{"id":52052,"date":"2023-04-30T22:59:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-30T22:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=52052"},"modified":"2023-05-04T18:03:04","modified_gmt":"2023-05-04T18:03:04","slug":"severe-thunderstorms-produce-an-ef3-tornado-in-virginia-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/52052","title":{"rendered":"Severe thunderstorms produce an EF3 tornado in Virginia Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"

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GOES-16 \u201cRed\u201d Visible (0.64 \u00b5m) images (with\/without an overlay of GLM Flash Extent Density) and \u201cClean\u201d Infrared Window (10.3 \u00b5m) images [click to play animated GIF | MP4<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/div>1-minute\u00a0Mesoscale Domain Sector<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0GOES-16\u00a0(GOES-East)<\/em>\u00a0\u201cRed\u201d Visible (0.64 \u00b5m<\/strong><\/a>) and \u201cClean\u201d Infrared Window (10.3 \u00b5m<\/strong><\/a>) images\u00a0(above)<\/strong><\/em> include an overlay of\u00a0GLM<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0Flash Extent Density<\/strong><\/a> — which showed the severe thunderstorm that produced an EF3-rated tornado<\/strong><\/a> in Virginia Beach, Virginia on 30 April 2023<\/strong><\/a>. With that particular storm a lightning jump began around 2135 UTC and peaked at 2142 UTC, and the coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperature of -55.58\u00baC occurred at 2145 UTC — both during the minutes leading up to the tornado, which formed at 2148 UTC.The coldest Cloud Top Temperature<\/strong><\/a> derived product (which also occurred at 2145 UTC) was about 0.9\u00baC colder, at -56.49\u00baC<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

A plot of rawinsonde data<\/strong><\/a> (source<\/strong><\/a>) from Wallops, Virginia at 0000 UTC on 01 May (below)<\/em><\/strong> indicated that the -56.49\u00baC Cloud Top Temperature value roughly corresponded to a Most Unstable air parcel Equilibrium Level (MU EL) overshoot of about 1 km.<\/p>\n

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Plot of rawinsonde data from Wallops, Virginia at 0000 UTC on 01 May 2023 [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>
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GOES-16 \u201cRed\u201d Visible (0.64 \u00b5m), \u201cClean\u201d Infrared Window (10.3 \u00b5m) and GLM Flash Extent Density images at 2147 UTC [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>A toggle between GOES-16 Visible, Infrared and GLM Flash Extent Density images at 2147 UTC (above)<\/strong><\/em> showed that the thunderstorm responsible for the 2148-2153 UTC tornado — whose SW-to-NE track was from Lynnhaven to Cape Henry — was apparently located just offshore (centered over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel). However, one must take parallax<\/strong><\/a> into account — which in this case was a northward displacement of around 14 km or 8.7 miles (below)<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Parallax offset direction (green) and magnitude (red, in km) for a cloud top of 50,000 feet or 15.2 km [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>A blog post discussing the use of Polar Hyperspectral Sounding data in a numerical model simulation for this storm is available here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1-minute\u00a0Mesoscale Domain Sector\u00a0GOES-16\u00a0(GOES-East)\u00a0\u201cRed\u201d Visible (0.64 \u00b5m) and \u201cClean\u201d Infrared Window (10.3 \u00b5m) images\u00a0(above) include an overlay of\u00a0GLM\u00a0Flash Extent Density — which showed the severe thunderstorm that produced an EF3-rated tornado in Virginia Beach, Virginia on 30 April 2023. With that particular storm a lightning jump began around 2135 UTC and peaked at 2142 UTC, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":52133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,74,30,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-glm","category-goes-16","category-lightning","category-severe-convection"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52052","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=52052"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52161,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52052\/revisions\/52161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}