There was much anticipation from meteorologists, storm
chasers, and weather enthusiasts for a “tornado outbreak” on the
afternoon/evening of 26 April 2016. As of this posting, 7 tornadoes have been
entered into the preliminary SPC tornado report database. Interestingly, the
definition (depending on your opinion) of “tornado outbreak” has been met (6 or
more tornadoes in one 24h period), yet some members of the meteorological
community seem to be surprised by the lack of tornado frequency on Tuesday, seemingly
largely to do the sensationalism and hype leading up to the event (probably more
so than any other severe weather event that I can remember). The truth is, the
atmosphere does not care about your anticipation, excitement, fear, or any
feelings you may have. The hype
associated with 26 April was totally a social construct. Yes, the synoptic scale weather pattern
featured pattern recognition features that were associated with major events of
the past. Mesoscale details the day of the event were pretty clear to me. Deep-layer wind shear vectors were ominously parallel
to most sources of lift in the boundary layer, and thus would promote more
updraft/downdraft interaction, storm mergers, and an overall linear
organization to the convection. Another reminder
of just how goldilocks the conditions must be to get tornadic supercells, and
that MESOSCALE DETAILS matter. No model
is going to help you with this days/weeks in advance. Take this as a reminder from someone on a 5
member team who is trying to push tornado activity level forecasts into the
week 2 and week 3 realm!
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment