By Rob Gutro NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
A satellite animation of NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite imagery showed the movement of the front that triggered severe storms and tornadoes in several states on February 29, 2012. Today, NASA released a GOES satellite animation of that weather system that triggered at least 20 tornadoes.
NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-13, captures visible and infrared images of weather over the eastern U.S. every 15 minutes. NOAA operates the GOES series of satellites, and NASA’s GOES Project, located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. compiles the images into animations. The GOES visible and infrared data is compiled and then overlayed on a true-color land surface map of the U.S. that was created using data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument that flies on NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites.
The 25 second movie of the February 29 severe weather was created using GOES-13 visible and infrared satellite imagery. The movie runs from Feb. 28 at 1245 UTC (7:45 a.m. EST) through March 1 at 1245 UTC (7:45 a.m. EST), and shows the progression of the cold front and associated low pressure area moving over the central U.S. That weather system triggered at least 20 tornadoes and severe weather on February 29, 2012.
Click image to go to web page with movie
By February 28 at 2301 UTC (6:01 p.m. EST), the circulation around the low pressure area in the central U.S. became more apparent in the animation, as the clouds associated with the trailing cold front swept through the south-central U.S. By 0545 UTC (1:45 a.m. EST) on February 29, a sharp line of clouds are seen in the movie, extending from the low in the central U.S. That line of clouds grew larger as the front moved east and generated the severe weather.
Tornadoes on February 29 raked through Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee. The severe storms killed at least 12 people. Tornadoes also touched down in the well-known tourist destination of Branson, Missouri, famous for country music theaters. USA Today reported that up to six of the city’s 40 theaters were damaged.
NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center reported that tornadoes killed 550 people in the U.S. in 2011.
The cold front associated with the storms that triggered tornadoes on February 29 is over the southeastern and Mid-Atlantic U.S. today, March 1. Another cold front is moving into the areas that experienced severe weather yesterday, and the National Weather Service noted that the south-central U.S. could experience more severe weather today. NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center forecasts a moderate chance for severe weather in southwestern Ohio, southeastern Indiana, central Tennessee, and northern Mississippi and northern Alabama. A slight risk of severe weather is forecast in 15 states today, March 1. Thunderstorms are expected from southern New England, through the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys, and as far west as eastern Texas and Missouri today.
As the front moves, the GOES-13 satellite will provide continuous coverage of its movements, providing valuable data to forecasters.
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This does not bode well – according to this NAM model from last night, A tornado outbreak for Ohio Valley is possible late Friday 00Z Saturday
The Storm Prediction Center shows a moderate risk of severe convective development on Friday March 2nd:
For those interested in tracking storms yourself, you can download a free and functional trial copy of StormPredator personal weather radar software.
From the Special relativity thread;
Deadman says:
March 1, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Fred H. Haynie asks, “how do you tell [virtual] reality from the real thing?”
Simple, virtual = not. For example:
“virtual reality” — not reality;
if your teen-aged son says his homework is “virtually finished” — it’s not finished;
“virtually no calories” — it does have calories;
“virtually identical” — not identical;
“virtually free” — not free;
“Some aspects of climate science are known with virtual certainty” — some aspects of climate science are not known with certainty; and so on.
With the standard method of forecasting with numerical models they hit the wall of accuracy at about 7 to 10 days out. Using my method I can forecast up to 18 years out with an average accuracy about equal to their 5 to 7 day forecast. In 1990 the comparison was about as good as the NWS 3 to 5 day forecast, in the past 22 years they have stretched their window of visibility out two to three more days. By adding what I and Piers Corbyn know and use, they could see the whole 18 year window as well.
My track record for last year;
http://research.aerology.com/severe-weather/tornadoes/tornado-forecast-verification/
Bill, not a white paper (i.e. that is not a white paper on the subject); rather, it is much closer to ‘advertising lit'(erature) than anything else. I would also assert that the orientation of such RADAR reflective debris would be randomly positioned (remember is the longer dimension which provides the greater return (RCS or RADAR Cross Section) or reflection back to the RADAR site) or isa ble to be seen as a different Azimuth velocity as opposed to various shaped hydrometeors (e.g. raindrops which might be oblately shaped as in the case of large raindrops or more spherically shaped hail stones or small raindrops). Remember, simple horizontally polarized WSR-8D NEXRADs pick up debris ‘clouds’ as well.
Let me be specific on this now: the implementation of Dual-Polarity as an add-on to the WSR-88Ds was not done for the purpose of debris-cloud detection; there are a number of sound meteorological reasons which the dual-polarity modes and equipment are being added, and a number of those modes optimize the WSR-88D for the purposes of detecting non-severe storm precipitation and also determining the type, although there appears to be a dedicated ‘spin’ afoot in the press (includes primarily TV it would seem) since “glitz and pizazz gets press”.
Is it ‘budget time’ or something in NOAA/NWS land?.
I would make reference to this document again which points out the added differentiation capability on hydrometeors (e.g. more specific precip types) that Dual-Polarity Doppler WSR-88Ds provides:
http://www.wdtb.noaa.gov/courses/dualpol/Outreach/DualPol-Flipchart.pdf
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Richard Holle,
Seems there is a discussion of these concepts over at http://joannenova.com.au/