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Severe weather across southeastern Idaho

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm, left) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm, right) images, with plots of SPC storm reports [click to play MP4 animation]

GOES-16 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (above) showed thunderstorms which produced hail, damaging winds and tornadoes (SPC storm reports) across southeastern Idaho on 31 May 2018. Note that after 2102 UTC a pronounced “enhanced-v” infrared storm top signature was exhibited by the larger supercell which produced most of the severe weather. The SPC storm reports on the imagery are “parallax-corrected”, such that they are plotted at a location matching the corresponding cloud-top features (applying the 10-km tropopause height from the 00 UTC Boise rawinsonde report).

As a surface cold front was moving through Idaho, large-scale forcing for ascent was increasing across the region within the middle troposphere as an upper-level trough moved eastward over California and Nevada — and strong southwesterly flow ahead of this trough was evident over eastern Idaho on GOES-16 Low-level (7.3 µm), Mid-level (6.9 µm) and Upper-level (6.2 µm) Water Vapor images (below).

GOES-16 Lower-level (7.3 µm, left), Mid-level (6.9 µm, center) and Upper-level (6.2 µm, right) Water Vapor images [click to play MP4 animation]

GOES-16 Lower-level (7.3 µm, left), Mid-level (6.9 µm, center) and Upper-level (6.2 µm, right) Water Vapor images [click to play MP4 animation]



Categories: GOES-16, Severe convection