Tuesday, July 19, 2011

July 19: Severe Thunderstorm Watch #662

A severe thunderstorm watch has been issued for a very strong thunderstorm cell and associated cluster of showers and thunderstorms.
This watch goes from now to 3:00 PM CDT for the areas outlined above.
Since this thunderstorm appears to be very strong and healthy, let's see if it could go tornadic or supercellular.
Below (in order) are the Supercell Composite, Significant Tornado Parameter, and Energy-Helicity Index images for this area.
Supercell Composite (SCP). Higher values indicate more likelihood for supercells.

STP. Values above 1 have been associated with EF2+ tornadoes

EHI. Dangerous levels begin at 2 units.
These above images (in order) tell if the storm will go supercellular, what chance it has of going tornadic, and how much energy combined with spinning motion the atmosphere has.

These images tell that the storm is in an unfavorable environment for tornadoes, thus only the severe thunderstorm watch instead of a tornado watch.
This storm probably won't produce a tornado judging by only these parameters, and hodographs (weather balloons that indicate spinning in the atmosphere) aren't impressive.

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