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July 11-14 Severe Weather Event


Powerball

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Well, knock on wood, but consider ourselves fortunate that it appears there's not much in the way of tornadic activity tonight, especially significant ones.  These types of environments have put down some very notable ones in the past.  Would be interesting to try to find a reason why.  Maybe something lacking in terms of low level shear, although it was progged to improve this evening so I don't know. 

Yeah it's a bit perplexing, to be honest.  We clearly destabilized sufficiently, had overwhelming supercellular activity.  Maybe the inflow was too weak?  It certainly wasn't a supercell mode issue.  Most of the supercells were classics.

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In this case, trees fell in the woods and someone did hear it

 

 


PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT  NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE INDIANAPOLIS IN  1044 PM EDT MON JUL 13 2015     .TIME...   ...EVENT...      ...CITY LOCATION...     ...LAT.LON     .DATE...   ....MAG....      ..COUNTY LOCATION..ST.. ...SOURCE.                ..REMARKS..    1035 PM     TSTM WND DMG     HELMSBURG               39.27N  86.29W  07/13/2015                   BROWN              IN   AMATEUR RADIO                   HEARD 3 TREES FALL IN THE WOODS OFF OF LANAM RIDGE               ROAD. ESTIMATED WIND OF 50 TO 60 MPH.     
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Yeah it's a bit perplexing, to be honest.  We clearly destabilized sufficiently, had overwhelming supercellular activity.  Maybe the inflow was too weak?  It certainly wasn't a supercell mode issue.  Most of the supercells were classics.

 

 

Who knows.  All I know is that today is an example that there's still stuff to be figured out. 

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Yeah it's a bit perplexing, to be honest.  We clearly destabilized sufficiently, had overwhelming supercellular activity.  Maybe the inflow was too weak?  It certainly wasn't a supercell mode issue.  Most of the supercells were classics.

Yeah combine that with meager 0-1km helicity. We had great 0-3 and 0-6km helicity to get the supercells but all they produced was big hail and downbursts.

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Yeah it's a bit perplexing, to be honest.  We clearly destabilized sufficiently, had overwhelming supercellular activity.  Maybe the inflow was too weak?  It certainly wasn't a supercell mode issue.  Most of the supercells were classics.

That's what I've heard from a few that were out there.

 

I really didn't care for the SFC winds that turned more WSW/SW later in the day across IA/IL either.

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Yeah combine that with meager 0-1km helicity. We had great 0-3 and 0-6km helicity to get the supercells but all they produced was big hail and downbursts.

 

 

That's what I've heard from a few that were out there.

 

I really didn't care for the SFC winds that turned more WSW/SW later in the day across IA/IL either.

I think it was more than that, though, because none of the supercells turned hard right, or right that much at all.  That's extremely confusing because getting right-turners really relies on the deep shear and instability combination, which was certainly there.  If you had a right-turner, SRH would have been more than sufficient for significant tornadoes.  I'm not sure why we didn't have any, given the number of supercells that were observed today.

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Back home after a three hour run. On the drive up heading northwest, I had an excellent pre-sunset view of the storms running the I-80 corridor, etc.

Had a chance to basically stay with a single complex with stopping points to view some features northeast of Janesville, east of Beloit (awesome hilltop view looking down over the city and I-90), southeast of Caledonia (they had activated the sirens there) and finally south of Poplar Grove.

The first stop northeast of Janesville had a couple lowerings that got folded up, but from Beloit on south, I was able to stay more or less south of the same decent notch. I wanted to drop far enough south and out ahead to make it on dry roads back to Woodstock, but that did not happen. I drove back east through a trifecta of strong winds, torrential rain and vivid lightning. Nice timing overall, following the end of the workday and still being back at a decent hour.

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I think it was more than that, though, because none of the supercells turned hard right, or right that much at all.  That's extremely confusing because getting right-turners really relies on the deep shear and instability combination, which was certainly there.  If you had a right-turner, SRH would have been more than sufficient for significant tornadoes.  I'm not sure why we didn't have any, given the number of supercells that were observed today.

Good point, today could certainly be worthy of a research project to delve deeper into why we didn't have any deviant cells.

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Back home after a three hour run. On the drive up heading northwest, I had an excellent pre-sunset view of the storms running the I-80 corridor, etc.

Had a chance to basically stay with a single complex with stopping points to view some features northeast of Janesville, east of Beloit (awesome hilltop view looking down over the city and I-90), southeast of Caledonia (they had activated the sirens there) and finally south of Poplar Grove.

The first stop northeast of Janesville had a couple lowerings that got folded up, but from Beloit on south, I was able to stay more or less south of the same decent notch. I wanted to drop far enough south and out ahead to make it on dry roads back to Woodstock, but that did not happen. I drove back east through a trifecta of strong winds, torrential rain and vivid lightning. Nice timing overall, following the end of the workday and still being back at a decent hour.

 

Wow, you went quite a few places. Nice overview. 

Hopefully you got pictures!

 

Probably better safe than sorry by blowing those sirens. It was looking hairy for a short time there.

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What was looking promising this evening in NW OH ended up busting out. Did get a decent light show and some ok lightning shots. We really don't need anymore rain, mayhave flooding again tomorrow. If it does, it'll be our 2nd flood in less than a week, and 5th since June 10th

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Warning out with the line of storms in SW Lower. With 500-1500 j/kg of MLCAPE over SE Michigan, and good shear and convergence moving into the area, I'd assume these storms shouldn't weaken too much. Thinking about staying up to see if there's a good lightning show since I don't have to work until 4 p.m. tomorrow.

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Brief summary of my day...

Encountered the first MCS just east of
Indy. The line was warned for 70MPH winds when we encountered it. We saw a nice shelf and gusts probably 40-50MPH:

post-525-0-68350400-1436845876_thumb.jpg

We then proceeded to Champaign and sat for 2-3 hours before heading north and intercepting a cluster of developing showers near Onarga, IL (county south of IKK) and followed it ESE. We initially were torn on the decision due to the large supercell kicking butt SW of Joliet, however we didn't like that it was struggling to wrap up so continued following our showers. We figured that more backed surface winds farther east may help things once the cap broke.

After about an hour of following moderate rain showers a stronger updraft finally took over and we decided that that storm would either make or break the chase, so we got firmly ahead of the developing storm over Benton County IN. The storm showed signs of rotation before becoming SVR warned and due to ESE storm motion at 20MPH or so and the rotation being on the NW side of the storm we were able to stay just south of the rotation with a great view for nearly an hour. For a good half hour we had a decent rotating wall cloud but no funnels:

post-525-0-89469300-1436846321_thumb.jpg

The initial meso occluded and a new one developed farther SW:

post-525-0-06482800-1436846395_thumb.jpg

This meso quickly began producing a rapidly rotating wall cloud and eventually a rope funnel for about 3 minutes. This funnel appeared to briefly touch down twice near or a tad north of Pine Village, IN at 8:56-8:59 EDT.

post-525-0-41504200-1436846502_thumb.jpg

Shortly after this image the funnel dissipated, however the wall cloud was still rotating nicely so we slid a bit farther SE. The velocity couplet intensified one more time around 9:20PM. We were essentially paralleling the meso at a fairly close distance on gravel roads through agricultural areas:

post-525-0-25631700-1436846693_thumb.jpg

At around this time of the image a funnel briefly formed over a field about a quarter to half
mile from our location. It was fairly dark and I just had my iPhone camera and this funnel was fairly short lived so I didn't snag any pics of it. Shortly thereafter the circulation weakened and we called it a chase.

In addition to a brief tornado...there was a terrific CG show as we followed the meso. Several wind mills got hit.

All in all, a very successful first out of state chase! We are still encountering storms across central IN as we drive home.

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post-7962-0-29618200-1436847224_thumb.pnMy best guess of the failure of today's supercells to produce tornadoes lies in the 00Z KILX sounding. Moisture quality was poor, and was only "awesome" at the surface really with 850mb DP at ~8C according to the RAOB. The cap still had a pretty good grasp on things especially if you use the Mixed-Layer parcel, like you should on hot days like today... and to add to how it is still interesting as to why it did fail, 0-1KM shear was 25kts on the 00z ILX sounding, more than sufficient for low-level mesocyclones, with decent turning (0-1KM SRH ~150m2/s2). Although Effective inflow layer shear was only 18kts... Have a look for yourself.

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