• 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.

South American MCC

Joined
Mar 8, 2006
Messages
136
Location
Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
I was just looking over the latest 30-day global rainfall anomalies from NASA's TRMM satellite. To my bemusement there was a HUGE amount of rain that has fallen over far-southern Brazil, Uruguay and far-northeast Argentina... obviously an MCC since it's so far south and spring. I looked up the news on this event and it appears there were thousands of people evacuated due to flooding with numerous tornadoes embedded.

CIMSS in their blog had a good description of the event and an EXCELLENT satellite loop of the MCC!

http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/3879
 
Those are some very impressive cloud top temperatures, numerous times there were shots of near -90C! :eek:

Willoughby, do you have the link for rainfall totals down there? I'm sure they were just as impressive.
 
I'm not sure what the rainfall totals were there but I'd assume plenty when seeing the anomaly chart.
http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov/trmm_rain/Events/latest_big_anomaly.gif

(So rare to see such a large blob outside of the tropics!)

-Actually it's not THAT rare, particularly during positive ENSO phases.

If you're interested in South American MCCs, here are some links to a couple recent papers of mine on the subject:

Subtropical South American MCC Climatology:
http://www.wku.edu/~joshua.durkee/publications/Durkee%20and%20Mote%20%5B2009%5D%20A%20climatology%20of%20subtropical%20South%20American%20mesoscale%20convective%20complexes.pdf

Subtropical South American MCC rainfall:
http://web2.wku.edu/~joshua.durkee/publications/Durkee%20et%20al.%20%5B2009%5D%20The%20contribution%20of%20mesoscale%20convective%20complexes%20to%20warm-season%20rainfall%20across%20subtropical%20South%20America.pdf
 
On the link to the CIMSS page, they mentioned something about an "enhanced-v signature" that indicates severe weather. Is this at all related at all to a "v-notch" that can be found on supercells? I'm guessing not, but I thought I'd ask to see if anybody knew anything about that.
 
On the link to the CIMSS page, they mentioned something about an "enhanced-v signature" that indicates severe weather. Is this at all related at all to a "v-notch" that can be found on supercells? I'm guessing not, but I thought I'd ask to see if anybody knew anything about that.

I've wondered that too, when I've come across the term. Jeff Haby explains it simply. The difference appears to be which remote sensing device you're using to look at a storm: IR satellite or radar reflectivity. Satellite depicts an "enhanced V" of cold cloud tops blown downwind; radar shows the standard "V-notch" of dual precip bands streaming downwind from the storm. Both depict a similar phenomenon.
 
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