lpfs 2009 scope of work rick luettich jason fleming robert weaver february 19, 2009

LPFS 2009 Scope of Work

Rick Luettich

Jason Fleming

Robert Weaver

February 19, 2009

LPFS Overall Goals

To provide reliable, timely, accurate guidance for

storm surge in southern Louisiana To provide accurate estimates of high water marks

and areas of inundation immediately after landfall

LPFS Overview

Automated software system for storm surge guidance in SE LA; written around ADCIRC

Uses NHC Official Forecast Generates 5-storm ensemble (consensus, 20%

stronger, 20% slower, veer right, veer left) Post process results for south shore of Lake

Pontchartrain and West Bank (Harvey Canal) Autogenerated output includes hydrograph and

wind speed plots

2008 Season Retrospective

Hurricane Zeus: Preseason Drill

Created and ran 20

forecast tracks Made Google maps of

each Provided hydrographs

of LP and West Bank Summary spreadsheet

for coastal parishes

Hurricane Zeus: Preseason Drill

Type and scope of output broader than anticipated Sapphire (ERDC supercomputer) reboot Drill held 13 May; COE pleased with the output

we provided (too much information in hindsight) Hurricane Zeus drill was picked up by media

Humid City blog: “Corps Cutting it Close at

Floodgates This Year” Baton Rouge Advocate “Corps Tests System of Storm

Protection”

Hurricane Dolly

Hurricane Dolly

7/20: Dolly formed in Western Caribbean; Corps'

internal forecaster Bill Frederick indicated Dolly

not a threat to MVD; LPFS activated at UNC 7/21: Corps Directive: Only activate LPFS on

Sapphire when Frederick forecasts MVD impacts 7/21: Dolly made 1st landfall in Mexico; we were

added to Frederick's forecast email list

Hurricane Dolly

7/22 Frederick forecast MVD impacts of 3 ft surge

west of Morgan City (outside target area) Preparations made to run on Sapphire Final landfall 7/23 on South Padre (TX) as Cat 1 LPFS ran at UNC from 7/20 to 7/24 and reliably

produced surge guidance for 15 advisories (no

impact predicted for target area)

Tropical Storm Edouard

Tropical Storm Edouard, 3 August


TS Edouard forms just off the coast of LA We activated at ERDC (in standard queue) with

backup at UNC (Lake Pontchartrain only) We request dedicated queue on ERDC machine ERDC computer experienced power fluctuations

causing network failure Bill Fredericks forecasts 2-3 ft surge in coastal LA


Request for dedicated queue on ERDC computer

temporarily denied pending higher authorization;

subsequently granted LPFS ran from 8/3 to 8/4, producing surge

guidance for 5 advisories at ERDC and 8 at UNC;

worst case predictions were ½ foot surge, winds 8-

10 kts TS Edouard made landfall near Port Aurthur, TX

Tropical Storm Fay

Tropical Storm Fay, 15 August


TS Fay forms over Dominican Republic LPFS activated on ERDC computer, as well as

LONI computer as backup, and UNC computer (as

tertiary backup) Dedicated queue requested on ERDC computer,

and granted LPFS running on all platforms – no significant

impact predicted

Tropical Storm Fay

8/17: Bill Fredericks forecasted no MVD impacts,

will continue to monitor; Captain Royston

indicated no further updates are necessary 8/18: Request made for surge guidance based on

the latest track from the GFS model instead of

official forecast; 1st landfall in Florida Keys 8/18: We begin the “ALT Fay” series of guidance

using manually developed forecast tracks based on

guidance from meteorological models

Tropical Storm Fay

GFS based guidance:

no significant impact 8/19 2nd landfall near

Naples FL ERDC opens up

additional computer 8/20 Surge guidance

requested based on

BAMM model instead

Tropical Storm Fay, Met Guidance

Tropical Storm ALT Fay, 20 August

Tropical Storm Fay, August 21

3rd Landfall, near Daytona Guidance based on BAMM model indicated 3-6 ft

surge along eastern coast of SE LA Guidance requested for NGFDL track with fwd

speed of 8 mph and 80 kt max wind; results

indicated 5 ft surge on south shore of Lake Pont. Sapphire (ERDC machine) down for emergency

maintenance; UNC machine down all September


Sapphire rebooted, removed from service for

emergency maintenance, then rebooted again Request made for guidance based on 6 day run of

NGFDL using 60kt and 80kt max winds Lake Pontchartrain runs available quickly, West

Bank runs require much more time Contour plot of surge guidance used to estimate

surge in IHNC Fay re-emerged into Gulf


4th (and final) Landfall near Carrabelle on FL

panhandle (dissipated inland following day) Last sets of official results indicated no significant

impacts in target area LPFS ran from 8/15 to 8/23 and provided guidance

for 19 advisories from ERDC; 35 advisories at

UNC (Lake Pontchartrain only) Also produced custom guidance for 5 tracks from

3 advisories based on met. model guidance

Hurricane Gustav

Hurricane Gustav, 25 August

Formed west of the

Windward islands and

rapidly strengthened

from disturbance to

hurricane Bill Frederick issued

wait-and-see forecast

Hurricane Gustav 26 August

We request LPFS Activation at ERDC at 0800;

EOC elects to hold off dedicated queue request Bill Frederick forecast is northern Gulf coast We make request for increase from 160 CPUs to

640 CPUs on Sapphire to speed West Bank results 2100 Official request made to activate LPFS on

Sapphire with “more power”

Hurricane Gustav 27 August Media and private citizens requests for

information made directly to LPFS Team at UNC,

appealing for release of results All inquiries forwarded to COE; LPFS results to

be made available only to Heath Jones and Nancy LPFS Activated on Sapphire using standard queue,

dedicated queue access scheduled to begin on 28th Need for 640 CPUs reiterated to MSRC MSRC requests justification for more CPUs;

eventually grants 640 CPUs for Gustav only


LPFS running in dedicated queue on 640

processors Contour plots of High Water Marks in Google

Earth format provided in addition to hydrographs Clarification requested for storm parameters:

pressure, windspeed, Rmax, lat/lon at landfall, etc Ensemble redefined for custom Rmax and custom

tracks (e.g., veer east by 1 degree only)

Hurricane Gustav, 29 August


3 of 4 LPFS storm tracks failed on Sapphire for

the 5am EDT advisory cycle LPFS guidance indicates 4ft/40kts in Lake

Pontchartrain and 10 ft/45kts on West Bank Bill Frederick issues estimates of 14-20ft on

eastern shore and 4-9 ft on northern Gulf coast


Overnight advisory cycle failed on Sapphire (node

failure) Additional custom adjustments to Rmax for

ensemble storms were requested 5 additional output stations were requested beyond

the original 2 (Lake Pontchartrain and Harvey

Canal) for a total of 7 Had to rewrite backend post processing code


Run failures on Sapphire became more and more

frequent ADCIRC runs performed on LONI hardware used

to advise Corps LONI runs used much larger grid, were available

much less frequently

Hurricane Gustav, Landfall

Shape file of high water marks were requested,

looking at hindcast First time LPFS results have been been used by

emergency responders after landfall LPFS ran from 8/25 to 9/2 and produced guidance

from 11 advisories with 2 output stations, and 3

advisories for expanded list of 7 output stations

September 2nd

Hurricane Ike

Hurricane Ike

Formed September 1 List of output stations expanded to 23 Additional outputs of wind model requested at 0,

3, 6, and 9 hours Request made for adjustments to hydrographs and

contour plots 640 CPUs requested on Sapphire and Jade

(approved)

Hurricane Ike

Problems continued on Sapphire Post processing code for 23 stations pushed the

limits of our plotting code Ike trended west, out of the target zone for the

LPFS grid Full sl15 grid was run on LONI to provide output

for whole LA coast Outputs consisted of contour plots of High Water

Marks

2008 Season Summary

Very active season for the Gulf Broadest participation in the surge guidance

process to date Tremendous effort by all involved to overcome

challenges and provide best guidance New technical requirements evolved as the season

went on

2009 Changes and Enhancements

Reliability

Flexibility

Coverage

Timeliness

Accuracy

Reliability

Limit the number of in-season changes any change may introduce/reveal bugs (incl. hardware) in-season changes make rigorous testing more difficult LPFS2009 will be more flexible reducing the need for

late changes Implement structured testing

run forecasts in test mode test mode carefully designed to cover all possible

situations

Flexibility

2008 experience indicated the need for swappable bathymetry input files (mesh) reconfigurable storm ensemble seamless modification of station output

Changes will be made such that ADCIRC input files easily swapped number and character of storms in ensemble may be

dynamically modified, advisory-by-advisory number and location of output stations dynamically

modifiable

Coverage

Geography Beyond Lake Pontchartrain, beyond West Bank 2009 will fully cover Louisiana coastline

Time span Early stages

What if only model guidance is available? 2009 will cover pre-official forecast period

Late stages After storm has made landfall, hurricane forecast uncertainty

disappears, surge guidance accuracy is maximized 2009 will advise after landfall for emergency responders

Timeliness

Fast turnaround of results will require greater

processing power 640 CPUs on sapphire produced a result in 1 hour

(per storm in the ensemble) Therefore, 3-storm ensemble will require 1920

CPUs to produce results in one hour We will request a dedicated reservation of 1920

CPUs for the 2009 season

Accuracy

Pleased with the accuracy of our surge guidance in

2008 season Detailed comparison of measured data and surge

guidance is still ongoing Enhanced accuracy in 2009 season via

use of most up-to-date bathymetry transition to asymmetric vortex wind model

Conclusions

Broad participation has provided a tremendous boost to the guidance process

The efforts, frustrations and successes of the 2008 season have informed the development of LPFS

The 2009 season will build on past experiences to provide the most reliable, timely and accurate surge guidance available

lpfs 2009 scope of work rick luettich jason fleming robert weaver february 19, 2009

Documents

storm surge guidance

augusttropical storm

augusttropical storm

storm ensemble consensus

mvd lpfs

unc computer

produced surge guidance

foot surge