Service Assessment for Parkersburg, IA EF-5 tornado

[Jarrod Cook]

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

 

[Mike Johnston]

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.

 

[rdale]

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?