Tampa forecaster issues another significant weather advisory

Very weakly sheared airmass thunderstorms are popping up in Florida, and one of our forecasters in Tampa issued his second significant weather advisory in the CWA using ProbSevere (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: ProbSevere with MRMS Ref. at -20C.

The forecaster noted up to 55 mph winds and nickel-sized hail in his sig. advisory. The ProbSevere was 90% for this storm, owing to high MUCAPE, very low shear, strong glaciation and normalized growth rates from GOES, and MESH about 1.5". The forecaster mentioned that the MESH may have been a bit high, considering the reflectivity at -20C was at most 62 dBZ, which suggested marginally severe hail in his opinion. He also noted a mid-level convergence signature with this storm, which gives it downburst potential. Though the probability of severe was rather high, he still liked how ProbSevere picked out the storm to interrogate further, since it was the trend in the probs that he focused on.

-Cintineo