{"id":20088,"date":"2015-11-15T23:45:31","date_gmt":"2015-11-15T23:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=20088"},"modified":"2015-11-17T22:35:22","modified_gmt":"2015-11-17T22:35:22","slug":"tornado-in-central-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/20088","title":{"rendered":"Tornado in central California"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GOES-15<\/a>

GOES-15 Visible (0.63 \u00b5m) images [click to play animation]<\/p><\/div>An EF-1 tornado was on the ground for about 20 minutes near Denair (Local Storm Report<\/strong><\/a> | Facebook post<\/a><\/strong>) in central California on 15 November 2015<\/strong><\/a>. 1-km resolution GOES-15 Visible (0.63 \u00b5m) images (above)<\/strong><\/em> showed that clusters of small thunderstorms rapidly developed in an environment of instability along and just behind a fast-moving cold frontal boundary. The location of the tornado is indicated by a red “T” on the 2145, 2200, and 2211 UTC images. Very strong southwesterly winds aloft allowed the upwind portion of the highly-tilted thunderstorms to be brightly illuminated by the low sun angle of late afternoon in mid-November.<\/p>\n

The corresponding 4-km resolution GOES-15 Infrared (10.7 \u00b5m) images (below)<\/strong><\/em> revealed that cloud-top IR brightness temperatures quickly cooled from -23\u00ba C at 2130 UTC to -42\u00ba C at 2200 UTC.<\/p>\n

\"GOES-15<\/a>

GOES-15 Infrared (10.7 \u00b5m) images [click to play animation]<\/p><\/div>There was a 30-minute gap in GOES-15 coverage from 2100 to 2130 UTC (due to a full disk scan), but a comparison of 1-km resolution NOAA-19 AVHRR Visible (0.63 \u00b5m) and Infrared (10.8 \u00b5m) caught the very early growth of the tornado-producing storm at 2115 UTC (below)<\/strong><\/em>. The cloud-top IR brightness temperatures were as cold as -23\u00ba C at that time, indicating a high probability that cloud glaciation had begun.<\/p>\n

\"NOAA-19<\/a>

NOAA-19 Visible (0.63 \u00b5m) and Infrared (10.8 \u00b5m) images [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>A timely overpass of the Suomi NPP satellite allowed a comparison of 375-meter resolution VIIRS Visible (0.64 \u00b5m) and Infrared (11.45 \u00b5m) images during the time that the tornado was srill on the ground (below)<\/strong><\/em>. Once again, the strong slant of the storms due to increasing wind speeds aloft allowed the western\/southwestern sides of the thunderstorm clouds to be brightly illuminated on the visible image. The coldest cloud-top IR brightness temperature was -51\u00ba C (yellow color enhancement),<\/em> which was just shy of the -53\u00ba C tropopause temperature reported on the Oakland rawinsonde report at 12 UTC<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Suomi<\/a>

Suomi NPP VIIRS Visible (0.64 \u00b5m) and Infrared (11.45 \u00b5m) images [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>A VIIRS true-color image of the storm visualized using RealEarth<\/strong><\/a> is shown below. The actual satellite overpass time was around 2151 UTC.<\/p>\n

\"Suomi<\/a>

Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color image [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>GOES-15 sounder Lifted Index (LI) derived product images (below)<\/strong><\/em> showed the pockets of post-frontal instability over central California — LI values less than -4 C were seen (yellow color enhancement)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"GOES-15<\/a>

GOES-15 sounder Lifted Index derived product images [click to play animation]<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An EF-1 tornado was on the ground for about 20 minutes near Denair (Local Storm Report | Facebook post) in central California on 15 November 2015. 1-km resolution GOES-15 Visible (0.63 \u00b5m) images (above) showed that clusters of small thunderstorms rapidly developed in an environment of instability along and just behind a fast-moving cold frontal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":20090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,15,43,26,53,3,49,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-avhrr","category-goes-sounder","category-goes-15","category-poes","category-real-earth","category-severe-convection","category-suomi_npp","category-viirs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20088"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20095,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20088\/revisions\/20095"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}