Snowfall Rate Page for Local NWS Office

Figure: S-NPP SFR during the first accumulating snow of the 2021-2022 winter season in the central Appalachian counties.
Figure: S-NPP SFR during the first accumulating snow of the 2021-2022 winter season in the central Appalachian counties.

The ESSIC/CISESS snowfall rate (SFR) team, Huan Meng, Jun Dong, and Yongzhen Fan, set up a webpage for the NWS Sterling, VA Weather Forecast Office (Office Call Sign: LWX) at the request of Luis Rosa, a senior forecaster from the office. The page is set for the LWX county warning area (CWA). Currently, the page has the operational SFR images from five satellites but will be expanded to include the experimental SFR from four other satellites. The SFR product is produced at CISESS from direct broadcast data retrieved from the University of Wisconsin. The product latency ranges from 12-25 min depending on the satellite.

 

Meng is a physical scientist with NOAA/NESDIS Center for Satellite Applications and Research, Satellite Climate Studies Branch, and a Visiting Research Scientist at ESSIC.  She received a MS in Physical Oceanography from Florida State University in 1993, and a PhD in Hydrology from Colorado State University in 2004. She has been working in the field of satellite remote sensing since 1999. Her current research focuses on snowfall retrieval using passive microwave measurements from polar-orbiting satellites.

 

Dong is a faculty specialist at Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) and Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies (CISESS)-Marylandof, University of Maryland. He received his Ph.D degree in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics from Florida State University in 2012. He has over fifteen years of experience in Methodology, Physical Oceanography and Remote Sensing. At ESSIC/CISESS, his work focuses on microwave satellite snowfall rate (SFR) retrieval algorithm development, implementation and real-time SFR product maintenance.

 

Fan is an assistant research scientist with the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) and the Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies (CISESS)-Maryland, University of Maryland (UMD), College Park. He received his B.E. in Electronic Science from Xi’an University of Science and Technology, China and his M.E. in Electrical Engineering and Ph.D. in Physics from Stevens Institute of Technology. His research interests include radiative transfer theory, machine learning, satellite remote sensing of ocean color, aerosols and snowfall.

 

Click here to access the new webpage.