Radar from 3/2/2012 Outbreak

[BBauer]

Just thought I would share a few frame grabs from my armchair chase yesterday, pretty haunting knowing the destruction these towns went through...

The dual supercells, one spawned the tornado that hit Henryville, IN...

Does anyone know which cell's tornado hit Henryville? The leading cell or trailing cell?

BV from West Liberty as the tornado passed over town...

This is a few minutes later, the reflectivity showing a hook echo...

 

[Jeff Duda]

I found myself rather frustrated with how speckled and ugly the velocities looked in the updraft regions of almost every supercell in IN/OH/KY. They seemed "dirtier" than normal. I think it had something to do with the VCP the various radars were in. They were all in 212, which is meant for speed and not accuracy. Also I think the de-aliasing algorithms were designed for the legacy velocity resolution, so they don't do so well with the super-resolution velocity.

 

[Bob Hartig]

The leading storm put down the Henryville/Marysville tornado. We intercepted that one southwest of those towns, north of Palmyra. Then we dropped down and tracked with the second supercell from west of Palmyra back into town, where the wall cloud passed to the north. It seemed to be struggling a bit at that point, and my guess is that cold air from the preceding storm was undercutting it. But later velocity couplets looked pretty vigorous, and I'm curious whether it put down any tubes farther east. I've got to believe that it did.

 

[Adam Simone]

I didn't save many radar images from yesterday but here is one I captured after the tornado went through New Pekin, IN. I believe I was using the HD radar out of Louisville when I saved this one.

 

[Jenn Brindley]

The leading cell is the one that produced the tornado that hit Henryville.

~J

 

[BBauer]

I found myself rather frustrated with how speckled and ugly the velocities looked in the updraft regions of almost every supercell in IN/OH/KY. They seemed "dirtier" than normal. I think it had something to do with the VCP the various radars were in. They were all in 212, which is meant for speed and not accuracy. Also I think the de-aliasing algorithms were designed for the legacy velocity resolution, so they don't do so well with the super-resolution velocity.

I noticed this too, thanks for the explanation

 

[Zach Young]

I found myself rather frustrated with how speckled and ugly the velocities looked in the updraft regions of almost every supercell in IN/OH/KY. They seemed "dirtier" than normal. I think it had something to do with the VCP the various radars were in. They were all in 212, which is meant for speed and not accuracy. Also I think the de-aliasing algorithms were designed for the legacy velocity resolution, so they don't do so well with the super-resolution velocity.

There was also a lot of range folding and probably some velocity folding going on too.

 

[Josh Richardson]

This is the only one I saved, shot of the West Liberty KY cell.

 

[Mark Ellinwood]

I made a few Reflectivity/SRV loops of the storms that produced debris ball radar signatures (though I didn't get all of them). I was also frustrated with the SRV output, with and without dealiasing. The SRV on the loops are not dealiased.

They're all 3-4 MB in size:

Henryville/Marysville, IN: http://madusweather.com/misc/2012_03/20120302_INdebrisball_loop.gif

West Liberty, KY: http://madusweather.com/misc/2012_03/20120302_KYdebrisball_loop.gif

Salyersville, KY: http://madusweather.com/misc/2012_03/20120302_Salyersvilledebrisball_loop.gif

 

[Skip Talbot]

I'm in the process of making a level 2 animation for this event with the Henryville tornado plotted along with several chaser's positions and a Google Maps terrain underlay. If you were chasing in the vicinity of southern IN/northern Kentucky, saved your GPS log, and would like to be included on the animation, shoot me a PM and send me the log.

 

[Jeff Duda]

There was also a lot of range folding and probably some velocity folding going on too.

It was something other than that. I've seen enough velocity patterns in the intense parts of supercells to know that this speckling pattern was not just simple velocity aliasing. Unfortunately I already deleted the image that shows what I mean so I can't show exactly what I mean.

 

[ScottKoenig]

Spent a few minutes pulling radar archive data of the storms from 3/2/2012.

EF4 that touched down near Fredericksburg, IN.

Base Velocity of EF4 that touched down near Fredericksburg, IN.

Base Velocity EF4 right on top of Henryville, IN

Supercell on top of Henryville, IN

 

[Skip Talbot]

I wanted to post this sooner, but I had to spent quite a bit of time working on this software to get it to plot tornado tracks and better mapping overlays. Here's the level 2 base reflectivity loop, plotted tornado tracks, and GPS positions from various storm chasers during the March 2 tornado outbreak:

Watch video >

Thanks to Jennifer Brindley Ubl for compiling the track information for me, as well as NWS Louisville for actually surveying the tracks.