This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is directed at developing a new technique to model the area affected by strong thunderstorm winds using the newly available NEXt generation weather RADar (NEXRAD) Doppler data. Other than hurricanes and tornadoes, thunderstorms are the largest producer of direct wind damage in the United States and dominate the extreme wind climate over much of the country. These locally intense storms have complicated structures with significant changes in the surface wind speeds and directions within the storms. As the storms move across the country they can cause wide spread damage. The current state of the art in the climatological modeling of the storms involves the use of the relatively sparse network of surface anemometer records of wind speeds produced by thunderstorms. This sparse network of wind speed measurements does not allow modeling of the total area affected by the damaging winds. The research will seek to model the thunderstorm gust fronts and regions of intense local winds using separate and distinct methods. The approach will couple surface level anemometer measurements and NEXRAD data to develop a technique to estimate surface level wind speeds given NEXRAD data. The approach described in the proposal is unique, and if successful will yield the only model able to estimate the total wind induced damage produced by these storms. The potential areas of commercialization for the technology are primarily in the insurance and power utility industries. Both of these industries are interested in risk management and improved ways for estimating and reducing potential damages. The integration of the thunderstorm model with wind damage models already developed by the firm could lead to unique products of interest to these industries as well as others.
