Forecasters were working in Jacksonville and Tulsa this afternoon, but one visiting scientist noticed convection firing in southern Alabama, under thick anvil ice from the massive MCS in the morning and early afternoon along the Gulf Coast.
LightningCast v2 contours (bottom left), LightningCast v1 contours (bottom right), and MRMS Reflectivity -10C (top). The background on the bottom panels is the GOES-19 ABI day-cloud-phase-distinction RGB, and the blue foreground pixels are GLM flash-extent density observations.
LightningCast v1 uses four GOES-R ABI predictors. While there was a large expanse of cold clouds in Alabama, the low texture and obscuration of any low-level features made it difficult for the model to detect the developing convection (see bottom right panel of the animation above).
LightningCast v2, with MRMS Reflectivity -10C as a predictor, ably picked up on the convection (bottom left), providing 20 minutes of lead time to the first flash in the initial cell (from the 25% probability threshold), and 10-15 minutes of lead time to the southern cells (from the 10% probability threshold). Version 1 of LightningCast provided essentially no lead time from the 10% threshold, and probabilities remained low even while the lightning was ongoing.
I believe this is emblematic of the type of situation where the radar predictor is complementing the satellite predictors in LightningCast v2.
- Hail yeah
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