Canadian River Valley Vorticity?

[NealRasmussen]

I'm wondering if the south bank of the Canadian River generates vorticity. If you go west of Riverwind Casino you drive up the slope I'm talking about. Seems like a 100' higher plateau from Norman going west-northwest to south of el reno.

Any southerly boundary layer flow 'falling' over this 'cliff' will have positive vorticity generated in it, no? I picture smoke curling over a ledge. The vorticity generated either zero if perpendicular, or +- depending on the angle.

Then this swath of vorticity lace air is drawn into any cell along the Canadian from NW Norman, to el Reno.

The only remedy for this is massive teraforming. OK, joking about the teraforming, but not about the vorticity gen.

Neal

 

[Jeff Duda]

While the brute motion of air curling downward over a topographical feature is by definition vorticity, I'm not sure if the horizontally oriented vorticity generated by flow going over a river bank like the South Canadian River is strong enough or on a large enough scale to really do anything. The topography isn't big enough or consistent enough to effect anything on the mesoscale or above, and I doubt it would be enough to impact anything on the storm scale, too. It probably could have an impact on the tornado scale, but in order for that to be realized, a rotating storm looking to produce a tornado would have to move over that (in other words, that topographical feature will not generate a storm nor make a storm rotate...those ingredients need to already be present).