Low-Shear/High CAPE tornado formations

Jim wyman

EF0
Joined
Apr 23, 2009
Messages
46
Location
Lexington Park , MD
WE had a Tornado Warning Issed the other day in St. Marys County , MD due to several reports of a funnel cloud being sighted... Looking at the RUC runs and current data, the shear at all levels were ~20-25 kts.... The CAPE was up around 2500+...

My question is: Is it possible to have tornado formation in a low EHI/Shear environment? IF so, how does that happen?

Thanks

Jim
 
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Well, shear is the change in wind speed or direction at two different levels. Did you mean the wind speed at all levels was 25 knots?

Tornadoes can occur anytime a thunderstorm occurs. Lots of tornadoes occur in high cape low shear environments as well as low cape high shear environments. I suspect there was a boundary interaction that was hidden from the comparatively low resolution RUC model. Perhaps the storm interacted favorably with an outflow boundary from an earlier or adjacent storm, or perhaps there was a seabreeze. These boundaries locally enhance the directional shear.
 
There has been a thread on this forum with on this topic recently. Read through this thread and perhaps you will find some answers.
 
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