R R Smith
EF0
Yet another California tornado warned storm occurred yesterday afternoon/evening in the northern Sacramento Valley. The storm was warned three different times between 5:25 PM PDT and 9:15 PM PDT in Glenn, Tehama and Butte Counties. It produced numerous funnel clouds and a yet to be confirmed brief tornado just NW of Chico.
This setup was somewhat different than Wednesday's when two confirmed tornadoes touched down. It appeared to me that some but all of the prime ingredients were in place. A cold core 60 knot 500 flow, 500 CAPE in the late afternoon, but weaker surface and 700 winds. I thought there would be a likelyhood of convection somewhere in the northern Sacramento Valley providing that the front moved through in a timely manner to allow afternoon sunbreaks to occur. That however never happened as the surface front appeared to stall and become more oriented north to south. However, an area of convergence running from west of Redding down past Orland fired up some storms in the late afternoon murk. The southern tail end Charley storm west of Orland got into some favorable orographically enhanced low level shear and was able to persist and rotate. And I sat at home again and watched it all on my laptop...
This setup was somewhat different than Wednesday's when two confirmed tornadoes touched down. It appeared to me that some but all of the prime ingredients were in place. A cold core 60 knot 500 flow, 500 CAPE in the late afternoon, but weaker surface and 700 winds. I thought there would be a likelyhood of convection somewhere in the northern Sacramento Valley providing that the front moved through in a timely manner to allow afternoon sunbreaks to occur. That however never happened as the surface front appeared to stall and become more oriented north to south. However, an area of convergence running from west of Redding down past Orland fired up some storms in the late afternoon murk. The southern tail end Charley storm west of Orland got into some favorable orographically enhanced low level shear and was able to persist and rotate. And I sat at home again and watched it all on my laptop...
