Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch

00:00:00:03 – 00:00:07:19
Speaker 1
Do we have on it? Looks like we have, Buffalo and we have, John at North Platte.

00:00:07:22 – 00:00:08:26
Speaker 2
Yeah, we just joined.

00:00:09:02 – 00:00:12:14
Speaker 1
Okay. And we have, Ken Pryor.

00:00:12:17 – 00:00:14:07
Speaker 2
Yes, yes, I’m here.

00:00:14:10 – 00:00:44:25
Speaker 1
And we have Scott and Tony and anybody else that I missed. Okay. Well, welcome. Today’s, visit, satellite chat. And, what I’m going to do here is show some visible loops from last few days and, recognize that we do have some, bandwidth issues whenever we do show loops. I’ll just ask you to, speak up and let me know if you’re, you know, not seeing these loops, properly.

00:00:44:27 – 00:01:06:22
Speaker 1
And what I’ll do is I’ll go through them and at times I will, just slowly step through them. So hopefully you can, understand, what I’m trying to convey here. So let’s start off with Monday over Nebraska. It was a very interesting day, as you probably heard, the, tornadoes in northeast, Nebraska and, twin tornadoes making it even more interesting.

00:01:06:22 – 00:01:35:22
Speaker 1
But, this is the visible imagery from, 16 Z. And I just wanted to highlight at this particular time, just looking at the still image, there’s an MCs, that a couple mixes across eastern Nebraska near the Iowa border, over here near the, near the, Missouri River. And, to the west of that, you can see cooler temperatures, lower dew points here, 68 over 57 here at, Norfolk.

00:01:35:22 – 00:02:00:23
Speaker 1
So you can see, outflow from that mix. And then if you look further to the southwest of that, you can see over here in the, Grand Island Lincoln area, much warmer temperatures and also very high dew points in the low 70s. So, the other thing to watch is a very strong winds. You can see the winds are gusting to 30, 20, 28 and the warm side of the outflow boundary over here.

00:02:00:23 – 00:02:30:15
Speaker 1
So what I just want you to watch here as we look at this loop is as I go forward here, you’ll see, the outflow boundary pushing to the west. And again, this shows up the best if I loop it really fast. But, I just don’t think it’ll show up over our go to meeting here. But what happened is it pushed to the west, but then the strong southerly kind of went, oh, I’ll stop it right here at 19, 1830 Z.

00:02:30:18 – 00:02:55:16
Speaker 1
And the outflow boundary is right here. Right where you begin to see these, warmer temperatures. Also, you see these, unstable cloud streets starting to surge towards the north. Here was for that, a little bit more, where you can begin to see in this area right here. I’ll turn off the observations momentarily. You can see an attempt at convective initiation right here.

00:02:55:18 – 00:03:24:13
Speaker 1
It looks like, it moved off to the northeast and, kind of became, elevated that initial attempt. So we have that, line right here moving rapidly towards the northeast. And then kind of the second attempt right here, stop at at 1940, we had convective initiation along that line. So it an outflow boundary that was surging towards the north with very strong southerly winds here.

00:03:24:16 – 00:03:51:05
Speaker 1
And then as we continue on our loop here, we can see that storm continue to develop. And I’ll go back to the OBS here and you can see the, high dew points and very warm air and strong southerly wind surging towards the north. So it’s, moving that helping to move that boundary towards the north here. So initially you think of it as an outflow boundary and then maybe acting as, something more like a warm front, later in the period here as these southerly winds are winning out.

00:03:51:05 – 00:04:19:17
Speaker 1
So, it is a very interesting setup here. I’ll just, advance this along here and you can see other MCs outflow boundaries as well up in, South Dakota. You can see one right here. It’s kind of shaped like a U. Across, South Dakota. And these are, these are days where you can add a lot of value as a forecaster because, you know, the models, struggle with these in terms of where these outflow boundaries are.

00:04:19:17 – 00:04:40:07
Speaker 1
So by looking at satellite imagery, along with observations, you can add a lot of value to the forecast by analyzing these, doing a missile analysis and picking up on where those boundaries are, how they’re oriented with respect to storm motion and, and really being able to hone in on, the areas most likely to see storms. There is another example.

00:04:40:07 – 00:05:30:01
Speaker 1
Just yesterday right here. And I will go back in time here. This is, yesterday, the morning hours. Let me make the observations slightly larger here. Easier to see. And, it was interesting. There was some, little bit of convection here in southeast Montana. Northwest. So South Dakota and this region moving off to the northeast, and, you can see a bit of a wind shift with that at this particular station in northwest, South Dakota, right here, further to the west, dry line was set up, and it’s actually, it’s complicated some by the Black Hills here, but it does extend, towards the southwest into, Nebraska here as

00:05:30:01 – 00:05:52:24
Speaker 1
well. But, I just want to go on to a little bit later and you can see thunderstorms initiating along that, dry line. You also see a little bit of activity going further to the southeast of that as well. And that that particular storm right here and, Montana has a really hard edge, in the back sheared anvil side of it right here.

00:05:52:24 – 00:06:14:16
Speaker 1
This had, quite a tornado with it and, southeast Montana. And the storm wasn’t moving a whole lot at this time. And then a little bit later, after some back building, merging with a few other storms, there was, supercell, just south of that as well. So, going to a little bit later in the day here.

00:06:14:19 – 00:06:29:03
Speaker 1
And, this is 2245 yesterday gets these storms down here in Nebraska that were, tornadic. And, but, John, this is in I believe this is right near CUA. Correct?

00:06:29:05 – 00:06:33:09
Speaker 2
Yep. That’s correct. Up in the northwest part of, Cherry County initially.

00:06:33:14 – 00:06:52:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, I was on, I was observing this storm where I had my pointer up here and, northwest South Dakota. But I was keeping an eye on some of these on my radar. So, let me, I believe, is that the, dry line right here, though, that, Or was that a different type of boundary?

00:06:52:08 – 00:07:10:28
Speaker 2
It was kind of right in that, dry line, warm front interface. Right in there. The dry line was kind of surging further south of that. So, yeah, it’s kind of hard to figure out where that boundary, you know, really initiated it. There was a definite warm front characteristics up in that area though.

00:07:11:03 – 00:07:36:12
Speaker 1
Okay, okay. Very interesting. Yeah. You can see if I just stop it right here. You can see, unstable cumulus that are just to the east of that, but extending back towards the storm here, kind of moving towards the direction of the storm. Two that would definitely, catch my attention here as well in terms of, you know, a very unstable airmass and that, was feeding into that storm here.

00:07:36:12 – 00:08:12:25
Speaker 1
So. So, yeah, that was a quite an interesting day as well. And, if we’re looking at the current imagery, which I believe is right here, this is the this is, let’s get on to the, you know, this is, 1440. So it’s, a little bit old, but it’s, recently here and, which you can see in place here, a cold front and that move through Colorado, western Nebraska, and then harking back towards the north here we have, kind of a warm front that extends back into, South Dakota with, pretty high dew points of some 74 over 68.

00:08:13:06 – 00:08:45:12
Speaker 1
Right here, I don’t know if that’s Chamberlain or one of these. Is Chamberlain here. And then you see very high dew points nosing into, northeast Nebraska again here with, with strong southerly flow here. So this area, again, will be under the threat for an enhanced, severe threat here into eastern Nebraska, southeast South Dakota, here, I’ll just show a little bit of a loop here because, it is interesting to see, a series of mixes across, South Dakota.

00:08:45:14 – 00:09:11:04
Speaker 1
You can see, a few, column, waves that are moving across here. They’re moving towards the, the southwest, actually across northeast Nebraska. You have that look of, gravity waves. Sometimes you get gravity waves mixed in with these lower level, boundaries that you see, and it’s, it’s important to distinguish between the two.

00:09:11:04 – 00:09:36:07
Speaker 1
But I think this one right here, right along the, Yankton area, the South Dakota, Nebraska line appears to be a gravity wave as it’s moving over the top of some of these, lower level clouds. And and then also, you probably have some lower level boundaries in here as well. Clearly, you can see the the cold front back in the here standing down towards, central Nebraska, this area right here.

00:09:36:07 – 00:09:56:22
Speaker 1
So, I don’t want to talk too much. And I do want to pass it over to Scott, but, any comments, from the field here in terms of, some of the imagery that we looked at or maybe something interesting in, in your area that you want to point out.

00:09:56:24 – 00:10:09:16
Speaker 1
Okay. Let’s turn it over to Scott Lindstrom at, Simms at the University of Wisconsin. And I will pass control over to him here.

00:10:09:18 – 00:10:35:22
Speaker 2
And I am waiting. Okay. Okay, I have some. I hope you can see my screen now. It’s animating, and I have some things from both, today, because we’ve had some severe weather here in Wisconsin. And also I’ll jump back to Monday as well. In fact, why don’t I start with,

00:10:35:24 – 00:11:04:06
Speaker 2
Let’s start with today. So, we had a, nice line come in as I was biking into work today. Got a little wet. So I just want to then had a good discussion on things you can look at as things are starting to fire. I’m going to maybe focus more on satellite products that are useful, in advance of something happening, sort of sort of a region, products that you can use to focus your attention into a specific region.

00:11:04:06 – 00:11:27:09
Speaker 2
And we’re looking right now at the three, the, sounder. So this is a this is a project that is in a WIPs. I’m not showing you the A screen grab right now, but this is the sounder cape from last night at three Z. Just showing the really, pretty extreme values, pull that have pulled over Iowa, east Nebraska and Iowa over the past couple of days.

00:11:27:09 – 00:11:54:25
Speaker 2
So there have been a, a few, as you know, there’s been this series of convective developments forming mixes that have started in the Central Plains and moved off to the east. There’s kind of a boundary, over northern Illinois that’s for that, that they’ve been that they’ve been moving along. So the, the Cape from the sounder showing plenty of, instability.

00:11:54:27 – 00:12:16:27
Speaker 2
And the lifted index is showing the same thing. So I’m showing this at three here yesterday just to show you that the atmosphere is really primed for something to happen overnight. And also, there’s a lot of cirrus right now. So if I were to show you the most recent image, there’s still plenty of cape, back in the Missouri River Valley.

00:12:17:07 – 00:12:42:02
Speaker 2
And then there’s I’m assuming there’s plenty of cape underneath this. We’ve got serious debris that’s over Iowa and Wisconsin as well. Or there will be once that, once it dies off and the sun goes to work again. So one of the things that you can use as things are going on to remember where, so this is a screengrab from, it’s animating.

00:12:42:02 – 00:13:15:13
Speaker 2
So I’m not exactly sure how well it’s going. It’s going to show it, but it’s the it’s a severe display that I pulled out of my ellipse tool this morning. So we’re looking at southern Wisconsin, Dane County, where I live at here. And it’s this is showing the, the prob severe product, which is a merge it, it blends together satellite information, radar information and other things to, maybe highlight a radar signature that you need to be paying attention to.

00:13:16:07 – 00:13:41:07
Speaker 2
In this particular case, the prob severe to us, I would say it didn’t do a bang up job on this particular system, because one of the things that prob severe uses is mesh, and there was not a lot of, large hail indicated in this storm. So when, when the, tornado warnings and the severe thunderstorm warnings were going off in Dane County, the mesh was, typically under an inch.

00:13:41:07 – 00:14:07:17
Speaker 2
This is from the miss. So the severe product was not really highlighting that particular storm. So, prob severe. If it’s been evaluated at the T that was going on in Norman at the past month. And, and a couple of the forecasters there noted that, when you have a severe event, it’s mostly strong winds. No.

00:14:07:17 – 00:14:44:08
Speaker 2
Or tornadoes because prob severe Ms.. Field that’s using is mesh. Maybe you’re not getting the complete information. The best information on on the mesh. One thing that it does do well on though. This is from Monday. There’s isolated systems out over Nebraska. So here we have a case where the mesh was, fairly strong. This is for the, twin tornado events in, in Stanton County in, in north eastern Nebraska.

00:14:44:08 – 00:15:06:25
Speaker 2
So an isolated storm, prob severe, does do fairly well with this. And you can see that the mesh in that storm was well up over an inch. There was a very strong of normalized vertical growth rate observed at 1925 C, so 3%. So, Scott, could you stop and explain it a little better? Well, this is an animated GIF, so stop is not an option.

00:15:07:06 – 00:15:31:26
Speaker 2
But I guess we’re going to see what it’s showing. So this is the yellow boxes. There are the severe thunderstorm watch boxes, in the red box at the end of a tornado watch box. The, warnings for the warning. Yeah. Sorry. This kind of the the, highlighted radar region. So it starts off in blue or cyan.

00:15:31:27 – 00:15:58:04
Speaker 2
It turns pink and then red. That is the object in the radar that is being tracked. And then on the bottom right you see the different values that are going into the the prob severe product. So there’s a and most unstable cape from the, from the rapid refresh, a environmental shear from the rapid refresh. The then we have the normalized vertical growth rate.

00:15:58:06 – 00:16:43:16
Speaker 2
That’s percent of the troposphere. So at 1925 C, this particular, the cloud that then developed into this radar object grew in 3% of the troposphere per minute at 1925. C that was the observation. And the glaciation rate was was 9% per minute. So 9% of the cloud was glaciated each minute. At 1925 C so, this is a, you know, a blended a few a data product that look that mixes together both the data from the, rapid refresh from the Ms..

00:16:43:16 – 00:17:16:08
Speaker 2
So you see the MRA, the m r m Ms. mesh values that are in there as well. You see that generally over and around and around an inch, increasing to about an inch and a half at the very end. So it’s the this product does a, I think, a very good job of telling you when to expect, especially especially from a developing isolated system, when will it first produce severe weather.

00:17:16:10 – 00:17:46:14
Speaker 2
So the probability here increases to 59%. And then about 15 minutes later the severe thunderstorm warning is issued for hail. And a little bit after that, the first hail report is if the first hail report occurs. So this is something that you couldn’t look at as the system is or as the event is unfolding to help you monitor what’s going on in the, in the system.

00:17:46:14 – 00:18:13:05
Speaker 2
And again, this is something that’s in a repository only at the moment that that’s in a website, you only if we go back to this, you know, a little bit earlier. Let’s see where did I put it. A little bit earlier in this particular outbreak, one of the things that you can use to, to determine, you know, where will this where, where will the, severe weather occur?

00:18:13:05 – 00:18:37:06
Speaker 2
And this is the near cross product. And one of the things this does well is identify gradients, along which, things might develop. So you do see a gradient, over eastern Nebraska here. So the, the most, the very unstable is the purple and there’s, and there’s a gradient with slightly less. So this is taking goes sounder information.

00:18:37:08 – 00:19:04:14
Speaker 2
It’s putting it into a Lagrangian model and it’s moving it around in time. These are forecasts all for 21 V issued at 1819 and 23. So there’s there’s been a lot of evaluation of this project as well at the, at T. So I encourage you to look at the blog that goes our.blogspot.com, and you can see some evaluation of some of these products.

00:19:04:16 – 00:19:28:10
Speaker 2
Now something else that is in I mentioned that we had this severe weather come through this today. And one of the things that’s new to Iowa UPS to recently are new Caps soundings. So if you got if you have a website two and you go to the satellite products, you will find a map to remember what it looks like.

00:19:28:13 – 00:19:29:28
Speaker 2
If you look under satellite.

00:19:30:00 – 00:19:34:19
Unknown
There is a.

00:19:34:22 – 00:19:35:24
Unknown

00:19:35:26 – 00:19:42:06
Speaker 2
What I just a second.

00:19:42:09 – 00:20:14:01
Speaker 2
There is an NTP products tab and under that there’s a new count sounding availability. So I’m looking at a sounding here from northwestern Illinois overnight. This is at eight C. Just kind of evaluating exactly what kind of environment the new caps are showing. And again this is looking at semi NTP data. It’s a it’s a combination of the output from Chris and from the ATM’s founders that are both on NTP.

00:20:14:03 – 00:20:49:08
Speaker 2
And one of the nice things, one of the things I like about the founding software is you can change things. So if you look at the bottom of the sounding, it’s, not quite as warm and moist as it should be. This has a cap of only about 400, and if you change, if you alter the sounding. So I just started altering the sounding by changing the by making it a little bit warmer, upping it to maybe in the upper 70s and bringing the dew point up from, you know, 60 upper to around 70, as observed in northern Illinois, you get a cape value that gets up to around 4400.

00:20:49:10 – 00:21:10:00
Speaker 2
So getting up something and it something that you can look at in a website to, to give you some information at synoptic times about what’s going on in the atmosphere. Although as I said, you sometimes do have to deal with the sounding when the surface data in the sounding does not really match the meters that are that are nearby.

00:21:10:03 – 00:21:22:09
Speaker 2
So are there any questions on the things that I have showed you on this? I guess I should have asked if, North Platte in Buffalo, if you have a website to yet.

00:21:22:12 – 00:21:43:12
Speaker 2
This is, John in North Platte. No, we do not. But, I was at the is there a couple of weeks ago and, did use a lot of the, surveyor and the mesh stuff from the memos and really looking forward to that. And you can’t get that online. There’s a there’s a website that shows that online it’s not quite as hand is having an alias.

00:21:43:12 – 00:21:46:29
Speaker 2
Of course.

00:21:47:01 – 00:22:04:11
Speaker 2
It’s in Buffalo. Are you online. Do you, do you have a web still? No, we do not have a web two yet either. Okay. So I’m showing things that are only a wedding. Your appetite, I guess. Yes.

00:22:04:24 – 00:22:29:09
Speaker 2
Does anyone else have any comments on, stuff that I’ve showed you were. Are you able to see the animations? Yeah, we were fine here in North Platte. Okay, that’s that’s gratifying to hear. Yeah, we saw them in Buffalo. They were a little, full flow, but. Okay. It is what it is. Yeah.

00:22:29:12 – 00:22:33:27
Speaker 2
So, Dan, that’s what I have for right now.

00:22:33:29 – 00:22:43:18
Speaker 1
Okay. Do we have any other comments or discussions? The last couple minutes here?

00:22:43:28 – 00:23:14:14
Speaker 2
Well, yes. And I, this is Cat. I have some goals, like first product imagery, that I would like to show pertaining to, Monday’s tornado and, severe weather outbreak, over in Nebraska and the Dakotas. And, this will be brief. Okay, here, I see. Okay. So do I have control?

00:23:14:15 – 00:23:16:23
Speaker 1
Yeah, I see your screen, I think.

00:23:16:24 – 00:23:43:28
Speaker 2
Okay, great. Okay. So very good. Then I will go ahead and, what I am showing here is, like the first one speed potential index imagery. This is, again derived from the. It was sounder. Index values are plotted over visible, imagery with this product. I will go ahead and animate this, very slowly at first.

00:23:43:28 – 00:24:34:19
Speaker 2
And then we can step through each image. This is, for the afternoon of June 16th and, focus primarily here over in the, upper Midwest region. And what we do see here is a dramatic increase in index values, from yellow to red to orange. And I would like to stop the animation and point out that by 2100, I’m sorry, 2200 V, there were index values of at and even over 100 by 23 V over extreme, northeastern Nebraska and along the Nebraska South Dakota border.

00:24:34:22 – 00:25:06:08
Speaker 2
And I want to point out that these very high values are very rare. It’s very rare to see and do we p values of 100 or greater. Typically these values would indicate wind gusts potential greater than 65 knots. And in fact, one of the first to I think we have a severe wind. Observations occur in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, around 2000.

00:25:06:22 – 00:26:00:03
Speaker 2
A and winds are recorded, I believe, at 87mph at two Falls Airport. And then there was a spotter or, storm chaser report of a wind gust of 96mph, in northern Sioux Falls, South Dakota. This was again near 23. At this time, even though, the values in a few falls area were not that impressive and only indicating wind gust potential 35 to 49 knots, if we then take a look at, 30 different values, this is again ghost sound sounder derived vertical difference in a between a, surface and mid troposphere.

00:26:00:05 – 00:26:37:07
Speaker 2
I will again stop the animation and move out to about, 28 here over, the upper Midwest. And we can see values here that are in excess of 30. I mean, widespread values in excess of 30. A few, very different values here plotted that were greater than 40. Again, these values are, remark ably high and correspond to a very high risk of severe activity.

00:26:37:15 – 00:27:14:15
Speaker 2
We can zoom in here a little closer. This is a composite, ghost sound or any difference? And, next red reflectivity image from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, here, right in the center of the image, right near the next red site. The location of the 96 mile per hour down burst wind gust is marked here with the white triangle vertical, 50 different index values are plotted here for the image.

00:27:14:15 – 00:27:51:23
Speaker 2
And we see valleys here well in excess of 30, as well as a local maximum and index values here ranging from about, 32 to 34. Immediately in the Sioux Falls area again, this would have been a good indicator of the potential for, very severe downpour activity at this time. And we could see that the downpour activity was associated with a bow echo like signature that was moving through eastern South Dakota at the time.

00:27:51:26 – 00:28:06:12
Speaker 2
So this, these are the highlights of the, go, like, here. Sporadic output that I have for the, Monday severe weather outbreak. Are there any questions?

00:28:06:14 – 00:28:41:03
Speaker 2
So is this product available real time then? Yes, it is, and it’s available on a, star. Experimental microburst product web page, which, I can share, with the group today, immediately after the chat, I can go ahead and perhaps send a link to Dan, and he can forward to the group. Or, I could go ahead and forward the, link, to a, like, risk products web page directly to the group.

00:28:41:06 – 00:29:15:21
Speaker 2
But we have, real time, MWP, and, data a different imagery, as well as it, as well as other like for syntax products as well, such as the wind index and the wet microburst severity index products, all of which, I believe are very beneficial and useful for, severe down burst forecasting. If you Google experimental microburst, it’s the first hit.

00:29:15:24 – 00:29:45:10
Speaker 2
Okay, cool. Thanks, dad. I’ve never tried that. Actually. Yeah, I grew up in Buffalo. Yes. Just looking at the vertical safety product. I mean, I’m not seeing a real strong correlation between the values where the where that black hole is. And I mean, for example, the higher value off to the west behind the line. You’ve got that other segment just to the north northeast of, through falls in Minnesota there, and the value there, but considerably lower.

00:29:45:10 – 00:30:17:24
Speaker 2
I mean, it just doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of correlation. But I’m seeing. Okay, well, that is a good observation. Yeah. How can I describe this, as an outlook, you know, as an outlook product? That, you know, there can be other factors that can, reduce or inflate to say to a different value, use.

00:30:18:19 – 00:30:52:21
Speaker 2
My point with this particular image was to show in the vicinity of Sioux Falls, near the time of the severe activity that say the difference values were very high. We had, 3040, the value with 30, the threshold value of 30, is considered to be important and has been identified as an important, threshold value for severe winds, thunderstorms.

00:30:52:21 – 00:31:24:17
Speaker 2
Sunday night. All right. So yeah, I mean that’s that that’s the best. You know, the best explanation I can provide is 3030 is really kind of the threshold. You’re looking for that. Yes. 30 or actually 20 has been identified as a threshold for a particular probability of severe down versus 30 has been identified as an exceptionally high risk.

00:31:24:19 – 00:31:28:16
Speaker 2
So wherever you say you okay. Thank you.

00:31:28:18 – 00:31:31:24
Speaker 1
Okay. Can that info is in your training session right.

00:31:31:26 – 00:31:40:00
Speaker 2
It certainly is. Yes. So if so you are highly encouraged to attend by next lesson.

00:31:40:03 – 00:31:54:05
Speaker 1
Yeah. There’s a live one and there’s also a recorded version. So you can take the recorded version of the visit page which is also found on the LMS. Okay. Any other questions here before we leave.

00:31:54:08 – 00:32:08:09
Speaker 2
I just have a comment if you want to see a really nice vortex, look at the radar over Lake Michigan right now. So the system that came through it, southern Maine, southern Wisconsin has really wrapped up nicely as it’s gone over the lake.

00:32:08:21 – 00:32:12:00
Speaker 1
I’ll pass you to the presenter if you have that up. I don’t have it up on my,

00:32:12:05 – 00:32:15:02
Speaker 2
Oh, okay. I don’t have it up on my screen. I was looking on a different computer.

00:32:15:06 – 00:32:32:29
Speaker 1
Oh, okay. Okay. Well, folks, can check that out. And, there is an afternoon visit. Satellite chat. If we have, storms going up there, and we’ll, we’ll certainly, be be focused on those. It’s 130 mountain time. So thank you, everybody for attending and have a great day.

00:32:33:01 – 00:32:34:20
Speaker 2
Thank thank you Dan. Thanks.