Radar, Winds, and Tornado Warnings

Okay, this is my last animation for this incredible tornado outbreak. Amazing to see how the surface winds remain southerly, contributing to substantial clockwise turning hodographs.

April 27 Tornado Reports and Warnings

Quite a remarkable job by the National Weather Service local offices throughout this event.

WSR-88D View of the Historic Supercell

Weather Surveillance Radar WSR 88-D (88 is for 1988, the year it began being implemented; D is for Doppler) is the primary nowcasting tool used to issue severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings for meteorologists working at local National Weather service offices. It is a vital infrastructure that has saved countless lives. Below I have provided an animation of a moving-window radar view of a very long-track supercell that originated in Mississippi before finally decaying in North Carolina. While it is not clear yet if the storm was producing a tornado throughout its entire life, it will certainly go down in history as one of the longest track supercells ever! Base reflectivity is shown on the left, and storm-relative velocity on the right. It is important to keep in mind that as the storm is moving, the altitude at which the radar beam is sampling is constantly changing. This is especially important when the storm gets far away from the radar site. Enjoy, and please respect copyrights.

Warning Frenzy

Unbelievable number of tornado warnings in the past 24-hours. Hats off to local WFOs and the SPC for what I consider to be a very well-forecasted event. More maps to come as the details become clearer...

Mid-April Madness Animation

http://vgensini.myweb.uga.edu/animations/April2011.mp4

Mid-April Madness

Today marks the finale of a 3-day severe weather episode across the Central and Eastern U.S. As memorizing as tornadoes can be sometimes, they can become particularly dangerous in densely populated areas as we saw today. The damage pictures are sad and amazing at the same time. My thoughts are with those who have been impacted by the events of the previous days...

Meteorologically speaking, this system was amazing. I don't have time to go into further detail at the moment, but I have annotated a surface weather map of significant surface features and severe reports from the three-day event.