• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

Service Assessment for Parkersburg, IA EF-5 tornado

Jarrod Cook

Jarrod Cook

EF2
Joined
Mar 6, 2005
Messages
189
Location
Peoria, IL
The service assessment has been released for the EF-5 tornado that struck Parkersburg, IA. It's an interesting read - with lots of good facts on how smooth operations where, where things could have been improved (both with NWS and Emergency Management), and recaps the meteorological aspects of the event.

One interesting aspect of the radar analysis is they found evidence of a Decending Reflectivity Core (DCR) which has been shown to occur just before tornados form. A research report was referenced to our own Aaron Kennedy on this subject.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/dmx/ParkersburgSvcAssmntfinal.pdf
 
Thanks for the link; a good Sunday afternoon read.

The implication of gravity waves in the intensification of the cells is also interesting. Gravity waves seem to be implicated in quite a few of these post-event analyses, but are seldom cited in actual forecast products. I'm unclear whether detection of gravity waves in real-time is just very difficult, or whether the role of gravity waves in supercell intensification / tornadogenesis is not sufficiently developed to be incorporated into operational forecasting.
 
Both of the above... Seeing them is tough - and then correlating to storm structure in realtime is even harder. Maybe with the future GOES satellites with their <5 minute updates will help?
 
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