Past Severe Weather Events and their Radar Displays

[wisconsinwx]

I thought I would start a topic on past severe weather events, and link to their radar displays. I'll start with one that I remember very well, July 2, 2000. By the looks of the radar in motion, we got three different cells, two severe, and flooding rains from that event. It seems we don't get events this intense very often anymore, but maybe it's just me. Even a ton of convection apparently did not rob the atmosphere of dynamics in this event.

http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/current/mcview.phtml?prod=lotrad&java=script&mode=archive&frames=50&interval=10&year=2000&month=7&day=2&hour=15&minute=0

[wisconsinwx]

I thought I would start a topic on past severe weather events, and link to their radar displays. I'll start with one that I remember very well, July 2, 2000. By the looks of the radar in motion, we got three different cells, two severe, and flooding rains from that event. It seems we don't get events this intense very often anymore, but maybe it's just me. Even a ton of convection apparently did not rob the atmosphere of dynamics in this event.

http://mesonet.agron...our=15&minute=0

My family was in Muskego that evening, just west of the brief tornado touchdown with the first cell, and then later that night remember breaking out the flashlights and candles for the final hurrah, a squall line. Experiences like this is what fascinates me about severe weather.

[Brewers]

Although this isn't my favorite severe weather event, its one that had the most affect on me.

The May 31st 1998 Derecho

http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/current/mcview.phtml?prod=lotrad&java=applet&mode=archive&frames=50&interval=15&year=1998&month=5&day=30&hour=19&minute=30

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/casepages/may30-311998page.htm

From what I remember I woke up to one of our large oak trees falling down and clipping both mine and our neighbors house. The neighbor across the street also had a tree fall on their house, all in all it was the most tree damage I had ever seen and I didnt even experience the strongest winds.

My favorite would have to be October 23 2001 hail storm

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/mkx/document/other/images/oct23-24.gif

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/mkx/document/other/hail_10-23-01-photogallery.php

I have lived on the western shores of Lake Michigan all my life and probably have witnessed only few hail storms.So to not only have hail that was of pretty decent size but to also accumulate was pretty exciting to say the least

[Geos]

Cool topic to start up! I have to dig in my archives to see which events were actually noteworthy around here! I never knew there was archives of radar loops before.

[Brewers]

Cool topic to start up! I have to dig in my archives to see which events were actually noteworthy around here! I never knew there was archives of radar loops before.

The Iowa mesonet site Is a pretty cool site there's a bunch of archived stuff and I think the radar archive goes all back to 1995, I may be wrong.

[wisconsinwx]

The Iowa mesonet site Is a pretty cool site there's a bunch of archived stuff and I think the radar archive goes all back to 1995, I may be wrong.

You're right about the 1995, so this will be fun for me as well.

[aurora]

I'm sure most of you know about this already, but just in case anyone doesn't, here's a great site which explains how to download archived GRLevel3 data.

http://www.lakeeriewx.com/TechnicalReference/GRLevelArchivedImages.html

[Geos]

I remember a severe thunderstorm that came through Kenosha and Lake County IL on the evening of April 19th, 1996. One of the earliest storms that I can remember well - date wise.

http://mesonet.agron...ur=12&minute=30

You can see it formed south of Dubuque and trekked across Rockford towards Lake Michigan. Before 11pm warnings go up, but then they are dropped just before the line reaches the I-94 corridor. A bit mistake! This storm did the most damage in eastern Lake County with 2 tornado touchdowns - one in Zion (F2) and the other outside of Gurnee (F1). Up to 1" hail came down and straight line winds up to 100mph! Did a lot of damage locally to both structures and trees. I remember the hail came down with such force that is sounded a lot larger then it really was. And it covered the ground well enough, it looked like snow! Some of it was still there in the morning!

[Tropical]

7/18/1996 - Oakfield, WI F5 tornado.

Not even a tornado watch issued that day.

http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/current/mcview.phtml?prod=lotrad&java=applet&mode=archive&frames=50&interval=15&year=1996&month=7&day=18&hour=14&minute=0

[Central Illinois]

April 18th and April 19th two Tornadoes (EF1 and a EF3) two nights in a row in Macon County just east of Springfield IL

http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/current/mcview.phtml?prod=lotrad&java=script&mode=archive&frames=50&interval=15&year=1996&month=4&day=18&hour=13&minute=35

http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/current/mcview.phtml?prod=lotrad&java=script&mode=archive&frames=50&interval=15&year=1996&month=4&day=19&hour=13&minute=35

May 28 2008 Numerous rounds of Severe Thunderstorms across Central IL

http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/current/mcview.phtml?prod=lotrad&java=script&mode=archive&frames=50&interval=15&year=2008&month=5&day=30&hour=13&minute=35

[frostfern]

July 2, 2008. Multiple rounds of severe storms over southern lower MI. Also really cool to watch the MCV and bow develop over the SE part of the state.

http://mesonet.agron...ur=12&minute=30

June 21-22, 2010. Fairly prolonged outbreak with supercells and multiple tornadoes in WI and IL. This was followed by straight-line winds and a nighttime F1 tornado associated with a very tight MCV that moved over Kent County in western MI. Best lightning show ever in the Grand Rapids area, at 1:45 AM!

http://mesonet.agron...ur=18&minute=30

[Geos]

Last summer, June 30th. Thunderstorm cells firing over Lake Michigan for several hours caused some exciting weather. The last major cell in this loop - as it is passing Racine, WI sets off a severe thunderstorm warning. A strong outflow boundary impacts the extreme eastern Kenosha and Lake County with winds up to 90mph causing severe tree damage along with some structural damage - especially along the lakefront. The cell continues into Cook County producing strong winds and hail. Had gusts up to 50mph here with minimal tree damage here. Not one drop of rain in this area from that storm!

http://mesonet.agron...ur=16&minute=30

[RCNYILWX]

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=lot&storyid=81136&source=2

I gave a presentation on the June 30, 2011 Lake Michigan supercell with a forecaster from the Milwaukee office at the Great Lakes Operational Meteorology Workshop in Chicago in mid March. The powerpoint is linked on the page I linked to. What an event that was! We put a bunch of cool radar imagery into the presentation.

[Met1985]

http://www.crh.noaa....=81136&source=2

I gave a presentation on the June 30, 2011 Lake Michigan supercell with a forecaster from the Milwaukee office at the Great Lakes Operational Meteorology Workshop in Chicago in mid March. The powerpoint is linked on the page I linked to. What an event that was! We put a bunch of cool radar imagery into the presentation.

Wow cool stuff and thanks for sharing. Great job to! Very interesting.

[Geos]

http://www.crh.noaa....=81136&source=2

I gave a presentation on the June 30, 2011 Lake Michigan supercell with a forecaster from the Milwaukee office at the Great Lakes Operational Meteorology Workshop in Chicago in mid March. The powerpoint is linked on the page I linked to. What an event that was! We put a bunch of cool radar imagery into the presentation.

Nice presentation! This was an odd storm solely based on the lack on precipitation here! Pretty much where I am at by IL-131, was the cut off in the tree damage. Had a few 1" dia. limbs snapped. About 3/4 mile east is where the bigger damage started showing up. Trees fell on garages, houses, and cars. Down by Sheridan Rd it looked like a hurricane went through! I remember a lot of roads on the south side of Zion and east end of Beach Park were closed half the day because of so many powerlines down. I know exactly where that video was shot in Kenosha - out of the street some of the trees uprooted taking chunks of sidewalks with them as they fell!

I won't forget that storm!

[Brewers]

http://www.crh.noaa....=81136&source=2

I gave a presentation on the June 30, 2011 Lake Michigan supercell with a forecaster from the Milwaukee office at the Great Lakes Operational Meteorology Workshop in Chicago in mid March. The powerpoint is linked on the page I linked to. What an event that was! We put a bunch of cool radar imagery into the presentation.

Thanks for the link, this was an interesting event to say the least.

I lost power for about 12hrs. There wasnt too much tree damage where I live but the closer you got to the lake the more damage there was.

[RCNYILWX]

Thanks for the kind words! Glad to share it. I'd highly recommend most of the other presentations on that page as well. Lots of great stuff at the conference. I was lucky enough to be able to be there all 3 days.

Regarding the storm, it really was fascinating how it intensified and became supercellular over the lake with the water temperature at the time in the mid to upper 60s. Also, Chicago was lucky, despite the really damaging hail that fell, that conditions became unfavorable for tornadoes, and it was an elevated supercell once it hit the city. The warning forecaster that night had a TOR polygon ready for the city after the waterspout report from the Coast Guard east of Zion, IL, but was able to go with a SVR once the outflow choked off the low level circulation. Since it was a pretty unexpected event, I'm sure many people in Chicago were caught off guard by the huge hail anyway, so a tornado coming in off the lake potentially could've been a disaster. We remarked at the conference, based off the SPC storm report event, how small an area impacted, but that area happened to have millions of people in it. Hopefully we'll be better able to predict such an event if a similar set-up were to occur again. And of course, the next day, convection continued to fire

The most amazing radar imagery to me were the GR2 Analyst cross sections from KLOT and KMKX and the high elevation scans from the Midway Terminal Doppler radar, which showed the unbelievable hail spike from the golf balls and baseballs coming down on the west side of Chicago. Finally, we took the occasion of playing the video from Kenosha to highlight the importance of people heeding warnings. The men in the video were lucky they weren't killed by the falling trees and limbs! Especially the one that came down right near them toward the end of the video. It's an awesome video, but those guys should've been inside the house.

[Hoosier]

Thanks for the kind words! Glad to share it. I'd highly recommend most of the other presentations on that page as well. Lots of great stuff at the conference. I was lucky enough to be able to be there all 3 days.

Regarding the storm, it really was fascinating how it intensified and became supercellular over the lake with the water temperature at the time in the mid to upper 60s. Also, Chicago was lucky, despite the really damaging hail that fell, that conditions became unfavorable for tornadoes, and it was an elevated supercell once it hit the city. The warning forecaster that night had a TOR polygon ready for the city after the waterspout report from the Coast Guard east of Zion, IL, but was able to go with a SVR once the outflow choked off the low level circulation. Since it was a pretty unexpected event, I'm sure many people in Chicago were caught off guard by the huge hail anyway, so a tornado coming in off the lake potentially could've been a disaster. We remarked at the conference, based off the SPC storm report event, how small an area impacted, but that area happened to have millions of people in it. Hopefully we'll be better able to predict such an event if a similar set-up were to occur again. And of course, the next day, convection continued to fire

The most amazing radar imagery to me were the GR2 Analyst cross sections from KLOT and KMKX and the high elevation scans from the Midway Terminal Doppler radar, which showed the unbelievable hail spike from the golf balls and baseballs coming down on the west side of Chicago. Finally, we took the occasion of playing the video from Kenosha to highlight the importance of people heeding warnings. The men in the video were lucky they weren't killed by the falling trees and limbs! Especially the one that came down right near them toward the end of the video. It's an awesome video, but those guys should've been inside the house.

I remember seeing a picture of what looked like a tornado near the shore in Lake county, but I guess it ended up being a gustnado. But yeah, a possible tornado coming in off the lake - talk about catching people off guard.

[A-L-E-K]

That was hands down one of my favorite storms ever....It put on a world class light show over the lake and then delivered a nice hail pounding.

A Classic.

[kab2791]

July 2, 1997 tornado outbreak across MI. Even an F2 tornado across northern Detroit/Hamtramck.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/dtx/events/RadarLoop.gif

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dtx/?n=july2

[frostfern]

With an offshore flow the cooler lake temperatures probably did more to intensify than weaken that storm. It just strengthened the temperature gradient across the front that was already there, increasing the convergence. A strong inflow across a really short fetch of water doesn't do much to stabilize things.

[frostfern]

The derecho of July 7, 1991 is the worst storm I've ever personally witnessed. I can't for the life of me find any radar imagery of it though. The highest official wind gust was 85 mph, but I have a feeling it was 10 mph higher than that in my immediate vicinity based on there being wooded swaths where large tree trunks were snapped in concentrated numbers. I was only 11 at the time so my memory is a bit foggy. I just remember a sudden whiteout / wall of water that bent all the trees almost to the ground. Neighbors thought it was a tornadoes, but it was probably wet microbursts happening within the broader derecho/bow-echo. One neighbor had part of their roof completely blown off.

May 31, 1998 was stronger and more widespread, but I don't recall it being that bad right overhead. I just remember the hail racket from the initial line the formed ahead of the main bow waking me up. I then woke my parents up and we went to the basement.