I found several products useful with monitoring the pre-storm and storm environment today.
The LAP CAPE product helped establish where the gradients in CAPE were located (along the cold front and another boundary ahead of the cold front. These were areas that saw convective development during the afternoon. In fact, I noted two cells that developed in the RAH CWA along a pre-frontal CAPE boundary. This was beneficial with locating where storms may form, so it was useful.
The NUCAPS soundings, once adjusting the low levels to fit observed conditions, helped with estimating CAPE and lapse rates. See my earlier blog post. This could be used in combination with the LAP CAPE product to get an idea of how much CAPE is present. This would need to be done by the mesoscale analyst, and not the warning forecaster, as this takes some steps to adjust the low levels of the NUCAPS sounding.
The CI product did a good job with identifying storms that did develop. One storm I documented earlier today in a blog post had 17 minutes of lead time from a 59% probability of CI. The Severe CI did not help much today with identifying severe storms.
As usual, the Prob Severe and lightning jump products were excellent in evaluating the severe risk of storms on radar (see my earlier blog posts). Used with the traditional radar analysis techniques, they gave me added confidene to issue (or not issue) a warning. Very helpful products!
JJW
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