Dodge City, KS Mesoscale Analysis

Today my pair is operating in the Dodge City, KS county warning area which covers roughly the southwest quadrant of Kansas. As of 1900 UTC, GOES-16 visible imagery and surface obs reveal a well-defined dry line stretching southwest to northeast across the CWA. Analyzing the 1-min visible imagery, cumulus clouds are quickly becoming more agitated in time, with towering cu developing all along the dry line.

LAP CAPE field clear sky algorithm highlights the dry line, with CAPE around 1500 j/kg just ahead of the dry line. This is lower than the adjacent GFS first guess pixels, which are between 2000 and 2500 j/kg. A 1900 UTC DDC souding revealed MLCAPE just over 2000 j/kg. So LAP CAPE bringing CAPE values down slightly too low, but capturing the gradient well.

- Bucky

ProbSevere All Hazards Alerts Dodge City Forecaster

One of the forecasters covering the Dodge City, KS noticed a rapidly developing storm just ahead of the main line around 2050 UTC.  The base reflectivity was only near 50 dBZ and MRMS MESH was less than 0.20", but the forecaster noted the appearance of a ProbSevere AllHazards contour of 48% at 2046 UTC.  The ProbSevere All Hazards probability then rapidly increased to 84% only 6 minutes later--due to rapidly increasing total lightning, strong satellite growth rates, and very favorable thermodynamic environment for severe hail (see Figure 1).  The forecaster said, "this caused me to interrogate the storm further using all-tilts and noticed a strengthening trend aloft".  The forecaster added, "ProbSevere All Hazards drew my attention to this storm, that combined with the ProbSevere All Hazards reaching high probabilities with other storms before MRMS MESH was exceeding 1.00" and getting reports of severe hail gave me the confidence to issue an experimental severe thunderstorm warning earlier than I would have using only an all-tilts interrogation of the storm".

Figure 1.  MRMS Composite reflectivity and ProbSevere All Hazards contours 2046 - 2052 UTC 01 May 2018.  The storm of interest AWIPS read-out demonstrates the jumps in probability of severe hail as well as rapidly increasing total lightning flash rates.

-J. Sieglaff

DDC Warning decision

Radar reflectivity increased with more upright updraft over time. Refl values exceeded threshold for warning as ProbSVR increased to 78%. This helped increase warning decision as previous scan was 50%. Lightning FED went from 1 to 6 in 1 min briefly before decreasing again prior to warning issuance.

ProbSevere All Hazards Providing Lead-Time in Kansas

Severe thunderstorms explosively developed along the dry line over central Kansas Tuesday afternoon.  The HWT forecasters are centered on the Hastings, NE and Dodge City, KS WFOs.  Forecasters from both WFOs have noticed ProbSevere All Hazards was exhibiting rapid jumps to to probabilities in excess of 90%, while MRMS MESH values remained in the 0.50" to 0.75" range (see Figures 1 and 2 below).  The forecasters remarked they were pleased with the lead-time ProbSevere All Hazards was providing, despite the MESH still being below severe size (1.00").  The jumps in the probability of hail from ProbSevere All Hazards can be attributed to 1) intense GOES-16 vertical growth rates, 2) rapid increases in total lightning flash rates, and 3) the environmental parameters from Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) used are extremely favorable for severe hail.

Figure 1.  Storm over Hastings, NE CWA at 2012 UTC 01 May 2018.  Notice ProbSevere All Hazards is 88%, while MRMS is only 0.37".  This example illustrates the power of utilizing other observations of deep convection, specifically satellite derived growth rates and total lightning flash rates, as well as environmental conditions from NWP data.

Figure 2.  Storm over Dodge City, KS CWA at 2014 UTC 01 May 2018.  Notice ProbSevere All Hazards is 95%, while MRMS is only 0.73".  This example also illustrates the power of utilizing other observations of deep convection, specifically satellite derived growth rates and total lightning flash rates, as well as environmental conditions from NWP data.

-J. Sieglaff

DDC ProbSVR

ProbSVR showed a new cell on the back edge of the convection with probs of 85%. This was based on a bad composite MRMS product. The local radar did not support any development in that area.

Preconvective Environment in Wichita

Below you can see VIS imagery of the Wichita CWA (in yellow).  The dry line is clearly seen to the west.

If you look at GOES-East derived CAPE (below), it's missing data over most of KS.  This is to be expected due to the clouds over the central and eastern portion of the state.  But why is the seemingly clear sky western portion of the state missing data?

Looking at the Cirrus band, you see thin high clouds blocking the western portion of the state retrievals.

This missing area is filled in with the AllSkyLAP layer CAPE.

It matches up fairly well with the SPC Mesoscale Analysis MLCAPEs.  The AllSkyLap layer CAPE is only a little underdone.

-Kevin

south side DDC

Looking at southern half of DDC's CWA expecting CI here first along the dryline. Moderate instability exists east of the dryline with deep layer shear sufficient for supercells. Low level winds are veered more than I would like for tornado threat so expect large hail to be the primary threat. Storms are expected to be more isolated as you go south along the dryline further removed from the better forcing. - S Coulomb

Week 1 Day 1 Wrap Up

Yesterday our forecasters operated in Cheyenne, WY and Lubbock, TX CWAs. Weather was pretty quiet but feedback from the forecasters is provided below:

ABI and All-Sky LAP
1 minute imagery helped track individual cu field development under thin cirrus

Cloud phase didn’t help any more just the Vis to analyze initiation

CAPE and LI seemed underdone by about half compared to mesoanalysis

All-Sky LAP seemed to bring values down in the LUB CWA closer to mesoanalysis than what the GFS had which seemed overdone

There was an upward trend in CAPE throughout the day which seemed useful as the day wore on and reports started coming in.

Doesn’t seem to add value but did perform well

Satellite derived CAPE and other products will be useful for off the East coast where mesoanalysis cut off at the coast

A lot of cloud cover caused the layered PW to not be too helpful

GLM

Forecasters really just need to know where the lightning flashes are

Need to be able to see the trend in the color tables to be able to see the cores and to see the increases and decreases better

Open to many suggestions on color tables that would be helpful for forecasters

Having different color curves for the different products would probably be more useful to to pull out the highlights of each product

Want a product that is 5 minute cumulative with 1 minute updates

Just the 1 minute data makes it hard to see the trends than having a 5 minute cumulative with a 1 minute update

NUCAPS

Issues with gridded products coming in the full way so they didn’t see much use

Modified NUCAPS adjustment way overdid the boundary layer moisture with height

NUCAPS seemed to be too cool in the mid levels and the tropopause was too low

30 minutes to an hour latency for the point soundings would be ideal

Anything over an hour would probably not be looked at and seen as out of date

The modified and unmodified were the same and didn’t make any modifications

Modified should at the very least update the surface temperature and dew point to match the RTMA

ProbSevere

Might be useful to display both the all hazards and tornado at the same time to be able to capture the tornado probabilities if they jump up

Interested to see if the probabilities are more calibrated than previous versions

In LUB the storm had a hail spike and ProbSevere went up to ~55% which with both of those prompted a warning

Want to be able to have all the hazards in one pane but still be able to easily distinguish between the severe hazards

Lines would probably need to be in different colors than the all hazards ProbSevere

Possibly would be good to toggle through with a key on the keyboard

CI

The GOES West CI over Cheyenne seemed to do better probably due to look angle

In LUB the CI didn’t seem to work too well under a pretty thick cirrus deck where you could see the cu developing in the visible imagery but not really any cooling in the IR

There were some pretty big jumps and then decreases back down

Week 1 Day 2 Operations

Today we will be operating in the Dodge City, KS, Hastings, NE, and Wichita, KS CWAs.

Michael Bowlan

ProbSevere in Lubbock Warning Decision

The first warning decision in the Lubbock CWA was based in large part on the  increase of ProbSevere to above 50% in combination with a three-body scatter spike. The storm decreased in intensity thereafter, and no severe reports were received during that warning period.

- Bucky