High-Impact Weather Assessment Toolkit (HIWAT)

The High Impact Weather Assessment Toolkit (HIWAT) uses a mesoscale numerical weather prediction model and the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) constellation of satellites. The toolkit includes a suite of ensemble model forecasts to constrain uncertainties and provide a probabilistic forecast for improved decision-making. The toolkit provides outlooks for lightning strikes, high-impact winds, high rainfall rates, hail damage, and other weather events. The toolkit provides a 54-hour probabilistic forecast over Nepal and Bangladesh along with parts of northeast India (i.e., the Hindu Kush Himalayan region). HIWAT will also support threat assessments, such as thunderstorm intensity, using GPM and impact assessments using Landsat/MODIS land imagery to identify damage scars. The dataset files are available from April 2, 2017, through October 2, 2022, in netCDF-3 format.