2022 Short/Medium Range Severe Weather Discussion

[frostfern]

9 hours ago, josh_4184 said:

They did execute their tornado drill even though it was only severe warned at that time, which I must admit I think APX was a little slow issuing the warning for that cell. It was already showing all signs of rotating near her school which is about 20 miles due West of Gaylord. APX also sent up a special balloon shortly before the storm reached the area which was indeed showing fairly impressive parameters especially for northern Michigan standards.

I remember looking at the radar.  I was watching the cell for about 45 minutes.  It seemed like there was some contamination of the velocity field from birds or something at one point.  It was hard to read.  They usually don't issue a tornado warning until they see evidence of a strong circulation near the ground.  I recall the circulation was evident a few scans before the tornado warning went out, but it was fairly broad looking.  I have seen many similar looking circulations that produced minor RFD wind damage but never produced a proper tornado.  I do feel that given the classic look of the cell and the path of the circulation towards a populated area, they could have put out the warning a little earlier and risked a false alarm.  It's a tough call though.  Hindsight is 20/20.  I think I will download the full radar loop.

[HillsdaleMIWeather]

I think it could be also argued they could've easily issued a Tornado Emergency for it, considering it was a large tornado, directly hitting a populated area. A lot of the Southern offices have been a little liberal with them this year, but some of the northern offices, like Gaylord, have never issued a single one

[nwohweather]

12 hours ago, Hoosier said:

Here's a wider radar loop from yesterday

Amazing structure on that cell. To be honest, I’m shocked it didn’t keep going longer as there was little around it to impede inflow

[frostfern]

Does anyone know where I can find the 3PM sounding before the tornado?  Also archived local mesoanalysis at a similar time.  I'm making my own writeup.

[Hoosier]

24 minutes ago, frostfern said:

Does anyone know where I can find the 3PM sounding before the tornado?  Also archived local mesoanalysis at a similar time.  I'm making my own writeup.

SPC has an archive of that stuff, but strangely, 5/20 is not listed on the main archive page (5/21 is listed, lol).  However, I was able to pull up 5/20 by manually changing the date in the link:

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/archive/event.php?date=20220520

 

You can get the 19z APX sounding here:

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/soundings/22052019_OBS/

[frostfern]

I'm getting Flagstaff AZ.  The page isn't working. 

[frostfern]

Hi-res radar loops I made of Gaylord tornado event.

Basic Reflectivity Loop

Close Up Radar Analysis

[WeatherMonger]

15 minutes ago, frostfern said:

I'm getting Flagstaff AZ.  The page isn't working. 

Think you just needed to click on APX star

 

[Hoosier]

44 minutes ago, WeatherMonger said:

Think you just needed to click on APX star

 

Yup.  I just didn't bother to mention that.

Question is why Flagstaff comes up as the default.  After all, APX is first alphabetically. 

[Powerball]

This was somewhere in Ontario, Canada yesterday. The uploader didn't bother to share the exact location and there's no sound

 

[Hoosier]

Took a look at Wednesday, and it seems like it has some potential to be semi-interesting.  Maybe even a bit of tornado potential.  I wouldn't sleep on it.

[CheeselandSkies]

5 hours ago, Hoosier said:

Took a look at Wednesday, and it seems like it has some potential to be semi-interesting.  Maybe even a bit of tornado potential.  I wouldn't sleep on it.

Just noticed that marginal area was pulled up into my neck of the woods on Day 2...Day 3 just had it in IL/IN. Day 4 (outlook issued Sunday) the 15% risk area was over SE TX/LA/MS...all of which has now been downgraded to marginal.

LOL BROYLES.

The wording of the day-2 outlook implies that a threat worthy of significantly greater categorical/probabilistic contours could materialize, but spread is just too high at this point.

[CheeselandSkies]

Looking at the soundings, I'm not sure why the forecast risk isn't higher already unless it's the weak-ish mid level winds or uncertainties about moisture although 6Z HRRR and 3K NAM both have upper 60s to low 70s dews across IL tomorrow evening. HRRR has a fairly classic looking triple point setup and 3K NAM even has what appears to be a mesolow north of St. Louis.

[Hoosier]

3 hours ago, CheeselandSkies said:

Looking at the soundings, I'm not sure why the forecast risk isn't higher already unless it's the weak-ish mid level winds or uncertainties about moisture although 6Z HRRR and 3K NAM both have upper 60s to low 70s dews across IL tomorrow evening. HRRR has a fairly classic looking triple point setup and 3K NAM even has what appears to be a mesolow north of St. Louis.

Suspect we'll see higher probs on subsequent outlooks.  Yeah, the mid level winds could be better, but they look sufficient enough and the low level shear is certainly good enough for some tornado concern.

[Hoosier]

Expanded areal coverage eastward on the 1730z outlook, though held at marginal risk.

[CheeselandSkies]

3 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

Expanded areal coverage on the 1730z outlook, though held at marginal risk.

They actually trimmed it mostly out of Wisconsin. Surprise, surprise (supported by CAM solutions).

[Hoosier]

4 minutes ago, CheeselandSkies said:

They actually trimmed it mostly out of Wisconsin. Surprise, surprise (supported by CAM solutions).

Yes.  I edited my post to put the word eastward in there, but you replied just before.

[Hoosier]

Although it's not reflected in the SPC outlook, would point out that there will probably be a local minimum of severe threat near the IL shore as the flow cuts in off the lake to some extent.

[Hoosier]

Got ya

 

By mid-afternoon, forecast hodographs
depict some 25-30 kt of 0-1 km storm-relative flow to sustained
and uninterrupted updrafts. However, mid- to upper-level flow will
be modest to weak at best, suggesting precipitation will falling
close proximity to what will likely be spatially small updrafts.
Taken together, any shower or thunderstorm where the downdraft is
just far enough removed from the updraft will have the potential
to support transient low-level mesocyclone with an associated
threat for a brief, likely weak (EF-10 to EF-1 caliber), tornado.
Such a threat appears maximized from about 2 to 8 PM. It`s worth
noting this system does not have the hallmarks of a surprise high-
shear/low- cape (HSLC) severe weather event but rather a "got ya"
type event given the moist and sheared low-level environment. For
a more substantial threat, we`d expect a regime in which a
surface low would be rapidly deepening while on a closer approach
providing a much deeper layer of shear as well as the means to
locally augment low-level instability via dynamically lifting a
moist-absolute unstable layer. We don`t look to have any of that
tomorrow. In addition, the threat for damaging hail and winds
looks exceedingly low (<5%) due to the expected shallow depth of
convective cores as well as lack of storm-scale organization to
develop a cold pool in an otherwise moist and unfavorable
environment. So, it`s one of those rare "weak tornado or nothing"
environments, notwithstanding the dangers of lightning.

[nwohweather]

3 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

Got ya

 

By mid-afternoon, forecast hodographs
depict some 25-30 kt of 0-1 km storm-relative flow to sustained
and uninterrupted updrafts. However, mid- to upper-level flow will
be modest to weak at best, suggesting precipitation will falling
close proximity to what will likely be spatially small updrafts.
Taken together, any shower or thunderstorm where the downdraft is
just far enough removed from the updraft will have the potential
to support transient low-level mesocyclone with an associated
threat for a brief, likely weak (EF-10 to EF-1 caliber), tornado.
Such a threat appears maximized from about 2 to 8 PM. It`s worth
noting this system does not have the hallmarks of a surprise high-
shear/low- cape (HSLC) severe weather event but rather a "got ya"
type event given the moist and sheared low-level environment. For
a more substantial threat, we`d expect a regime in which a
surface low would be rapidly deepening while on a closer approach
providing a much deeper layer of shear as well as the means to
locally augment low-level instability via dynamically lifting a
moist-absolute unstable layer. We don`t look to have any of that
tomorrow. In addition, the threat for damaging hail and winds
looks exceedingly low (<5%) due to the expected shallow depth of
convective cores as well as lack of storm-scale organization to
develop a cold pool in an otherwise moist and unfavorable
environment. So, it`s one of those rare "weak tornado or nothing"
environments, notwithstanding the dangers of lightning.

Man that's a really good discussion

[yoda]

Anyone else catch the error in that discussion? Didn't know EF-10 was weak lol

[Harry Perry]

Tomorrow afternoon/evening trying to sneak up on us. RAP/NAM show some intriguing soundings with storms firing along the warm front near I-65 northeast to roughly the MI/IN border. 

[Hoosier]

It seems like one of those days where a bunch of stuff will be spinning, but question is how much will actually produce.  Still looks to me like there could be a corridor of somewhat elevated potential embedded in that large 2% tornado area.  

[cyclone77]

Was hoping to see this

Instead we got this

 

Think a slight risk is warranted over much of IL and parts of IN.

[pen_artist]

Welp, we got our slight risk, just couple hundred miles down south 

[Hoosier]

Dews are in the mid-upper 60s south of the warm front, so low level moisture isn't a problem.  Also, temps are already in the 70s south of the front across much of IL/IN.

[HillsdaleMIWeather]

Slight risk introduced

[Hoosier]

34 minutes ago, HillsdaleMIWeather said:

Slight risk introduced

[Hoosier]

The updated AFD from LOT mentioned that mid-level flow is slightly stronger than progged.  

[Hoosier]

Sky brightening, trying to get filtered sun here.