Tornadoes, huge hail pound the Midwest, but bring little Texas drought relief
Severe weather blasted the Midwest again yesterday, with NOAA's Storm Prediction Center logging 32 reports of tornadoes, 399 reports of damaging thunderstorm winds, and 325 instances of large hail (including softball-sized hail of 4.25 - 4.5" diameter in Clarkesville, MO and Stringtown, OK.) Fortunately, no deaths or injuries were reported from yesterday's storms. The storm also brought the heaviest snow so late in the season to Green Bay, Wisconsin--9.9 inches. This brought the seasonal total for Green Bay to 92.4", the third most on record.
The storm responsible will trek eastwards today, bringing the threat of severe weather to regions of the Southeast hard-hit by last week's remarkable tornado outbreak. NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has placed a wide swath of the country from Eastern Texas to New Jersey under their "slight risk" for severe weather. According to the latest tornado tallies on the excellent Wikipedia page on the April 14 - 16 tornado outbreak, 128 tornadoes are confirmed to have occurred, with 39 of these strong EF-2 and EF-3 twisters. Remarkably, there have been no violent EF-4 or EF-5 tornadoes reported yet in 2011, despite the fact that the preliminary 2011 tornado count as compiled by SPC is 611, which will likely make 2011 the most active tornado season on record for this point in the year.
Figure 1. Satellite image taken at 8pm EDT on Tuesday, April 19, 2011, of the storm system that brought severe weather to the Midwest. Image credit: NASA/GSFC.
Figure 2. Severe weather outlook for today.
Yesterday's storms bring little drought relief for Texas
Yesterday's severe weather outbreak brought a few thunderstorms to the Dallas/Fort Worth area last night, with up to two inches of welcome rain falling in isolated areas. However, the rains missed the areas of Texas where the worst fires area burning, and strong winds associated with the spring storm helped whip up the fires. Winds will not be as strong today, and the latest 1 - 5 day rainfall forecasts show the possibility of isolated thunderstorms bringing drought relief to the same portions of Texas that benefited from last night's rains. These rains will not be enough to significantly slow down the record fires scorching Texas, though, and the latest 2-week forecast from the GFS model shows little chance of drought-busting rains over Texas into early May.
Figure 2. Total rainfall for North Texas from last night's storms brought only isolated drought relief.
Atlantic tropical disturbance
As a reminder that hurricane season is not that far away, an area of disturbed weather has formed in the Atlantic near 23N, 80W, about 700 miles northeast of Puerto Rico. This system is under a hefty 60 knots of wind shear, but does have a surface circulation. The disturbance's heavy thunderstorm activity has been removed well to the northeast of the surface circulation center by the high wind shear. The storm is expected to move northwest into a region of lower wind shear on Thursday and Friday, and should begin building more heavy thunderstorms during the next three days. The storm is not a threat to any land areas, and will likely be ripped apart by high wind shear this weekend. It has perhaps a 10% chance of becoming a subtropical depression before then. Climatology argues against this storm becoming the first named storm of the year; there has only been once named April storm in the Atlantic since 1851, Tropical Storm Ana of 2003.
Figure 4. Morning satellite image of the Atlantic tropical disturbance 700 miles northeast of Puerto Rico.
Jeff Masters
Wildcat Fire near San Angelo, Texas. Pictures taken between 3 and 4 pm just to the south and east of Orient, Texas.
Reader Comments
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Well, here's some more material he won't want to read, either:
U.S. CO2 levels saw large decline in 2009
"...Total U.S. anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gas emissions in 2009 were 5.8 percent below the 2008 total...
...The decline in total emissions - from 6,983 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) in 2008 to 6,576 MMTCO2e in 2009 - was the largest since emissions have been tracked over the 1990-2009 time frame..."
Their data shows that:
1. U.S. CO2 emissions in 2009 were the lowest since 1995.
2. The trend in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions has been downward since 1999.
Yet the global temperatures are increasing rapidly.
Here's the report from the EIA (Energy Information Administration):
Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2009
If Heaven can wait, so can you LOL I will have it for you in a moment. It is now part of CMSSIS.
Here it is.
Link
Hey Hydrus. Where are you from?
Never ends for it, does it? We've been having great weather. No rain though.
Aussie better not ask me where I am from. We could be here all night. LOL
Wind shear maps. 80Kts both east and west of Australian. During the middle of winter, I wouldn't be surprised to see 120kts.
Where are you at now. lol, Better yet, I'll make a blog entry and Everyone can just write there WU screen name and location.
My Forecast:
91L TC Formation %:
Tonight~ Less than 10%
Tomorrow~ 25%
Tomorrow Night~ 45%
Friday~ 65%
Friday Night~ 55%
Weekend~ Less than 10%
Strength:
Subtropical to Tropical Storm.
Duration of Status: 3/4 of a Day to A day and a half.
Alright, Night all. And good luck to you 91L, to survive the diurnal Minimum, and 50+ knots of wind shear. See you in the morning(Maybe).
But seriously ill be back in the morning, nite everyone.
Ok, my new blog is up.
Just go here
While it would be best to wait until the visible imagery tomorrow morning at this point, 91L meets the NHC's criteria for naming, and has model support for further organization, so I wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of a statement sometime tomorrow about upgrading it, assuming it continues to deepen.
23N, 62.4W
From Satellite Image...
I'll find a famous Australian poem. It tells of life and weather of Australia.
Night Dean.
My Country
by Dorothea McKellar
(1885-1968)
an iconic poem about Australia
The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies -
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!
The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
Not so sure that will happen...
Earlier today with that ASCAT pass it passed every requirement for an upgrade with that circulation center. The only debatable requirement is the shallow warm-core structure, which every model says it currently has, but one cannot prove that.
Ft. Lauderdale. (details to follow)
I know you did, and I enjoyed reading it.
you mean this one?
Crater map
I thin that is very true. I just noticed the CIMSS just dropped it as an invest. It could be temporary while they are updating. Just thought it was funny that they had it up and now it is gone.
I could understand that if it was in their definition of a subtropical cyclone, which it is not. Everything about classifying tropical systems is about defined criteria.
Was just about to post that lol. Interesting warmth in the upper levels.
"A non-frontal low pressure system that has characteristics of both tropical and extratropical cyclones. This system is typically an upper-level cold low with circulation extending to the surface layer and maximum sustained winds generally occurring at a radius of about 100 miles or more from the center. In comparison to tropical cyclones, such systems have a relatively broad zone of maximum winds that is located farther from the center, and typically have a less symmetric wind field and distribution of convection."
That is interesting, as although we wouldn't expect a significant warm-core signature with such a weak system, it might offer contradicting evidence against the models which say it is already warm-core.
That is because convective organization is implied and is subjective to the forecaster since each system is unique. Stating it would not clear up the ambiguity of convective organization.
He'll never catch me. That is why I am the only one on the blog who is really worried about Global warming predictions for 2200. I will be the only one on the blog still around.
Then why do they state it in the definition of a tropical cyclone, but not in the definition of a subtropical one. By definition, subtropical cyclones typically have a very disorganized convective pattern.
With yourself and Levi in here, I figured someone would. lol
91L has a decent amount of dry air worked into portions of its circulation. If it can shake that before Friday and develop some convection in the area, then there's a chance that this could become classified.
Read the first line of the definition you posted in your post 695. And you just contradicted yourself too.
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