Crisp Highly Visible Anvils vs. supercells with overcast skies

[Hannah.Taylor]

Is there anyway to tell when forecasting if during your day you will see crisp highly visible anvils for miles and miles as opposed to supercells that develop with overcast skies and have no noticeable anvil?

(image borrowed from google images, no idea who shot it so i cant credit the photographer)

Camera
Canon PowerShot A310

Focal Length
5mm

Aperture
f/5.6

Exposure
1/250s​

​

 

[rdale]

You'd want a day with clear skies and isolated storms versus an active set of storms with widespread precip.

 

[Paul Knightley]

You need to determine how much surrounding cloud is likely, and unfortunately models are not great at simulating cloud, especially low cloud! As a very simple rule of thumb, though, the lower the relative humidity (RH) is, the less cloud there will be. Thus, high plains days with dewpoints in the low 50s and air temps in the high 80s should yield pretty decent shows - of course, cloud can exist at many levels, and so looking at something like the 700hPa RH should help in seeing whether 'mid level' cloud is present.

Oftentimes, though, the moist sector will have quite a lot of cumulus or even stratocumulus in, indicating plentiful moisture for the storm to feed on. To get a crisp anvil view, you would need to be in a drier airmass - for example, west of the dryline looking at the storms to the east. Indeed, dryline storm days can give the best views of departing storm clouds.

 

[Hannah.Taylor]

very good info from you both, thank you!