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T-Storms Part 2 : "North and West of the city!"


TalcottWx

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You can see how the strong winds blossomed in the lower levels from 21z to 00z. It's a good spot to be when you are on the nrn edge. Those cells can utilize what is probably a good shear zone, and you sort of could see that as the storms were slow to move east and didn't want to move away from the LLJ feeding right into that area.

 

 

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That's interesting...  

 

One thing I noticed is that once the anvil rains passed by us (I think we got .25 to perhaps a third of an 1" up here around Rt 2) is that the temps and DP were above 70.   Was there perhaps even weakly defined warm boundary in play that was offering some SRH to boot?   

 

Yea, if the meso had a vertical representation it's hard to discount that. 

 

Even a slight differential heating boundary might have been enough of a feature to latch onto.

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Kind of tough to see anything, but I agree around 32 seconds it appears to move from the right center of the frame to the right off camera.

 

hah, yeah, clearly was a bad choice of words... but it's convincing.  Weak, embedded in precipitation, I'm surprised someone actually got somewhat concrete footage. 

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That thing was odd.   No lightning, or very little by the time the TOR event took place. 

 

I'm up here in Ayer, which as the crow flies was plenty close enough for a SC's pulsing illuminations to be seen.  Yet, I saw nothing...nadda.  Not one flash.

 

I was wondering if the fact that geopotential heights are around 582 to 588, with dm thickness well over 570 might have something to do with it, in that cloud tops were only partially glaciating.  But that's speculation...  I was also wondering if the TOR was a momentum transfer/curl thing, that had less to do with an actual updraft -- can that be identified by rad?  

 

In other words, if there was sufficient downdraft that tugged some of the mid level wind field down, and at less than meso-scale it curled around the hilly topography of Worcester, could that have mimicked a tornadic event??  There is a phenomenon known as "gustnado", which is just that ... when downburst/outflow winds curl into land-spouts, not associated with sustained updraft. 

 

I suppose in the end it wouldn't matter. At night, in sheets of horizontal wind...with transformers sparking and timbre cracking, who the hell cares. 

Mini-supercell?  Sounds like a fairly tropical environment, and they're often embedded in other rain.  Kinda like the CT tobacco net twister last year?

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That thing was odd.   No lightning, or very little by the time the TOR event took place. 

 

I'm up here in Ayer, which as the crow flies was plenty close enough for a SC's pulsing illuminations to be seen.  Yet, I saw nothing...nadda.  Not one flash.

 

I was wondering if the fact that geopotential heights are around 582 to 588, with dm thickness well over 570 might have something to do with it, in that cloud tops were only partially glaciating.  But that's speculation...  I was also wondering if the TOR was a momentum transfer/curl thing, that had less to do with an actual updraft -- can that be identified by rad?  

 

In other words, if there was sufficient downdraft that tugged some of the mid level wind field down, and at less than meso-scale it curled around the hilly topography of Worcester, could that have mimicked a tornadic event??  There is a phenomenon known as "gustnado", which is just that ... when downburst/outflow winds curl into land-spouts, not associated with sustained updraft. 

 

I suppose in the end it wouldn't matter. At night, in sheets of horizontal wind...with transformers sparking and timbre cracking, who the hell cares. 

No time stamp on this, but I think it's indicating significant lightning from the cell that produced the tornado around the same time.  

post-1816-0-01114700-1409592934_thumb.pn

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Enhanced low-level helicity was noted last night around the time of the spin-up. The 00z OKX sounding indicates that the RAP mesoanalysis may have been on the conservative side. The sounding sampled 180 m2s-2 of 0-1km helicity, along with 47 knots of 0-6km shear (which matches up close to the mesoanalysis.) Although not directly over Worcester, I think it's a fair representation of the general environment that was in place. Looks like another low CAPE/moderate shear event. While nighttime tornadoes are fairly uncommon, there have been multiple cases of tornadoes around 01-02z in the Worcester area.

2014090100.72501.skewt.parc.gif
SPC sounding with more parameters: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/soundings/14090100_OBS/OKX.gif

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Turning into a nice stretch of chances of rain. Hope you see more today lol. Grass completely burned out at pope john paul park by neponset I noticed. Looked dry closer to you when I went to south shore mall last weekend.

 

Just bad luck missing out. I normally wouldn't care much, but when you work hard in the Spring to make it look nice and it becomes like the Sahara...it's frustrating to say the least. 

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