EWP: UW-CTC captures southwest building line of thunderstorms

Another day at the EWP with storms initiating in the late morning so immediately grabbing screen shots and getting forecasters to look at the cloud-top cooling products while they are relevant is a challenge.

Below are some figures of the UW-CTC rate products (bottom left panels) from AWIPS-II  showing the southwestward building convection along a cold front over southern Georgia.  Since the radar environments were just initialized to the southeastern US @ EWP we do not have radar data from this morning, so NLDN CG lightning strikes are plotted atop the GOES visible imagery (top right panels).  The GOES IR-window brightness temperatures are plotted in the top left panels.  The bottom right panel is the UW-CTC ice mask, which identifies where before the inclusion of GOES optical depth retrievals, it was not possible to identify cloud-top cooling rates.

The progression of figures 1-4 below show UW-CTC identifying newly developing cooling cloud tops.  Figure 1 valid at 1615 UTC 09 May 2012 is an example of the UW-CTC algorithm identifying a vertically cooling convective cloud beneath thin cirrus clouds, due to the inclusion of GOES optical depth retrievals (note how the UW-CTC signal is occurring in the area of 'ice mask').  Figures 2-4 are a progression from 1715 UTC - 1745 UTC showing the convective clouds developing along a cold front over southern Georgia.

Figure 1. Valid 1615 UTC 09 May 2012, note the UW-CTC signal over southeastern Georgia (bottom left) occurring in the area of thin cirrus clouds (indicated as blue areas in the bottom right).

Figure 2.  Valid 1715 UTC 09 May 2012.  UW-CTC is identifying developing convective clouds over southern Georgia.

 Figure 3.  Valid 1732 UTC 09 May 2012.  UW-CTC is identifying developing convective clouds over southern Georgia.

Figure 4.  Valid 1745 UTC 09 May 2012.  UW-CTC is identifying developing convective clouds over southern Georgia.