CTC and CI Provide Lead Time on Texas Storms

Currently monitoring storms in Clay/Montague counties and potential CI further to the S/SW. Broad field of Cu was seen further south but it was hard to distinguish which of those Cu fields would finally grow into a thunderstorm.

051513 2145 UTC CTC (top right), CI (bottom left), and reflectivity (bottom right) 

Please have a look at Palo Pinto county, where the CTC product had a 80-90% signal strength of showing initiation potential (the lower orange dot). At the same time in the reflectivity fields only a few weak signals were seen.

051513 2215 UTC CTC (top right), CI (bottom left), and reflectivity (bottom right)

About 30 min later, the CTC instantaneous product showed a modest signal of -15K/15 min over the NE part of that county with reflectivity appraoching 40 dBz at the same time and place.

051513 2230 UTC CTC (top right), CI (bottom left), and reflectivity (bottom right)

Finally at 2230 Z reflectivity revealed a small core with 60 dBz. The first lightning strike occurred at 2237Z. Those products gave the forecaster a good indication which area would finally see the highest probabilities for thunderstorm development and there was abundant lead time left before that storm finally took off. 

Helge