FORECASTING HEAVY RAINFALL FROM RAIN CELL MOTION USING RADAR DATA

Very-short-range forecasting of precipitation (a few minutes to less than 1 h ahead and at a spatial scale of less than 1 km) for hydrological purposes is based upon the tracking of the precipitating cloud echoes which appear in radar data and the extrapolation of their detected motion. We have developed a new forecasting method which focuses on tracking high-reflectivity rain cells, which are closely related to convective cells. Comparison of our method with three other methods (persistence, global extrapolation and the SCOUT II.0 method) shows that our method is reliable and generally gives the best relative performance, for each event studied.