Hodographs

[Rich Long]

I've been on Met Ed learning about Hodographs and right now I'm shaky at best with them. In this morning in Nashville we have no storms and none are expected, but if we were going to have storms, based on my (maybe flawed) reading of this hodograph relative storm motion would be around 060 degrees? Would this be correct?

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/soundings/09101512_OBS/

 

[rdale]

Not quite... First - don't say "relative storm motion" if you want the storm motion.

Note that the storm motion is plotted for you on the map already. A left-mover would be out of 255*, a right mover comes from 290*, and a "generic" storm would be out of 278*.

Since all of the winds are from the west, you're initial thinking would be to have storm motion to the east - not the northeast. You can also look at the mean wind product, for eithed the SFC-6 or the cloud-bearing layer.

 

[Rich Long]

Ah I see exactly what you are saying! Met Ed doesn't have all those fancy smancy numbers at the bottom

I will get all of this eventually.. Thanks for putting up with noob questions I'm sure there will be more..lol

 

[rdale]

Not a problem. I also highly recommend getting BUFKIT and playing with the info there. The very newest version 9.08 has "BUFKIT University" which goes into more detail.

http://wdtb.noaa.gov/courses/winterawoc/BUFKIT/BUFKIT_AWOC_Winter_9.08.zip

Also look at RTM-230, 2000: Skew T Log P Diagram and Sounding Analysis at http://www.unca.edu/~dmiller/NWS SkewT manual.doc