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Aug 8th-10th Severe Wx


free_man

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The Euro definitely seems to deepen that low with falling pressures across western New England/eastern New York as the front slides east. That should keep winds backed but not sure if the strong LLJ response on the GFS/NAM is overdone or not.

 

Obviously convective mode and amount of destabilization are still up in the air. 

 

Yeah winds still mostly S if not SSE. 

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How accurate does the Euro tend to be with severe events compared to the NAM and GFS?

 

Well unlike snowstorms, I feel like models usually aren't terribly far off when it comes to severe wx. You just have to watch out for possible convective feedback and overzealous LLJ as a result. However, all models strengthen the jet during the day as a weak low develops in ern NY. It's one of those things where the models all show good shear so you have multi model support for that, as well as low CAPE. It's up to the forecaster to take it from there. If you look deeper, low level CAPE in the lower 10,000ft or so is decent for stretching any updrafts. It doesn't mean tornado, but it's a signal for potential. I think shear is there, just a matter of how much we can destabilize. It might be one of those deals where a few breaks of sun and brightening gets temps to near 80 and that's all you need. Or, it could be a complete dud. I'm not one to get excited from these, but the shear caught my eye...that's darn good.

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Well unlike snowstorms, I feel like models usually aren't terribly far off when it comes to severe wx. You just have to watch out for possible convective feedback and overzealous LLJ as a result. However, all models strengthen the jet during the day as a weak low develops in ern NY. It's one of those things where the models all show good shear so you have multi model support for that, as well as low CAPE. It's up to the forecaster to take it from there. If you look deeper, low level CAPE in the lower 10,000ft or so is decent for stretching any updrafts. It doesn't mean tornado, but it's a signal for potential. I think shear is there, just a matter of how much we can destabilize. It might be one of those deals where a few breaks of sun and brightening gets temps to near 80 and that's all you need. Or, it could be a complete dud. I'm not one to get excited from these, but the shear caught my eye...that's darn good.

 

Yeah it looks like it will be a classic low CAPE/high shear setup. There looks like a fair amount of CAPE in the 0-3km layer... when coupled with low LCLs and high shear that's an intriguing setup.

Davies 2006 is a good read. 

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It actually could translate east. It's important to keep expectations in check...I would get excited for an outbreak....but there are very notable ingredients. Shear is everything in these setups.

Well i dont even entertain the thought of anything inside 128, not sure if i have ever heard of ONE occuring. But s nh sw to merr valley and sw sure.

Btv wrf really crushes se ny w ct s vt/wma over to south central nh and ne toward limerick maine

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Let's compare some forecasts vs. previous analyses.
(Most of the forecasts are text based, but some values had to be approximated)
 

STP  SCP MLCAPE EBS 3km SRH ML LCL Index

3.01 22  2500   48    400    1000  4.22  Springfield, Mass. June 1st, 2011

1    3.2 396   38.4   411     452  3.25  18z NAM: BAF, 18z Friday

0.21 3.2 500    40    200     500  2.79  Stamford, Conn. July 1st, 2013

0.7  2.2 800    30    180     350  2.77  18z GFS: CEF: 18z Friday

0.13 3.1 1200   25    110     600  2.43  Coventry, Conn. July 10th, 2013

 

For tomorrow, the GFS/NAM agree that the best overlap between CAPE and helicity/wind shear would fall near the CT/MA border.

 

It would appear to me that a GFS solution is comparable to the previous two tornado "days" that southern New England has seen this year. The NAM on the other hand is above that and ranks fairly high. The last time a tornado case had a higher value was the mini-outbreak of July 31st, 2009. Two tornadoes in southwestern Connecticut had indicies of 3.81 and 3.83.

 

The index is based off of a 0 to 5 scale. Based on my research of previous tornado events in SNE:

<1 = Very Low probability of tornadoes

<2 = Low probability

2.5 = Mean value for climo tornado cases

<3 = Moderate

<4 = High

<5 = Very High

5+ = Historic (a 5.0 would mean every parameter is maxed out based on climo tornado cases)

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Quincy and the severe wx parameters lol 

 

A couple things though... I'm not sure I'd lump all tornado days together. Some occur from very different synoptic setups. The "numbers" you'd expect from a classic supercell high CAPE/high shear day are very different from a closed low or near warm front high shear/low CAPE day. Also what's SCP and EBS? I don't normally look at the composite indicies because I think they can mask important details.

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Quincy and the severe wx parameters lol 

 

A couple things though... I'm not sure I'd lump all tornado days together. Some occur from very different synoptic setups. The "numbers" you'd expect from a classic supercell high CAPE/high shear day are very different from a closed low or near warm front high shear/low CAPE day. Also what's SCP and EBS? I don't normally look at the composite indicies because I think they can mask important details.

I like to look at the numbers since partially since I lack the experience that many of the mets have on here with operational forecasting. I've really only closely studied severe weather for the past two summers and I'll be the first at admit there's still a lot I need to learn. Different setups yield different results. You mentioned once that there are two types of setups, the rare supercell days (like Springfield) and then the more common high shear/low CAPE. Most of the cases I've looked at have been high shear/low CAPE.

 

SCP is the supercell composite parameter, based off of MUCAPE, SRH and bulk shear. EBS is effective bulk shear.

 

The reason I look at those 6 parameters was that it was easy to go back and re-analyze since SPC uses those values in their charts. The mean CAPE value for 28 tornado cases in SNE was 1129. How often do we see CAPE values of 2000-3000+ with nothing significant happening?

envbw.gif

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I like to look at the numbers since partially since I lack the experience that many of the mets have on here with operational forecasting. I've really only closely studied severe weather for the past two summers and I'll be the first at admit there's still a lot I need to learn. Different setups yield different results. You mentioned once that there are two types of setups, the rare supercell days (like Springfield) and then the more common high shear/low CAPE. Most of the cases I've looked at have been high shear/low CAPE.

 

SCP is the supercell composite parameter, based off of MUCAPE, SRH and bulk shear. EBS is effective bulk shear.

 

The reason I look at those 6 parameters was that it was easy to go back and re-analyze since SPC uses those values in their charts. The mean CAPE value for 28 tornado cases in SNE was 1129. How often do we see CAPE values of 2000-3000+ with nothing significant happening?

envbw.gif

 

EBS - that makes sense - wasn't even thinking that. Yeah I think it's hard to look at numbers and get a really good feel because so many different setups can produce severe with different variables in place. It's tough to do.

 

Tomorrow will be interesting - let's see how it plays out.

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One of the toughest parts of high shear/low cape setups is generating enough buoyancy to overcome the strong shear.  While strong shear is certainly great, if you don't have enough updraft support or strength, the shear overrides the updraft and the updrafts can't grow large enough to tap into and utilize those stronger dynamics.  With that said, if we are able to materialize instability values tomorrow which were similar to today, there could be some storms of interest.

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