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00:00:01:28 – 00:00:24:25
Speaker 1
Well, thanks for joining this. Almost impromptu satellite chat. This is a little discussion on the severe weather that was on the West Coast. Last week on the 14th. And I thought it was interesting because, of all the satellite data that you can use to view it coming. And, just to diagnose things.
00:00:24:25 – 00:00:48:07
Speaker 1
So I’m just going to show you a bunch of different products that were helpful, for this particular event. And, if you have any questions, feel free to break in at any time. So the first one here is an animation. This is an morphed animation of mirrors to precipitable water. So this is it’s called mimic, and it’s showing Songer as it crosses the Pacific.
00:00:48:15 – 00:01:19:03
Speaker 1
This is an interesting case because there was a forecast that song, would generate a very strong storm, and the, severe weather was actually with the system that was just in advance of it. And if you look at this animation long enough, you can and also I’ll show you a, infrared image. You can see that there’s a very strong system coming off Asia, Asia and the northern stream here that kind of taps into the moisture in advance of sound, helps it to really spin up into a nice cyclone.
00:01:19:14 – 00:01:42:04
Speaker 1
That helped spawn the severe weather on, on the, 14th. So again, this is a morphed. So it’s taking all of the polar passes and it adjusts them using the GFS winds. So you get a nice continuous look to the total precipitable water. So this is the mirrors data side. It’s an ice bow.
00:01:42:07 – 00:02:05:24
Speaker 1
It’s an ice bow project that this is, the the, mimic is actually what, this is produced by Tony Wimmer. Shows up at the University of Calgary, in Alberta, or maybe the University of Alberta in Calgary, and I’m not quite sure. This is an animation I put together. If it’s blending comms data from the from Korea on the left with, goes 15 on the right.
00:02:05:24 – 00:02:27:22
Speaker 1
So you can, you can see a proxy where the same as because of the, comms one has a 10.8 micron goes 15, of course, is 10.7 microns. Let me make this a little bit bigger. Whoa. Made it a lot bigger. And you can see from the forming over and the western part of the, Pacific. So here’s the tropical tropical system.
00:02:27:23 – 00:02:53:12
Speaker 1
Tropical system forms becomes a very strong I believe was a cat for typhoons or super typhoon. And then it’s this is your first time joining and go to webinar, and then it flips across the entire Pacific and follow the cold cloud here. It loses a lot of its, a lot of its integrity. But then as it runs the trough that’s in the eastern, eastern part of the Pacific, it really invigorates.
00:02:53:12 – 00:03:17:19
Speaker 1
And again, the interesting system was this one that starts up off the coast of Kamchatka, comes off to the east, dives to the southeast. And that’s what spawned the big storm that helped, that helps support the tornadoes. And, I’m going to pronounce it wrong. Maybe manzanita, Oregon. So this this long animation is just kind of setting the stage for what’s going on.
00:03:17:19 – 00:03:42:07
Speaker 1
So very strong jet all the way across the, all the way across the Pacific Ocean. You can see that here, too. There’s a there’s a funnel of, moisture stretching across the entire Pacific basin in the run up to this particular storm. You could use ozone also to diagnose how strong this storm is. This is the Goes 15 ozone product.
00:03:42:15 – 00:04:04:28
Speaker 1
So you see a nice enhancement in the ozone in the North Pacific, a very nice gradient there where the jet is. So, again, things that are typical for, for strong cyclic genesis in the Pacific. So getting closer to the storm, Daryl, who is on the line, supplied this beautiful sumi NPP day night band.
00:04:04:28 – 00:04:29:08
Speaker 1
So if you this is the day night band is something that goes through the spine. So I hope you’re looking at it. And the lunar illumination was very favorable for this storm. So you’re you’re seeing this visible image at night. This is 11 Z so total day, total nighttime out over the Pacific. But the lunar illumination is really giving you a great view of what’s going on with this storm.
00:04:29:11 – 00:04:58:05
Speaker 1
And again, this is tweeted out. So, let me see if I can. Or the Oregon coast is here and upstream of that region, you do see a lot of in this visible image you see a lot of overshooting top. So there is convection ongoing in this very cold weather where you have very cold air aloft. Again, helping to maybe alert you to the fact that something first of all, we had the very strong storm, but even a very strong storms.
00:04:58:05 – 00:05:24:16
Speaker 1
I’m not certain how often you have, tornadoes along the Oregon coast. I think that’s a fairly rare event. This is just a series of soundings from Salem. Salem, Oregon, just kind of giving you an idea of how the atmosphere is changing pretty dynamically. This is the zero C sounding on the 14th and the 12 C on the 20 on the 14th and zero the on the 15.
00:05:24:16 – 00:05:50:14
Speaker 1
You see some very significant cooling between 0 and 12 c, I mean maybe even some drying in the, in the mid-levels as well. So again, just just some data for us to show you exactly what’s going on. There is a layered precipitable water that, oh, this is a sirup product. I’m trying to remember the website. Well, you have to do a layered layer.
00:05:50:14 – 00:06:11:15
Speaker 1
If you do a layered total precipitable water here, you will find the website and in your Google search you will find the website. It does show some, lower values of moisture aloft, which of course is going to be, favorable for a tornado environment. Sheldon, who is also on the line, sent me a PowerPoint that actually shows the relative humidity.
00:06:11:26 – 00:06:34:16
Speaker 1
Let me just and hit me. Let me just show the slides here. So this is, I didn’t realize this was going to be animating when I clicked on it. So this is showing. Actually, I like it better when it’s not animating. So here we have the 12 V on the 14th, and you do see in the 850 to 700, there’s this region where you have.
00:06:34:18 – 00:06:58:18
Speaker 1
Somewhat drier air coming onshore. So that kind of mid-level dry air is something you might want to be looking for. To help support the development. Convection. So we have here we had the layer two W for this surface to 850 and the upper left 850 to 700, upper right, 700 to 500. And again you do see a lot of moisture at low levels.
00:06:59:01 – 00:07:38:16
Speaker 1
Not as much moisture at an upper level. So you are seeing a little bit of a decrease in, moisture content as you go up, which is favorable, favorable for, the, the destabilization of the atmosphere. Now, I’m not used to talking about the sounder because of course goes 13 founder has been out of commission for almost a year now because the filter we have because the filter apply filter real pros say that three times fast but goes 15 sounders up operating just just fine and goes 14 has a perfectly fine sounder as well.
00:07:38:16 – 00:07:58:10
Speaker 1
And I noticed, on this particular day you can see the low lower values of DPI lifted index. This is pulled right out of a. So this is a project you could look at in networks. And we have values down around minus four and minus five upstream. So this is going from 11 to 17 Z in hourly steps.
00:07:58:10 – 00:08:19:14
Speaker 1
And you can actually see in the sounder data eventually when it when it steps forward you will see the, the right. Here’s the thunderstorm that is actually producing the tornado. And you have these values in the lifted index that are just what you’d expect when you have a tornadic thunderstorm occurring. So, I thought that was kind of cool.
00:08:19:14 – 00:08:45:25
Speaker 1
Again, to look at the I looked at index again. After all this time, going to withdraw because I don’t have a with goes 13 anymore. There is another product that’s being produced. This is the, legacy legacy atmospheric profiles. These are a goes-r product that this is produced using the go sounder. And this is also showing, smaller values.
00:08:46:04 – 00:09:16:18
Speaker 1
This is a, showing smaller values of the, of the left intact lifted index. Again, this is at a 15 C. So let’s look at the storm itself, which is kind of exciting. This is the and now of course it always happens this way. This the tornado was at about at 1518 Z. And of course, that’s when at 15 Z goes 15 is doing its, full disk scan.
00:09:16:21 – 00:09:38:07
Speaker 1
And so we have a 15 Z image and we have a 1530 z image. So here we have the storm coming onshore. It’s also right around sunrise which is which is kind of nice because you can see the overshooting tops over north northwestern Oregon. So it’s a very nice looking thunderstorm, over northwest Oregon, with overshooting tops.
00:09:38:10 – 00:10:00:29
Speaker 1
And this is at 15, 1515 Z and a 1530 Z. You can see it departing here with, I’m not exactly sure what this is. It looks like there might be a banner cloud with this. You can you can imagine all sorts of things. But it does. It does have a very nice. It does, it does look like it has some very nice overshooting tops with it.
00:10:00:29 – 00:10:28:28
Speaker 1
So very strong convection. So not surprising, I guess, that a, tornado was on the ground with this particular storm. Ghost 13 viewed it. So this is a 1515 Z. So it goes 13 is done with its, that of its full disk. So it goes 13 full to 1445. So at 1515, this is just about the time the tornado is on the ground.
00:10:29:11 – 00:10:55:05
Speaker 1
So this this started at 1515 Z. So when it got down to Oregon, it’s probably about 1518 or 15 19ft kind of artsy stuff here. I don’t even really see overshooting tops. But you do see that the nice cirrus shield, there is infrared data. So this is just showing the infrared data at 1430, at 1500 at 14, 4515 and 1530.
00:10:57:25 – 00:11:21:25
Speaker 1
Not some not really strong overshooting tops are only down around -50 Celsius. But you do see some isolated regions where you have the colder the colder cloud tops. So yes, this was a kind of a classic, supercell thunderstorm, probably fairly low top because the top is tropopause was probably pretty low. But it is showing some very nice structure.
00:11:23:09 – 00:11:46:05
Speaker 1
Again, so not surprising. Interesting little tweet from the National Weather Service in Portland. Never had more than three tornado warnings in one day. And they issued ten, on the 14th. So this was a, let me and they have a little write up on it as well. So this got up to a maximum width of 700ft.
00:11:46:07 – 00:12:12:07
Speaker 1
So a very wide tornado, I, I hesitate to call it a wedge, but it was only because it was only, it was less than a mile long. But again, the maximum pass with 225 yards and EF2. So certainly an unusual thing to happen. Over, over Oregon. And again, this was accompanied by a lot, but this is a three day rainfall, from the 13th through the 15th.
00:12:12:09 – 00:12:28:29
Speaker 1
So we saw those we saw that nice atmospheric river coming onshore. So we have regions really pretty, impressive region of at least five inches of rain right along the coast and then, on the inland Range as well. And so.
00:12:29:02 – 00:12:47:02
Speaker 1
Another another product that you can use to look at the impact on this storm. Let’s see if we have this is back to the mimic DPW. And that’s actually all I have. So this is just a 15 minute satellite chat. I really wanted to bring up the coast sounder because it really did give some interesting information. I looked at it a little bit later in the week.
00:12:47:13 – 00:13:08:26
Speaker 1
And it because, I mean, not being a native of Oregon, I’m not familiar with the ghost sounder lifted index climatology there, so I was kind of surprised to see it there. And then I looked again, I think 2 or 3 days ago. And again I saw the listing indices, below zero from the coast 15 sounder, which I thought was unusual.
00:13:09:08 – 00:13:25:01
Speaker 1
But then I started wondering if maybe just happens all the time. But then I looked at the SPC outlooks and they were under General Thunder. So, just a reminder about the coast 15 sounder. So if you have any questions. Sheldon, I know you’re on. If you want to, I can put your your animations back up if you want to talk to them.
00:13:25:07 – 00:13:39:10
Speaker 2
Well, I was looking at the, the Salem, sounding, it looks like the equilibrium level temperatures were, I believe in, like the, -15 Celsius range. If I’m looking at the sounding right, which.
00:13:39:10 – 00:13:41:25
Speaker 1
One do you want? The 12.
00:13:42:08 – 00:14:14:11
Speaker 2
Yeah, I actually I was looking at the university of, of, Wyoming, sounding and, yeah, I think it’s at the, equilibrium levels, like around 543 millibars. Which, if my calculations are right, if I’m doing this right, it’s like -15, -20 Celsius, which is pretty low. So, you would expect, looking at a sounding like that to expect, very warm.
00:14:14:23 – 00:14:22:16
Speaker 2
Cloud tops, the cloud tops not getting much colder than, the equilibrium level, temperature. So.
00:14:22:18 – 00:14:25:19
Speaker 1
You know, the brightness temperatures were around -50.
00:14:25:22 – 00:15:07:08
Speaker 2
Minutes, 50 and. Well, okay. Well, yeah, even if I’m, if I’m doing the, the equilibrium temperature long, it’s it’s probably no, no colder than -30 or -20. That’s that’s a a pretty big, storm to get above an equilibrium level temperature. So, that’s kind of one of the things we used to do when we were doing fairly rainfall estimates, we would look at the equilibrium level temperatures, for for the warm type events and anything above the equilibrium level temperatures that you knew, to further enhance the rainfall.
00:15:07:08 – 00:15:10:29
Speaker 2
And in this case, it probably further enhanced the severe weather.
00:15:10:29 – 00:15:18:05
Speaker 1
Aspects so that, okay. Yeah. This is Bill Snyder on the Sue here in Portland.
00:15:18:08 – 00:15:19:07
Speaker 2
And,
00:15:19:09 – 00:15:22:12
Speaker 1
So in talking about the soundings.
00:15:22:15 – 00:15:24:01
Speaker 2
It’s so happens that day.
00:15:24:01 – 00:15:38:04
Speaker 1
That we did an 18 of these soundings. I don’t know if you have access to that through the, University of Wyoming page. Or maybe they only put, the zero and 12 soundings on there, but it was a lot.
00:15:38:04 – 00:15:41:03
Speaker 2
More unstable at 18 V, which was.
00:15:41:21 – 00:15:51:16
Speaker 1
Kind of more indicative of the environment during the afternoon and, stabilized quite a bit. So that might be something to go back and look at. Yeah.
00:15:51:18 – 00:16:01:29
Speaker 2
Yeah. I, I don’t believe the University of Wyoming puts the 18 the sounding. So, I think they just put the zero and 12 and my recollection is correct.
00:16:02:02 – 00:16:22:16
Speaker 1
Yeah, I unfortunately I don’t have access to it at the moment. We are archiving that data, but I don’t have it in a format that I can display it. So I can’t even look at it at the moment. Yeah, I don’t see any in the in here. So.
00:16:22:18 – 00:16:30:02
Speaker 1
But I believe you. Hey, Scott. Yeah, yeah, I saw I showed that one nice, day night band.
00:16:31:10 – 00:16:32:00
Speaker 2
Did you.
00:16:32:10 – 00:16:57:04
Speaker 1
Maybe I missed it, but did you try to look for any new caps forming? New caps, soundings over Oregon? Yeah, but there wouldn’t be any at 14 or 15 C, there would be some at 11 C, but I don’t have the, new cap soundings for then. No. Yeah. I’m sure your could help. Yeah. Because that would be another good way to, you know, and they all complement each other.
00:16:57:06 – 00:17:09:07
Speaker 1
And, looking at these different data sets, I really like the presentation. And looking at even, the big picture of you looking across the whole Pacific there, but then the zero zero and.
00:17:09:07 – 00:17:13:23
Speaker 2
Really zooming in and, on the northwest there and then,
00:17:13:25 – 00:17:27:25
Speaker 1
A good reminder to 15,000 or so working. Yeah, yeah. Tony and Scott, I can provide that data if you want me to, get that for you. So, just so you know, I think it would complement everything else that.
00:17:27:25 – 00:17:31:27
Speaker 2
You’ve been doing, and.
00:17:32:00 – 00:17:33:12
Speaker 1
And we are promising. Right.
00:17:33:12 – 00:17:35:20
Speaker 2
Trial and new caps reminding everyone.
00:17:35:20 – 00:18:02:07
Speaker 1
There’s also new cap on Aylward. Yes. Yes, indeed. With the quality flags even though they may be hard to see for some folks. Yep. Underneath the NP products under the satellite, there are no new caps sounding available. Yeah. And Scott, is there some lightning there in some of those storms? Offshore there, it’s a little difficult to tell, but it might be.
00:18:02:12 – 00:18:24:24
Speaker 1
Yeah, that’s the point. So yeah, the moon is so nice. It’s hard to see. You’d really have to. I’d have to zoom. I’d want to zoom in. I mean, the coast is right here, so I think we’re seeing some there bright spots here that I think are associated with the, with the cities on the coast.
00:18:25:08 – 00:18:48:22
Speaker 1
I don’t see any obvious lightning streaks in here. I’d have to zoom in. I have to I I’d want to zoom it in a lot farther to, To be sure. But I don’t see anything there. Gerald, did you look at this at higher zoom? Zoom in to see if there were any streaks. Hey, I zoomed in.
00:18:48:22 – 00:19:15:18
Speaker 1
I didn’t see much of the lightning any more. As you. What? You were mentioning, which was the diffusion of light from the city lights. Yeah. So, but, Yeah. So. But this, I mean, that I could talk about this particular image and that this structure in the Cirrus Shield over British Columbia and, but that’s that’s something for another telecon one.
00:19:15:18 – 00:19:28:03
Speaker 2
One thing I’d like to add. I did take a look at the, coated spill water loop. And, if you go well, I mean, there’s there’s really no way to.
00:19:28:06 – 00:19:30:27
Speaker 1
Know which which which one? Yours are there.
00:19:30:29 – 00:19:32:02
Speaker 2
Well,
00:19:32:04 – 00:19:33:07
Speaker 1
I don’t want to call it, I guess the.
00:19:33:07 – 00:20:02:09
Speaker 2
Blended tea, but you probably would be able to see it as well with, Tony. Swimmers mimic live. Especially around zero UTC on October 14th, which would have been about, at least 15 hours before the event. You see very, very high moisture with, yeah, the, the crown, the atmospheric river that’s, coming into western Oregon.
00:20:02:12 – 00:20:47:27
Speaker 2
And you see a very, very sharp gradient on the, the western edge of that moisture plume, not, probably, a change in moisture of at least, and ten 15mm, over a very short distance. And that, that that’s one thing that, forecasters, need to be kind of. And I’ve gone for the past ability of the severe weather, that short gradient of the, the water on the western edge of the, the moisture plume back and, you know, hold together the way it is as it’s, offshore and moving toward the coast, that could have alerted and also alerted the forecaster to the possibility and maybe increase their
00:20:47:27 – 00:20:58:13
Speaker 2
confidence of the possibility of severe weather, 12, maybe as much as 15 hours ahead of time.
00:20:58:15 – 00:21:18:28
Speaker 1
This is Warren and Mona Ray. Just, I don’t know, maybe I’m missing the obvious, but how does that alert a West Coast forecaster to the possibility of severe weather?
00:21:19:00 – 00:21:20:04
Speaker 1
Sheldon? Well.
00:21:20:07 – 00:21:22:02
Speaker 2
I, I didn’t I.
00:21:22:06 – 00:21:30:05
Speaker 1
How does the sharp gradient in total precipitable water alert a West coast forecast or to the possibility of severe weather?
00:21:30:08 – 00:21:55:20
Speaker 2
Well, it’s, it’s very unstable. We’ve we’ve, you know, we’ve seen that as a satellite signature for, for decades, especially over the middle of the country. And I’ve even seen as a, during the summertime, when, you had this, short gradient of the of the water that comes from the Gulf of California into, Arizona, southeastern California.
00:21:55:23 – 00:22:27:09
Speaker 2
And, you have very dry air. Very sharp gradient between that and the very dry air along the, mid California coast. And, it just creates a very unstable situation that, that, that satellite signature of, of a sharp water gradient. And it’s very similar to, you know, the types of satellite signatures that you see for severe weather where the severe weather occurs, with that, that chalks up the water gradient.
00:22:27:09 – 00:22:50:25
Speaker 2
And it also aligns with the, the sharp gradient of lifted index. Talking about the gradient, not so much, the very, very high instability or the very high up the water, but but the gradient of the little border, it just kind of creates, and very strong instability.
00:22:50:28 – 00:23:01:25
Speaker 1
Yeah. I’m just looking at the animation here as you’re talking, and I’m not quite sure I see that kind of gradient, around the time of the tornado on the Oregon coast.
00:23:01:25 – 00:23:12:03
Speaker 2
So. No, no, no, I’m, what I’m talking about is, 14 hours beforehand that you see on the 14, when you could see it a lot better right out over the ocean.
00:23:12:03 – 00:23:12:24
Speaker 1
Yes.
00:23:12:27 – 00:23:46:20
Speaker 2
And you stepped through that for the next 12 hours, and you hope that gradient stays, as sharp as it is that as it gets closer. But, it’s, it’s it’s kind of a way to to keep the forecaster, aware of the possibility that there is a signature out there. And if it holds together as it as it moves closer to the coast and inland, it, could continue the increased chance of, of a severe weather event.
00:23:46:23 – 00:24:22:24
Speaker 1
Okay. Was that clear warning? Yeah, sure. You know, well, the call was going. I’ll just mention I pulled up the, 18 the, Salem sounding from the SPC website, and it’s a, it’s a classic sounding for, severe weather along the West Coast, which the ultimately the circumstances, for that aren’t really that much different in, in Bill’s area up in Portland and for us here in the central Coast of California.
00:24:22:24 – 00:24:34:13
Speaker 1
And, you know, it shows, close to 900 joules per kilogram of instability through a deep later. Yeah. And especially the really strong, low.
00:24:34:13 – 00:24:35:01
Speaker 2
Level.
00:24:35:19 – 00:25:00:21
Speaker 1
Wind shear to 925 and even more to 850. And that’s, you know, combined appreciable cape with really strong, low level wind shear here on the West Coast. And that’s sort of a classic set of. Yeah, I was going to look for it, but I’m afraid that from I’m not familiar enough for the SPC archive system, so but I, I’m glad you found it there.
00:25:00:21 – 00:25:03:06
Speaker 1
So maybe after this I’ll go and look at it.
00:25:03:09 – 00:25:31:13
Speaker 2
It may also be good to to maybe look at the, the the goes west, soundings, the cape and the, the headlines, out over the, waters, within 100 miles, maybe a little bit more than that off the coast, between zero and, six, nine, three. Yeah. And see any trends or or just see how unstable things were around over the ocean.
00:25:32:16 – 00:25:58:25
Speaker 2
As a, as a kind of a key point to, because, just, you know, the forecasts are realizing that, boy, it’s unstable over the water. But if it if it can remain that way as it heads east toward the coast, there’s something across that to keep an eye on there. And, of course, you know, it’s it’s very unusual to have such severe weather on the, the West Coast like this.
00:25:58:25 – 00:26:10:27
Speaker 2
So. And especially in October. So, you’re not thinking about things like that. So, it’s something to think about, you know, possibly for the future or if it ever happens again.
00:26:11:08 – 00:26:32:14
Speaker 1
I’m afraid it’s gone from the archive on, on the since. So it’s it’s around, but it’s not easily accessible anymore. But it’s gone. Well, does anyone else have any more comments? We’re almost up to 30 minutes, and I don’t want to go too long.
00:26:32:16 – 00:26:47:04
Speaker 1
And hearing none, I’ll say thanks for, thanks for joining. If you want to see this, again, this they recorded version of this will be available on the chat website at the, at the.