CHASING thunderstorms just got easier. A new system for predicting their path will soon be in use in Australia, after bettering existing methods of forecasting.
The technique, called THESPA, was developed by at the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research and it can produce “nowcasts” for up to 1 hour ahead. It borrows an idea that is used to predict the movements of cyclones, which are far bigger. THESPA assigns a strike probability – the chance of a thunderstorm hitting a location in a given time period.
Existing methods merely predict a “threat area” in which a storm…
