Skew-T plots

[Maggie Kahman]

Would anyone care to help me be more accurate in reading one? Tonights CAPE is--well, wait. Now im really confused. To find CAPE, parcel has to be warmer then ambient. Which it is, in 2 places. Which one do I look at? Also, from 950 to a little more then 150, the parcel line follows the dry adiabat line. That means something, but I dont remember what.

This is the sounding im looking at.

http://weather.unisys.com/upper_air/skew/skew_KOAX.html

Help would be greatly appereciated

Thank you.

 

[Terry Tyler]

there aint even no cape in that diagram, just a sliver of weak instability in the mid levels...

i aint gonna lie to you, i dont even look at the dry adiabats and wet adiabats...just look at the temperture, parcel lapse rate and your dewpoint...

aint never had no use for the other lines...the information all those other lines get can be found in the indicies table at the bottom of the diagram...

those lines are similar to the mathematical formulas made to make the indicies...i dont care about the math...just the finished product...

i struggled with the skew-t for a while, im sure everyone has when they first look at one...but the one place that really helped me understand the skew-t was this site...

https://www.meted.ucar.edu/loginForm.php?urlPath=mesoprim/cape

now, that site is going to ask for you to register before you can look at it...thats the first in 3 volumes about storms, and shear and whatnot...if its that important to you, you should study them over and over again if you havent seen them before...

sometimes, you gotta go through the module several times to really understand the material...i had to anyway...

i made you this little picture here...i hope it helps you out...

 

[Brian Emfinger]

http://www.theweatherprediction.com/thermo/

http://www.theweatherprediction.com/thermo/parameters/

can help as well.

 

[Shane Adams]

I really understood the skew-t diagram for about two hours back in 2002, when I attended one of Tim Vasquez' weather classes in Norman. But I woke up the next day, and couldn't remember any of it. I looked through the notes I had taken and they may as well been Chinese. I haven't looked at a skew-t since.

 

[Jason Boggs]

Here are a few more sites that can help:

http://twister.sbs.ohio-state.edu/helpdocs/skew_T_help.html

http://www.personal.psu.edu/smd293/meteo482/overview.html

http://www.thewxpage.com/upperairtutorial.html

http://weather.unisys.com/upper_air/skew/details.html

 

[Maggie Kahman]

Boy Shane. You solved that problem quick, huh...lol

 

[Bill Hark]

Maggie,

If you haven't bought them already and are relativley new to chasing and forecasting, I would suggest the following books, The Storm Chasing Handbook and The Weather Forecasting Handbook by Tim Vasquez:

http://www.weathergraphics.com/chasing/

http://www.weathergraphics.com/fcstbook/

These have a lot of forecasting info, much of it related to chasing.

Bill Hark

 

[Terry Tyler]

Here are a few more sites that can help:

http://twister.sbs.ohio-state.edu/helpdocs/skew_T_help.html

http://www.personal.psu.edu/smd293/meteo482/overview.html

http://www.thewxpage.com/upperairtutorial.html

http://weather.unisys.com/upper_air/skew/details.html

those are some really good resources, jason...

its amazing the kind of information on the internet...you could learn about anything youd like...if you have the patience to sit down, and learn it...

 

[Tim Vasquez]

To find CAPE, parcel has to be warmer then ambient. Which it is, in 2 places. Which one do I look at?

I think the sounding you asked about expired as I don't see the parcel crossing over... I now see 12/00Z. I looked at the one Terry Tyler posted and the CAPE he has painted is correct. You don't get it from the bottom as this is a mixed layer parcel... it will have 0 CAPE in that layer.

Also, from 950 to a little more then 150, the parcel line follows the dry adiabat line. That means something, but I dont remember what.

Actually it doesn't mean anything... a lifted parcel will always follow either the moist adiabat or dry adiabat. However once you get into the upper troposphere, the moist and dry adiabats tend to become parallel to each other. You're thinking of the environmental sounding having a segment that's parallel to the dry adiabat... that's a whole different animal and is called a steep lapse rate.

Tim

 

[Marko Korosec]

This is the sounding from OAX Maggie was talking about... http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/images/2007111112.72558.skewt.gif

Here are some more links about skew-Ts..

http://www.downunderchase.com/storminfo/stormguide/PDF/Storms07.pdf
http://www.met.tamu.edu/class/atmo352/aws-tr79-006.pdf (best resource so far I think)

 

[Michael Stanga]

Thanks for including my site on the list Jason. I worked for a while to put something together for that as most people visiting my site didnt really understand why a SKEW-T was important (Doh!), and as always comments/suggestions are welcome.