Questions?

[JF Massicotte]

I hope I'm not crashing the thread..

SBCAPE is useful for storm environments where only a low level of inflow is ingested into the storm, I personally don't use this much because it's tricky to identify situations that would benefit from this method. Use this when you think that MLCAPE might mask some short CAPE scenarios. The downside is that it might be a red herring if you have a very warm, moist layer right at the surface (evapotranspiration from crops comes to mind) and these types of scenarios aren't as common.

One use of SBCAPE is to confirm MLCAPE is rooted to the surface. Sometimes you get an unstable inversion at 50mb above the surface and surface parcel is stable. MLCAPE will show positive values but lack of SBCAPE will confirm slightly elevated stuff.

 

[Greg Blumberg]

To expand upon the question about outflow boundaries, I will add that pretty much the same rules for outflow boundaries can be applied to synoptic scale boundaries as well (cold fronts, warm fronts, stationary fronts, etc.) The only difference is that the source of air for outflow boundaries is from a thunderstorm rather than an air mass. The important thing for chasing is that, like in fronts, you want to come across a boundary that is stationary for your best supercell potential. If your outflow boundary is moving, it can act like a cold front and develop a non-supercellular mode of convection.

Finally, boundaries of all types are important because they are often sources of low-level horizontal vorticity. When a storm forms on the boundary, it can utilize that vorticity by tilting and stretching it to form a supercell. Additionally, they're good as a source of low level convergence.

 

[Danny Neal]

For Jordan and Jeremy who posed questions about night time chasing, I wrote a blog about it and started a thread specifically about it. http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?26646-Night-time-chasing-strategies&goto=newpost

 

[Teri Mooney]

Skip: How do you underlay visible satellite data feed onto GrLevel3? Thanks so much for your input.

 

[Jim Parsons]

Skip: How do you underlay visible satellite data feed onto GrLevel3? Thanks so much for your input.

In your placefile manager, make sure both check boxes next to the sat file are checked.

 

[Danny Neal]

Alright we covered....

[x] RFD
[x] Night Chasing
[x] Outflow Boundaries
[x] Forecasting

What else does anyone want to know more about? It takes me a while to do these blogs, but as long as people learn from them I will never stop doing them. The floor is now open.

 

[welkin87]

Thanks for that post Skip! (The one about the supercells and what they require). It was VERY helpful, but I have a question. Where does helicity tie in with all this? Or is it a combination of some of the ingredients you mentioned (like shear)?