Saturday, March 31, 2012

Severe Weather Targets the Mississippi Valley Today

There is a risk of severe weather this afternoon for states around the Mississippi Valley. This comes as a frontal boundary sags southward and a dry line is located out west.

This is a sounding valid for 18z tonight, known as 7 pm Central time. When you get the dashed line to the right of the soldi blue line, that is when you develop instability. As you can see, there is a large gap between the solid line and dashed line, indicating a lot of instability. CAPE shown on the sounding indicates over 3000 j/kg of instability present at that time.
Another thing seen on the sounding is something called 'ConvT', which appears to indicate the temperature when air will rise to produce thunderstorms. To figure out the surface temperature, I use 28 degrees Celsius, as the solid temperature line is in that 25-30 Celsius area closest to the bottom of the image. Converting 28 Celsius to Fahrenheit results in a temperature of 82.4 degrees F, a good 2 degrees above the ConvT of 80.4 F.
A couple final indices: The Hail index shows hail of 1.5 inches is possible. The hail index is the first parameter in the 4th column labeled 'Hail'. The Supercell Potential parameter, 3rd result in the 2nd column, indicates a 60% chance of a supercell if convection were to develop (which it will).

I don't blame you at all if you don't understand this- I just started getting the gist of it recently after a lot of researching and learning, so my apologies if I am confusing you.
In short, thunderstorms, with a fair chance of becoming supercells, are possible today.

-Andrew

12 comments:

ERN WX said...

These storms have been impressive. A report of SOFTBALL sized hail came in. Also several reports of baseball sized hail. When I went storm chasing in Kansas a couple of years ago I saw the effects of 3.5 inch diameter hail. My car was dented, the windshield destroyed, the ground had a nice coat of hail, and buildings in the path of the supercell were damaged. It was amazing! In my area though we don't normally get any hail larger than 1.5 inches.

Anonymous said...

You JUST started learning this stuff...?

1994blizzard said...

Who started learning this stuff????

mike paulocsak said...

Looks VERY interesting for the Ohio area Tuesday thru Wednesday.Washington county had a pretty good hailstorm last evening.Marietta Ohio got hit pretty hard.I really think we have a really long road ahead of us in the severe weather department.Too many warm fronts followed by cold fronts tagging behind them is one of the reasons so much severe weather recently.Another words,warm/cold air masses "the perfect recipe for these outbreaks"!!!!!!!!!!!!

sidekick said...

Yikes, Anonymous. Where did you learn meteorology?

ERN WX said...

Agreed, Mike. This season will be long and rough. The hail in Ohio was fun to watch on radar. Wish I could get some! Take care!!!

unknown said...

What stuff?????????

1994blizzard said...

Hey ERN WX and Andrew.I have a feeling anonymous no.1 is cracking on you.Another words,what your topic is.I would say myself.it's well written.

sidekick's sidekick said...

I wonder if anonymous knows what NAM stands for. It would be interesting. Why is anonymous searching for trouble?

ERN WX said...

Yes, 1994blizzard. I am quite certain anonymous is cracking on Andrew and me. There is a group of kids 9-18 that are online looking for trouble. My group got a lot of emails from that group this week. They are all just trying to look big. In reality they look foolish. Andrew, what should we do? Maybe we could help anonymous in some way!!! We could teach him meteorology!

mike paulocsak said...

Couldn't agree more with you ERN WX,sidekick,unknown,and also 1994 blizzard.This anonymous is searching for trouble.We seen it this past winter up to now.I'm sure they will eventually leave like Andrew always says.I have an idea,they should go to another site and stop being foolish!I don't know ERN WX if you ever visited the site called snowday.com.That site is full of nasty comments.I don't want to repeat any of the comments,they are downright nasty!Hopefully Andrew doesn't get a live chat bar like chatango.That will bring them here.

Andrew said...

Eastern WX: Fascinating story! You and Mike sure have some interesting stories! Thanks for sharing!

Anonymous: No. I have been in the process of learning the Skew-T for over a year. I have been in the process of learning meteorology for over 5 years.

Mike: The SPC has only put out a see text area, but it could be upgraded.

Sidekick, 1994blizzard, Eastern WX, Sidekick's sidekick, Mike, Unknown: In my opinion, I frankly do not understand why kids use their time to troll on others when they themselves could be learning. It is a shame when that happens. Thank you all for handling the situation while I was away from the computer- I really do appreciate it.