Numerical Prediction of the 8 May 2003 Oklahoma City Tornadic Supercell and Embedded Tornado Using ARPS with the Assimilation of WSR-88D Data

Abstract

Abstract The 8 May 2003 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, tornadic supercell is predicted with the Advanced Regional Prediction System (ARPS) model using four nested grids with 9-km, 1-km, 100-m, and 50-m grid spacings. The Oklahoma City Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) radial velocity and reflectivity data are assimilated through the ARPS three-dimensional variational data assimilation (3DVAR) and cloud analysis on the 1-km grid to generate a set of initial conditions that includes a well-analyzed supercell and associated low-level mesocyclone. Additional 1-km experiments show that the use of radial velocity and the proper use of a divergence constraint in the 3DVAR play an important role in the establishment of the low-level mesocyclone during the assimilation and forecast. Assimilating reflectivity data alone failed to predict the mesocyclone intensification. The 100-m grid starts from the interpolated 1-km control initial conditions, while the further nested 50-m grid starts from the 20-min forecast on the 100-m grid. The forecasts on both grids cover the entire period of the observed tornado outbreak and successfully capture the development of tornadic vortices. The intensity of a tornado on the 50-m grid reaches the high end of category 3 on the Fujita scale (F3), while the corresponding simulated tornado on the 100-m grid reaches F2 intensity. The timing of the tornadogenesis on both grids agrees with the observations very well, although the predicted tornado was slightly weaker and somewhat shorter lived. The predicted tornado track parallels the observed damage track although it is displaced northward by about 8 km. The predicted tornado vortices have realistic structures similar to those documented in previous theoretical, idealized modeling and some observational studies. The prediction of an observed tornado in a supercell with a similar degree of realism has not been achieved before.