24 hour forecast from wt360

In light of the softer market regarding futures prices, extreme heat across the corn belt this week should add some strength to the sector with widespread warmer temperatures and a drier pattern in the southern belt for several days potentially limiting yields.  With season to date weather now figured into our models coupled with the forecast weather through harvest, the WTI outlook for US corn (18 major states) is for 2011 yield numbers to come in just above trend line (7 year) yields.  We also feel that USDA crop numbers will start to reflect these limitations on the crop. 

this morning’s September chart below

….strongly recommend Economic and Societal Impacts of Tornadoes just released by Simmons & Sutter, and pulled a few points from Chapter 4 of the book.

Warnings with lead times up to 15 minutes reduce both fatalities and injuries, but we find no additional reduction of casualties for lead times beyond 15 minutes. We also find that tornado watches have no effect directly on casualties, although they do contribute as part of the warning process to saving lives.Together these findings suggest that residents do not appear to need lengthy advance notice to protect themselves from tornadoes, at least given the traditional recommended protective actions.

We also found evidence of a false alarm effect, as a higher recent, local false alarm ratio significantly increases fatalities and injuries. [...] We have not precisely quantified the warning-false alarm casualty trade-off, but simply knowing that the trade-off exists is significant.

We are now at a point where we can examine the effectiveness of the warnings beyond simple measures like lead time. Future research can consider the role of time of day in the warning process. Nocturnal tornadoes are much more dangerous, even when controlling for warnings and false alarms, presumably because residents are less likely to receive warnings for these storms.
Pg 170-171…

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From:    Societal Impacts Discussion Board
Subject:     [reply] Re: Storms Across the Southern US

This tornado outbreak seems to have struck a chord with many of us interested in the weather/society interface. There are seemingly endless questions that are being asked and that warrant finding answers.

Is there interest among the WAS*IS community to create some sort of coordinated weather/society research effort to study this event? The NWS will almost certainly perform a service assessment, which will reveal a lot, but might only scratch the surface of what happened. I have students who would also be quite interested in contributing to such an effort in some way or another. And it seems like if people are planning to investigate this event anyway, it might help to share ideas and possible approaches. Thoughts?

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As a Board Member of the AMS Board on Societal Impacts, I will be involved with organizing a session (along with Tanja Fransen of the NWS) on extreme weather events and their subsequent impacts for the 2012 AMS meeting.  In the 2011 meeting this past January, the Impacts session focused on the Russian heatwave and flooding in Pakistan.  Speakers discussed the physical causes for the events, as well as the economic effects across the affected regions.  Similarly, I expect that this recent outbreak of severe weather in the southern US may be a suitable platform for discussions at the 2012 meeting.  The coming days and weeks will provide a better assessment of the human and physical toll that this severe weather event left behind, and I am soliciting suggestions for topics and/or speakers who will be studying this event with something that is scientifically useful to contribute to the attendees.

Please contact me via email if you have suggestions or wish to discuss.

At Fargo, major flood stage for the Red River is 30.0 feet.  Shown below is the Weather Service forecast for river levels over the next 7 days, followed by the WeatherTrends360 forecast:

Looking ahead, while the cold weather in Europe is supporting activity in London markets, the domestic picture looks less threatening.  The NAO and AO are both trending towards positive phase, and the extended range Weather Trends outlook is anticipating a pattern that should produce less heating demand in January as compared to last year (see table).  There will still be cold (it is winter) but high stockpiles coupled with lower y/y demand will limit upside risk.