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Widespread outbreak of severe thunderstorms across the Midwest and South

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 Total Precipitable Water, Lifted Index and Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) derived products [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

With a strong midlatitude cyclone centered over Iowa on 31 March 2023, the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) outlined 2 areas of relatively rare High Risk for severe weather — and GOES-16 (GOES-East) Total Precipitable Water along with the Lifted Index (LI) and Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) Derived Stability Indices (above) showed that a corridor of moisture and instability was in place along and ahead of the primary cold front (surface analyses).

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (below) included plots of time-matched (+/- 3 minutes) SPC Storm Reports during the period from 1615 UTC on 31 March to 1137 UTC on 01 April.

GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images, with time-matched SPC Storm Reports plotted in cyan [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

One event of note was the EF3-rated tornado that affected Little Rock, Arkansas — GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (below) included time-matched SPC Storm Reports.

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm, top) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm, bottom) images, with time-matched SPC Storm Reports plotted in red/cyan [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

1-minute GOES-16 Visible/Infrared Sandwich RGB images (below) included polygons of Severe Thunderstorm and Tornado Warnings — note that at one point a bold Tornado Emergency was issued.

GOES-16 Visible/Infrared Sandwich RGB images, with polygons of Severe Thunderstorm and Tornado Warnings plotted in yellow/red [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

Farther to the north, 1-minute GOES-16 Visible images (below) showed the widespread severe weather across the Midwest during the daytime hours.

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm, top) images, with time-matched SPC Storm Reports plotted in red [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

1-minute GOES-16 Visible/Infrared Sandwich RGB images (below) included plots of time-matched Local Storm Reports — showing the storm which produced an EF4-rated tornado that moved from Wapello into Johnson County in eastern Iowa (NWS Quad Cities summary).

GOES-16 Visible/Infrared Sandwich RGB images, with time-matched Local Storm Reports plotted in red [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

Categories: GOES-16, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Severe convection