{"id":57036,"date":"2024-02-08T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-08T23:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=57036"},"modified":"2024-03-10T21:16:07","modified_gmt":"2024-03-10T21:16:07","slug":"early-february-thunder-and-tornados-over-the-upper-midwest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/57036","title":{"rendered":"Early-February thunder (and tornados!) over the Upper Midwest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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GOES-16 Band 13 infrared (10.3 \u00b5m) imagery and clear-sky derived Lifted Index (scaled from -5 to 10), 1751-2246 UTC on 8 February 2024 (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Storm Prediction Center placed portions of the upper Midwest United States in a marginal risk of severe weather<\/a> on 8 February 2024 and issued two mesoscale discussion on the thunderstorm development, one at 2053 UTC<\/a>, one at 2345 UTC<\/a>. The graphic from the 2053 UTC MD is shown below. The animation above shows clean window infrared imagery overlain by the Level 2 product Lifted Index (LI) that gauges the stability in the atmosphere. The AWIPS scaling for LI has been changed from the default to -5 to 10. Thunderstorms develop at the leading edge of the unstable air as it pushed into Wisconsin, and the first recorded February tornado in Wisconsin history was reported!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mesoscale Discussion 113 issued 2053 UTC on 8 February 2024 (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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GOES-16 Mid-level Water Vapor infrared imagery, below, shows the evolution of the atmosphere over the upper-midwest as the convection developed. As in the Window Channel imagery above, the swirl of the large upper-level cyclone moving through central Minnesota is obvious. A more subtle feature moving northeastward from northwest Missouri through southern Iowa and into northwest Illinois at the end of the animation might also be affecting the developing convection<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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GOES-16 Mid-level water vapor (Band 9, 6.95 \u00b5m) infrared imagery, 1806-2301 UTC on 8 February 2024 (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The animation below shows LightningCast probabilities contoured over visible imagery, and the probability product gave lead time in most cases during this unusual lightning event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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GOES-16 Visible Imagery (Band 2, 0.64 \u00b5m), LightningCast Probability, and surface observations, 1811-2306 UTC on 8 February 2024 (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The LightningCast website (here<\/a>) includes time series plots (‘Aviation Lightning Dashboards’) of Probabilities along with GLM observations. Data from Rock County (KJVL) and Dane County (KMSN) airports, below, show an increase in probabilities about an hour before the GLM observations occurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Time Series plots of LightningCast Probabilities and GLM observations at KJVL (left) and KMSN (right), 8 February 2024, times (CST) as indicated (x-axis) (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The most unusual aspect of this convective line in southern Wisconsin was the tornado it produced (link<\/a>), as shown below. The 2337 UTC time of the tornado is after the animations shown above. Did ProbSevere give information for this tornado?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Preliminary SPC Storm Reports, 8 February 2024 (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

ProbSevere version 3 is available at this website<\/a> and the screen-capture, below, shows the view at 2336 UTC, just before the tornado observation, when ProbSevere was at 70%. The time-series plot of the values within the ProbSevere object (#253605<\/a>) is shown at bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ProbSevere Version 3 display, 2336 UTC on 8 February 2024 (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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ProbSevere readouts for Object 253605 associated with the tornado in Green County, WI (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It’s difficult to isolate a signal in ProbSevere that unilaterally says a tornado is present. Storm-relative helicity (the purple line in the Kinematics plot) and Environmental Bulk Shear (the cyan line in the Kinematics plot) are suggestive, but no field shows a peak near 2337 UTC. Use products such a ProbSevere as a tool, along with others (satellite, radar, etc), to judge whether or not a warning is warranted. Note that a warning was issued for this cell at 2304 UTC on 8 February 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GOES-16 Mesoscale Sector 2 observed the Midwest at 1-minute intervals on 8 February. Band 13 imagery, below (rescaled so that the coldest cloud brightness temperatures are -80o<\/sup> C vs. the default -109o<\/sup> C), shows the cold cloud tops associated with the strong convection moving from Lafayette into Green County in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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GOES-16 Mesosector 2 Band 13 infrared (10.3 \u00b5m) imagery , 2245-2345 UTC on 8 February 2024 (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A closer look at 1-minute GOES-16 Visible and Infrared images centered over southern Wisconsin (below)<\/strong><\/em> included plots of Local Storm Reports<\/strong><\/a> — pulses of overshooting tops were evident in the vicinity of most of the reports of severe (or sub-severe) weather. The thunderstorms that produced wind\/hail and two tornadoes<\/strong><\/a> across southern Wisconsin apparently developed just ahead of an approaching cold front \/ warm front intersection (WPC surface analysis<\/strong><\/a>). Here are a few AWIPS cursor samples of Local Storm Reports associated with the 2 tornadoes: 2333 UTC<\/strong><\/a> | 2335 UTC<\/strong><\/a> |\u00a02336 UTC<\/strong><\/a> | 2341 UTC<\/strong><\/a> | 0000 UTC<\/a><\/strong> | 0020 UTC<\/strong><\/a> | Animation<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

1-minute GOES-16 Visible and Infrared images with plots of surface reports, surface fronts and Local Storm Reports, from 2145 UTC on 08 February to 0111 UTC on 09 February (courtesy Scott Bachmeier, CIMSS) [click to play animated GIF | MP4<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n

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1-minute GOES-16 ABI Sandwich Product with Tornado reports showing up in Northern Illinois as “T” and X for the eventual location of the tornado in Wisconsin. from 2100 UTC to 22:59 UTC on 08February (courtesy Mat Gunshor, CIMSS) [also available as a MP4<\/strong><\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The Sandwich Product<\/a> is a composite image created by stacking visible light (0.64\u00b5m) and infrared (10.3 \u00b5m) channels. The resulting multi-dimensional image gives meteorologists and researchers an efficient way to study severe weather in near real-time with an added texture from the sandwich-like layers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this animation the preliminary tornado reports from SPC in Henry and Magnolia, Illinois are shown as a red “T” approximately when & where they were reported. The approximate location of the tornado on the north side of Albany, Wisconsin is shown as a red X at the end of the animation. The animation ends at 22:59 UTC, which is well before the tornado in Wisconsin was reported at 23:37 UTC (which was 5:37pm local, CST). The Sandwich Product is only useful during daylight hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A model run that incorporates Polar Hyperspectral Soundings (that has been discussed on this blog<\/a>, and at the Hazardous Weather Testbed<\/a>) in the past gave good results with this strongly-forced event. The image below shows a 3-4 h forecast of composite reflectivity and Significant Tornado Parameter. Composite Reflectivity shows supercellular-like features, and also two separate locations of convection, one over southern Wisconsin, one over Illinois. The animations above (especially the Sandwich Product) also show those two main regions of convection. A model run initialized near 2000 UTC would include fine-scale moisture information from the early afternoon Polar overpasses that occurred that day (NOAA-20<\/a>; NOAA-21<\/a>), leading to a better definition of subsequent convection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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PHS model output forecasts of Composite Reflectivity (left) and Significant Tornado Parameter (right) valid at the time of the Evansville tornado (2338 UTC, Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This event\/set-up vaguely reminded the lead blog post author of\u00a0this late-January 2023 event over Ohio<\/a>, mostly because of the clear patch that allowed the used of derived stability indices!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NWS forecast office in Milwaukee\/Sullivan WI (WFO MKX<\/a>) has a write-up on this event here<\/a>, and a story map describing the event is available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Storm Prediction Center placed portions of the upper Midwest United States in a marginal risk of severe weather on 8 February 2024 and issued two mesoscale discussion on the thunderstorm development, one at 2053 UTC, one at 2345 UTC. The graphic from the 2053 UTC MD is shown below. The animation above shows clean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":57054,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,74,115,145,59,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-glm","category-goes-16","category-lightningcast","category-phs","category-probsevere","category-severe-convection"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57036","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\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57036"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57603,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57036\/revisions\/57603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}