05/20/09 DISC: NE

[Larry J. Kosch]

Thought I would open a discussion about the storms that were chased in NE 05/20/09. I saw from the REPORTS thread that a number of storm chasers saw good cloud structure. They also found themselves being pelted with hail and nearly blown off their feet by outflow gusts.

One interesting radar loop I found on wunderground.com (listed below) showed the storm cluster near Bridgeport. Then if you follow the storm thru the loop, it held together pretty good. It even got that supercell look just sounth of Norfolk close to midnight!

EDIT: For some *&^( reason, I could not upload a GIF file. The upload kept changing it to JPG.

EDIT: Try this link http://www.wunderground.com/radar/radblast.asp?ID=LNX then scroll down to Radar Archive, select 05/20/09 and watch the radar loop.

Note to Mods: Sorry I had this in the wrong area. My bad.

Any comments about why we didn't get any "ice ball in hell" chances to see any tornadic activity??

 

[Larry J. Kosch]

Severe Storm Setup Sypnosis

Sheesh. Since nobody is brave enough to dip their toes in the icy cold waters, guess I will take the first leap!!

To me, the severe weather setup was marginal, very marginal. In fact, I would be very much surprised if a storm had gone super celluar and dropped a tornado! SPC did have a MSD about a possible SWW for NE but never did issue one.

A few basic elements of a severe weather setup was lacking: 1. Inflow of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico was blocked by the upper level low system that dumped much needed rain over FL. 2. The jet stream, which usually dips deep into the SW US before it streaks NE over the Midwest, was hiding in the forests across the US-Canada border. 3. Lack of a low pressure system along the cold front boundary kept the firing storms to a minimum. 4. Lack of a dryline, even though it showed up on Nexrad radar really well over central NE, just didn't have the "punch" needed to drive the storms once they were initiated.

Still some good storms developed and rode right along the cold front draped across NE. The cold front stalled out overnight, but it should get thru NE sometimes today 05-21 or tomorrow 05-22. The archived radar loop for NE showed how this storm cluster that went over Braynard managed to slide along the stalled front and was still active south of Norfolk at midnight.

Looks like a number of storm chasers got in some good mileage in following the storms. This should be a good "dry run" to work out the bugs before we get hit with a big tornado outbreak. Good cloud shots by the way!

Any other comments? The waters is getting warmer now!!

 

[Jeff Duda]

Well analyzed

Larry, I think you pretty much spelled it out. Good analysis.