Splitting Supercells; The right and left movers

[Stephen Barabas]

As a meteorology major, the dynamics of the atmosphere are of high interest to me. Having a concentration in mesoscale and microscale focuses that interest down.

I went to a lecture granted by Mr Rich Rotunno who presented about "Models of Severe Convection: From Theory to Application" and it was, needless to say, extremely fascinating.

I'm making this thread so, if people of interest wish to share their information on splitting supercells, that would be great! Any links or personally gained knowledge is excellent.

Much appreciated!

 

[Jeff Duda]

Here's some factoids I picked up from a COMET module:

Clockwise curving hodographs favor right moving supercells (or right splits)

Counterclockwise curving hodographs favor left moving supercells (or left splits)

Straight lined hodographs favor both left and right splits equally.

I'm not 100% of the reason for these facts, but I think it has an intimate relationship with SRH. If you have a clockwise turning hodograph and a right moving storm, the SRH for that storm will be significantly higher than it would for a left moving storm. The opposite is true for a counterclockwise curving hodograph. For a straight line hodograph, the mean wind vector should like on the midpoint of the hodograph, so that there is some symmetry between left and right moving storms, symmetry such that SRH would be the same for both right and left moving storms (assuming the actual storm motion vectors had the same perturbation from the mean flow), thus favoring both equally.

 

[Stephen Barabas]

Thanks Jeff! Yeah, COMET is an amazing site. I learn a great deal when listening to the modules.

 

[GPhillips]

Jeff Snyder answered a similar question in a thread a few years back...

http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3927

where he linked to a summary paper by Joe Klemp that does a very good job of explaining it.

http://twister.ou.edu/MM2005/Klemp87Review.pdf