Hurricane Dorian – Meteorology

Some of the best meteorology-related posts for Hurricane Dorian. More as I go get the links out of my favorites.

Southeast Alabama Tornadoes – 3 March

Numerous fatalities occurred on Sunday, 3 March, as a result of multiple tornadoes in southeast Alabama and southwest Georgia. (Until this message is removed, this post is subject to updates and additions.)

Radar loop of the supercells that developed in advance of the squall line:

Radar loop of the correlation coefficient product, showing the likely path of the the tornado:

A comparison of two proximity soundings — today and last week’s MS/AL event that produced only 4(?) tornadoes:

Trees decimated near Beauregard, Alabama:

An after effect of the tornadoes: closed hospitals.

A breathtaking drone-eye view of the Beauregard tornado, while it was on the ground. Wow!

More coming as I have time to find more links.


Hurricane Michael imagery

Some selected images from Hurricane Michael.  There are many more to add, so I’ll edit this post as I can.

Prior to Landfall

During Landfall

The Eye

Weakening after landfall, as seen on infrared satellite imagery

Damage Photos and Videos

Post-Analysis

Why don’t people evacuate?  Here’s a study from Louisiana: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212420917301693#bib8

 

Florence & Manghkut imagery

Collecting some damage photos and videos for Hurricane Florence and Typhoon Manghkut.

Hurricane Florence

Animated rainfall accumulation map from the NY Times:  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/13/us/hurricane-florence-impact-damage-map.html

Typhoon Manghkut

 

Big hail near Dallas, April 11

A major hail event occurred in the north suburbs of Dallas on Monday, April 11.  Some media I thought worth saving are captured below.  [Reminders: more than anything, this is archive of images and links that I might use in future classes.  I may add more later, or delete some of these.  If you have any sources that you think complete or improve on this set, please do share.]

Let’s start with the geography of the event:

The Severe Thunderstorm Warning that included Wylie, focus of some of the videos below:

 

Videos

Slow-motion video of baseball or softball hail crashing into a pool:

Additional good ones:

 

Photos

I don’t know how big this person’s hand is, but does it really matter?

Additional good ones:

Meteorology

  • The focusing mechanism for convection: a surface low, frontal boundary and dryline.  The WPC’s surface analysis at 1800 UTC:
    namussfc2016041118
  • The full complement of upper air charts for 1200 UTC (11th) and 0000 UTC (12th) is available via the Storm Prediction Center’s archive.
  • A 9-h forecast sounding from the 4km NAM for 2100 UTC (model initialized at 1200 UTC).  Over 3000 J/kg of CAPE, no matter how you calculate it!
    nam4km_2016041112_009_32.91--96.14
  • And if model soundings aren’t your thing, the observed, pre-event FWD sounding at 1800 UTC.  But note that in this case, there’s a 2500 J/kg difference between surface-based and mixed-layer CAPE; the high surface dewpoint may be anomalous.
    FWD
  • A regional radar loop that honestly isn’t that breathtaking, but illustrates the isolated supercell nature of this hail producer.
    dfw_hail
  • At one point, about 2200 UTC, the storm had a textbook high-precipitation supercell look.  Upper left and color bar: reflectivity at the lowest elevation angle.  Lower left: storm-relative velocity.  Upper-right: VIL (the scale maxes out at 80 kg/m2, but I found a value of 121!!!).  Lower right: radar-estimated maximum hail size, with one pixel indicating 2.98-inch size.  Probably one too many significant figures there, but I digress.
    kfws_20160411_2202

Images and data from November 16

The rare November tornadoes in western Kansas provided some breathtaking photography and great meteorology.  As I’ve said before, one purpose of this “blog” is to keep some of that information together for posterity’s sake and for future classes.  If there’s anything you think would make a nice addition, send it on.

NWS survey photos and damage tracks:  http://www.weather.gov/ddc/TornadoOutbreak2015Nov16

Recap from US Tornadoes website, emphasizing the rarity of a November tornado event in the Plains

USA Today’s story has a superb collection of Twitter-linked photos from the day

Springtime in November” brief summary from Jeff Masters, including a couple of links

Story from the Hays Post, of people complaining about the lack of sirens even when they were being warned via text message (sighhhhh)

Sorry about the sounding diagrams below — they display correctly at full resolution, but they have a transparent background so the thumbnails look garbled.

DDC

DNR

500_151117_00

namussfc2015111621

Throwing out the record books?

I’ve tweeted about that phrase a lot this week.  “It’s a rivalry game, so throw out the record books!” and all its variations, in most cases, couldn’t be further from the truth.

Records of the favored team in rivalry games since 1995 are shown below; lines and results are from Odds Shark.

  • Alabama/Auburn 15-4
  • Baylor/TCU 6-3
  • Clemson/South Carolina 15-4
  • Florida/Florida State 16-3
  • Georgia/Georgia Tech 12-7
  • Indiana/Purdue 17-2
  • Michigan/Ohio State 15-4
  • Michigan State/Penn State 11-4
  • Minnesota/Wisconsin 17-2
  • Notre Dame/USC 14-6
  • Oklahoma/Oklahoma State 13-6
  • UCLA/USC 13-6

All games are alphabetical, just so no one gets peeved.  🙂  The favored teams have the worst results in Baylor/TCU, which may be because they’ve only played 9 times in those 20 years.  For all the others, it is overwhelmingly true — on average 75 percent of the time — that the favored team wins.

(Disclaimer: results from this year are not included, since I just decided to do the post today.  I’ll update it between now and next year.)

The “All-Star Soundings”

One of the highlights of my undergraduate synoptic meteorology course at Oklahoma was the first three weeks — the “all-star soundings,” our individual presentations of notable weather events which had classic signatures on the Skew-T diagram.  Dr. Kenneth Crawford was one of the best teachers I ever had, and I loved this part of his course so much that I’ve kept the name and tried to carry on the tradition.

This post is simply a way for me to keep track of all the events I’ve collected on my “all-star” list.  I’ll come back and add more as I find them, as people suggest them, etc.  Don’t hesitate to submit your own: by sharing this list publicly I want to make it more of a community effort.  Ideally, while the events from pre-2005-ish are good, there is much more data available online for those that are more recent; I’m most interested in those.

As of right now, the entries don’t have a common format–I’ll change that later.  I might even add links.  They are sorted only by date and season, the way it was when I was a student.  Old habits die hard.

Cool Season Soundings

  • IAD 12 UTC 03/13/1993 – “Storm of the Century”
  • HAT 12 UTC 03/13/1993 – “Storm of the Century”
  • BNA 12 UTC 03/13/1993 – “Storm of the Century”
  • INL 12 UTC 02/02/1996 – Arctic Air Outbreak
  • LCH 00Z 01/13/1997 – Ice Storm
  • WMW 00 UTC 01/06/1998 – Ice Storm
  • Buffalo – Lake Effect Snow Christmas 2001
  • CRP 12 UTC 12/25/2004 White Christmas in South Texas
  • JAN 15 UTC 12/11/2008 – Deep South Snow/Heavy Rain
  • OKX 00 UTC 12/27/2010 – NY Blizzard with Thundersnow
  • DNR 12 UTC 12/22/2011 – Upslope Snow
  • January 2014 – the “Polar Vortex” Cold Air Outbreak
  • February 2014 Southeast Ice Storm
  • Buffalo Record Lake Effect Snow – November 2014

Warm Season Soundings

  • CKL 12 UTC 03/27/1994 – Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak
  • TOP 00 UTC 04/11/2001 – Hailstorm
  • LIX 06 UTC 08/29/2005 – Hurricane Katrina
  • JAX 00 UTC 08/22/2008 – Tropical Storm Fay
  • LCH 12 UTC 09/13/2008 – Hurricane Ike
  • JAN 18 UTC 04/24/2010 – Yazoo City, MS Tornado
  • BMX 18 UTC 04/27/2011 – April Tornado Outbreak
  • SGF 00 UTC 05/23/2011 – Joplin Tornado
  • ILN 00 UTC 05/26/2011 – Indiana Tornadoes
  • ILX 00 UTC 07/12/2011 – Derecho
  • Hurricane Irene – August 2011
  • High Risk / Ohio Valley Tornado Outbreak – March 2012
  • OUN 00 UTC 08/04/12 – Plains Heat Wave
  • Wildfire in Arizona – June 2013
  • Colorado Record Flooding – September 2013
  • Detroit Flooding August 2014
  • Calbuco Eruption, Chile – April 2015
  • CRP 12 UTC 10/30/2015 – Record TX Rainfall

I’m overwhelmed.

I just can’t figure out how to keep up with all the “social media” accounts I have. At least not all of them at the same time. Maybe this think-out-loud post, or some of your comments, will help.

As with most people, I’ve used Facebook to stay connected with family and friends, but I haven’t posted there much lately at all. I’m not losing touch with anyone (any more than I already have!) — instead I’ve been sharing more of my quick thoughts, ramblings, and science link finds on Twitter. That’s where most of my science- and teaching friends and colleagues are, where our dialogue is, where the community is. It means that my own  feed is a mosh of weather, education, political ramblings and sports quips, but it works. I could separate those into multiple accounts like some of my friends do, but so far I have refused because I am one person. A very complicated person, but one with lots of interests, from Alabama to Z-R relationships.

This summer I joined Instagram for its intended purpose, photo sharing. That site has become my happy place — a no-spin, no-bad-news zone. Come over and sit a spell.

When I don’t want to be bothered by anyone I know, there’s Tumblr, which for me is more for kitten animations and funny pictures and such. That leaves us with this blog, which in my mind has an identity crisis. I don’t know what I want to put here. And more so a time crisis, which is the essence of this rambling — I just simply don’t know how to juggle all of these. I already have way too many emails to answer and text messages to read and write. And course materials and websites (with blogs, ugh!) to maintain. And a couple personal websites I run. It always seems, however, that when I focus on one or two, the others take a hit in activity. How do you all do it?? How do you keep up track of all your platforms and media at the same time without becoming paralyzed by it all??