Hoosier Posted May 30, 2011 Author Share Posted May 30, 2011 I may have mentioned this before but I have a real oddity to share about hail. I've had golfball or larger hail in my backyard ~4 times and every other event except 1 has been pea or small marble size. In other words, I have never seen an event where the max hail size was between penny and ping pong. It's been many years since I've had severe criteria hail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 I grew up in one of those supposed screw zones in Rhode Island. Storms always seemed to split around my home town. Well one, it was Rhode Island, not exactly a severe weather hotbed. And two, storms had to cross Narragansett Bay (a very stable influence) to reach my town. The storm split likely came from high CAPE over the areas northwest of Providence, and the relative maximum over a large island to the southwest of town in the middle of the bay. Yet one week before I moved to Iowa, I snapped the picture in my avatar from my town beach. Twenty years of feeling left out of the party were taken care of in those few minutes. Yeah I am sure that someone thought that Tuscaloosa or Yazoo City were screwzones before too, but all it takes is one event to change that in an instant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 I may have mentioned this before but I have a real oddity to share about hail. I've had golfball or larger hail in my backyard ~4 times and every other event except 1 has been pea or small marble size. In other words, I have never seen an event where the max hail size was between penny and ping pong. It's been many years since I've had severe criteria hail. Yeah that's one thing that I think SEMI does miss out on, is large hail, mostly due to the fact the majority of our convection comes from linear complexes as compared to say discrete storms. Its not impossible to have large hail though, last year North of me in Macomb County we had a supercell move W-E and it dropped baseball sized hail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyclone77 Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 I may have mentioned this before but I have a real oddity to share about hail. I've had golfball or larger hail in my backyard ~4 times and every other event except 1 has been pea or small marble size. In other words, I have never seen an event where the max hail size was between penny and ping pong. It's been many years since I've had severe criteria hail. Haha, that is pretty interesting. The largest hail I've ever had hit where I was living was ping-pong sized back in '98 when I was living on the east side of the QC. Most other storms have been marble sized or less. This year I had quarter size hail a few times though. The softball size hail we saw back on June 7 2009 along the Missouri River in northeast Kansas was enough to make me never want to see large hail again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoosier Posted May 30, 2011 Author Share Posted May 30, 2011 Yeah that's one thing that I think SEMI does miss out on, is large hail, mostly due to the fact the majority of our convection comes from linear complexes as compared to say discrete storms. Its not impossible to have large hail though, last year North of me in Macomb County we had a supercell move W-E and it dropped baseball sized hail. I don't know about your area but there's been quite an increase in hail reports around here in recent years (probably in large part due to more spotters/reporting). I tend to think the really large stuff (say baseball or larger) occurs somewhat more often than hail climatology may suggest, but the Plains and areas like eastern Colorado are still king. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 I don't know about your area but there's been quite an increase in hail reports around here in recent years (probably in large part due to more spotters/reporting). I tend to think the really large stuff (say baseball or larger) occurs somewhat more often than hail climatology may suggest, but the Plains and areas like eastern Colorado are still king. Oh yeah I agree about the High Plains being king, although I think the increase in technology (mobile radars) and increases in spotter coverage has led to the increase in larger hail reports for many areas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoosier Posted May 30, 2011 Author Share Posted May 30, 2011 Oh yeah I agree about the High Plains being king, although I think the increase in technology (mobile radars) and increases in spotter coverage has led to the increase in larger hail reports for many areas. Threadjack alert I looked at reports of baseball size hail or larger for the state of Indiana: 1950-1979: 18 days/22 reports 1980-2009: 41 days/60 reports the past decade is comparable to the entire 30 year period from 1950-1979: 2000-2009: 16 days/26 reports I'm sure these numbers are embarrassing compared to states farther west but it shows a clear increase in reporting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stebo Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 Threadjack alert I looked at reports of baseball size hail or larger for the state of Indiana: 1950-1979: 18 days/22 reports 1980-2009: 41 days/60 reports the past decade is comparable to the entire 30 year period from 1950-1979: 2000-2009: 16 days/26 reports I'm sure these numbers are embarrassing compared to states farther west but it shows a clear increase in reporting. Yeah leads me to believe the thought of more chasers/better technology is helping cause this increase, not to mention urban sprawl has a hand in it too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SEMIweather Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 Yeah that's one thing that I think SEMI does miss out on, is large hail, mostly due to the fact the majority of our convection comes from linear complexes as compared to say discrete storms. Its not impossible to have large hail though, last year North of me in Macomb County we had a supercell move W-E and it dropped baseball sized hail. Yeah I can agree with this, and it's probably why I've become such a hail junkie..."you always want what you can't have" lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hm8 Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 ^I missed that storm last April that moved through Oakland and dropped golf balls... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chicago WX Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 I will probably never see hail this big again. Or should I say hopefully not. State: Illinois Map of Counties County: Kankakee Event: Hail Begin Date: 08 Jun 1981, 1615 CST Begin Location: Not Known Begin LAT/LON: 41°07'N / 87°51'W End Location: Not Known Magnitude: 4.00 inches Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoosier Posted May 30, 2011 Author Share Posted May 30, 2011 I will probably never see hail this big again. Or should I say hopefully not. State: Illinois Map of Counties County: Kankakee Event: Hail Begin Date: 08 Jun 1981, 1615 CST Begin Location: Not Known Begin LAT/LON: 41°07'N / 87°51'W End Location: Not Known Magnitude: 4.00 inches We had a shot last year if that cell in my avatar wouldn't have weakened. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SEMIweather Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 We had a shot last year if that cell in my avatar wouldn't have weakened. Is that the one that produced softball sized hail and 100 mph winds? Sick storm if that's the one... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoosier Posted May 30, 2011 Author Share Posted May 30, 2011 Is that the one that produced softball sized hail and 100 mph winds? Sick storm if that's the one... yeah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
on_wx Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 How about screw zones where strong tornadoes seem to strike often? Moore, OK Tuscaloosa, AL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoosier Posted May 30, 2011 Author Share Posted May 30, 2011 How about screw zones where strong tornadoes seem to strike often? Moore, OK Tuscaloosa, AL Interesting topic. Here is a paper regarding strong, long track tornadoes specifically: http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/81872.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 After watching this for several years and living in different parts of the country, I have a couple of useful things to say about screw zones. There seems to be a hot spot at northwest Indiana and Chicago. I suppose you could say there are screw zones in areas that are not the hot spots. There are areas that are more likely to see storm initiation in the daytime. Where I used to live in Ohio, it seems like initiation of storms would always occur in the day in Indiana and Illinois, and then squall lines would travel and then hit us at night. Then again, IL/IN gets rain/severe weather at night, too. Also, there is a tendency for supercells to split, and a tendency for squall lines to split north and south. The splitting of squall lines sometimes has left me frustrated. I said to myself, "can't it even rain more than two raindrops???" right after a huge squall was heading toward me in Ohio. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tornadotony Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 After watching this for several years and living in different parts of the country, I have a couple of useful things to say about screw zones. There seems to be a hot spot at northwest Indiana and Chicago. I suppose you could say there are screw zones in areas that are not the hot spots. There are areas that are more likely to see storm initiation more often in the daytime. Where I used to live in Ohio, it seems like initiation of storms would always occur in the day in Indiana and Illinois, and then squall lines would travel and then hit us at night. Then again, IL/IN gets rain/severe weather at night, too. Some of the local research I've done, especially in the strong tornado arena, supports the idea of the NWI/Chicago hotspot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinook Posted May 30, 2011 Share Posted May 30, 2011 Well, I used to think Toledo was a screw zone. Then, June 5, 2010, an EF3 ripped through just a few miles from where I used to live. There was a tornado west of Toledo at my favorite park. I saw the downed trees at that park in NOVEMBER 2010 when I visited my folks. There was also Walbridge/Moline (EF3) which wrapped cars around trees and knocked down part of a 2-story brick high school building. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoosier Posted May 30, 2011 Author Share Posted May 30, 2011 Some of the local research I've done, especially in the strong tornado arena, supports the idea of the NWI/Chicago hotspot. And it makes sense when you think about how that area is positioned with respect to the lake. I examined Cook county a while back and found some patterns within the county. There is increased tornadic activity in the northern third and southern third with less activity in the central third of the county. There's actually a very pronounced lack of weaker tornadoes in that area which happens to coincide with Chicago. I think the lake killing some setups in combination with the extremely urbanized nature of Chicago proper could be contributing to that corridor of less activity, but some of it is probably luck. I'm always hesitant to trot out the "too urban" argument because I think it's dangerous and mostly false but Chicago is about as urban as it gets and I could see how it could make it harder for vortex formation in marginal setups (which there are many). Of course the tornadoes that have occurred in that central third have been pretty damaging since there is so much to hit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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