Abstract
Over 33,000 flash flood events recorded by the NOAA National Weather
Service (NWS) between 2006 and 2017, after polygon warnings replaced
county-wide warnings, are analyzed in terms of NEXRAD (Next Generation
Weather Radar) radar coverage in two ways. Events are binned in two
large categories according to whether the starting point of an event
falls inside or outside the range implied by the 6 kft AGL
bottom-of-the-beam altitude, accounting for beam clutter and beam
obstructions. Separately, events are classified according to the
percentage surface area covered under the 6 kft beam height for each NWS
Weather Forecast Office (WFO) or state. Emphasis is on unwarned events
associated with fatalities, injuries and property damage and their
relationship to WFO-area NEXRAD coverage. Significant property damage is
defined in terms of the mean damage per event of about $411k. There is
parity in the ratio of events warned or unwarned inside the
inside/outside distance bins except for injury-event ratios. The linear
fits to the traditional metrics of warned ratio (WR), false alarm ratio
(FAR) and critical success index (CSI) are statistically significant and
improve with more radar coverage. A stronger sensitivity is found for
the WR as a function of the total number of events. New metrics are also
evaluated, such as the mean flash flood partial event warning (PEW) and
the ratios of unwarned to all events per WFO have statistically
significant variations with radar coverage, improving with higher
coverage. This is unlike the linear fits to the ratios of unwarned
fatal-to-all-fatal events, which is marginally significant. Unwarned
fatal-to-all-fatal, unwarned injury-to-all events and unwarned
significant damage-to-nonzero damage event ratios are both not
statistically significant to the 95% level of significance. The large
scatter in the data results in very low coefficients of determination,
and is interpreted to mean that radar coverage alone is not necessarily
the primary driver though there is sensitivity to variations in such
coverage.