Maxwell Air Force Base Thunderstorm Study.

This technical note documents a study AFCCC completed to correlate various thunderstorm indices to the occurrencenon-occurrence of thunderstorms at Maxwell AFB, Ala. Eleven thunderstorm indices were calculated using unmodified and modified Centerville, Ala., upper-air data. Discriminate analysis techniques were used to determine statistically which, if any, of the indices could be used as predictors for occurrencenon-occurrence of thunderstorms. The discriminate functions were verified against an independent data set consisting of upper-air data from Centerville, Ala., and surface data from both Maxwell AFB, Ala., and Montgomery, Ala. Six different sets of classification tables based on probability thresholds were produced from the output of the discriminate functions. The regression equations developed are useful if they are used as a tool-not as a forecast. The unbinned modified sounding regression has high skill scores, a low false alarm rate, a low percent missed, and a high probability of detection.