2000
Baron SCITs

National Weather Service SCITs (Storm Cell Identification and Tracking) are designed to identify the storm centroid, and provide the ability to identify the same storm in the next 5-minute volume scan. As opposed to the spinning circles, the SCITs are the arrows.

Use of the centroid location is helpful, so long as the meteorologist bears in mind that the SCIT location is always 5 minutes old to begin with. Additionally, the SCIT does not necessarily represent the exact location of hail, and rarely the location of gate-to-gate shear.

Storm tracking via use of the Mesocyclone or TVS SCITs is subject to substantial error according to the weather service's own research, yet this remains the only method of storm tracking other than the Baron algorithms.

At Baron Services, we process and provide two types of proprietary SCITs: Severe Storms and Shear. Both are processed within the first two cuts of the atmosphere, so they're available almost five minutes earlier than NWS attributes. With Baron SCITs, storm direction and speed are determined by movement of the feature, rather than the centroid, which improves the accuracy.

Severe Storm SCITs focus on finding hail cores. Shear SCITs, meanwhile, are focused on identifying lowest-level gate-to-gate shear. They appear when there is sufficient depth and longevity to suspect actual tornadic development. They do not appear without defined vertical development. By comparison, the circular shear markers only appear when there is defined gate-to-gate shear.

Tracking storms, identifying communities at risk and providing an estimated time of arrival based on Baron's Severe and Shear SCITs continues to be a significant tool for advising viewers of impending threat.

Baron SCIT technology, at work during the devastating Oklahoma City tornado of May 3, 1999. The accuracy of Baron SCIT technology is evident when paired with an automated storm track and an overlay of the tornado's movement and strength, as determined by the NWS damage survey.

Highly accurate ETAs and other data are accessible via Baron SCITs.