Storm Initiation for FWD and Gremlin gets Going

From a top down perspective looking at Octane products down to Gremlin and actual radar data from KFWS, it provides a clear picture of what you might want to be looking at as far as what the Octane products can show you and to take a targeted approach to potential warning operations. Taking a look at some satellite data, we can see two areas of interest to the north and then a second one to the west where strong Cloud top Cooling and Cloud top Divergence is seen. In addition to all of this, the greatest gradients from the Octane Speed/Direction images show a rather robust cell to the north and west of the Dallas Fort Worth CWA and this is the cell we will be focusing on.Figure 1: Four panel with Octane Speed Sandwich in upper left corner, Octane CTC/CTD with no smoothing upper right, Octane CTC/CTD High smoothing lower right, and Octance CTC/CTD Mod smoothing lower left. Times were between 1902Z-1932Z

Taking a look at the Gremlin data we can clearly see the MesoSector began to pick up on the previously mentioned cells and further strengthening of these cells located to the north and west of the Forth Worth CWA a few minutes prior to MRMS showing some reflectivities, as this initial CI began to strengthen further. We can also see a bit of a lightning jump with these cells as well.

Figure 2: Four panel with GREMLIN Mesosector on the top right, MRMS reflectivity on the lot left, ECONUS Gremlin with GLM flash density on bottom right and finally GOES Meso sector 3.9 Micron Imagery on bottom left. Times were between 1921Z-1945Z

Finally with radar returns finally noting a strengthening trend with the cell of note to the northwest of the Dallas Fort Worth Metro, and with the previous signals from the stronger cloud top cooling and resultant Divergence, we could infer if these storms did develop in our CWA that they had an increasingly likely chance to become severe within the next 30  minutes or so.

- Sting Jet