multicellular complex.