Kyle J Gillett
@wxkylegillett
Storm chaser. Severe Storms Researcher and Graduate Student at UND. SounderPy developer.
MS from the University of North Dakota is complete. Officially a UND PhD student.
A result from my M.S. work: in idealized simulations of a rear-flank storm interaction, the "parent" supercell in an "interaction simulation" produced *substantially* more surface vert. vorticity than a discrete control storm, for a much larger period of time (34min!).
Master's Thesis: defended ✅️. A long two years of grinding through this work as a TA had both its ups and downs but the work was worth it. I'm stoked to have the opportunity to continue this research here at UND for my PhD starting in the fall!
Today I gave the final lecture of the semester to my first class as instructor of record (Computer Concepts in Meteorology). My students were excellent and the subject was fun to teach. Hopefully this was the start of many more!
This general idea has been proposed and discussed in the literature for decades, especially in recent studies by Fischer and Dahl 2022 and Fischer et al. 2024. Here is an example:
...advected away too quickly by storm relative inflow. Less residency time beneath the LLMC = less stretching. A primary speculation of my master's work is that rear-flank storm interactions can promote more favorable RFD behavior. CON: discrete storm; INT: CON + an interaction
What's one way the RFD might be important? Inflow-outflow balance I.e., collecting pre-tornadic vert-vorticity (vortex patches) beneath the low-level meso (LLMC) such that it can be stretched into tornadic intensity. When the RFD isn't surging "forward", vortices may be... 🧵
I think we finally had a legit (warm) cu field over northeastern North Dakota this afternoon, for the first time this year. We are so back.
Presented preliminary results of my master's thesis work in my first ever conference talk last week at the NWA Severe Storms and Doppler Radar Conference!
Dimensions are a hard concept to grasp for beginner programmers. I'm hoping this ridiculous example using a saltine cracker helps solve this problem when I show it lecture this afternoon lol
Coming to an Iowa Severe Storms and Doppler Radar Conference near you this Saturday.... Storm interactions impact storm behavior and we may be beginning to unravel why. I'll share some preliminary findings from my Master's work at UND that investigates this relationship!
Stoked to present my master's thesis work to the public for the first time today at UND's Graduate Research Achievement Day. TLDR: storm interactions are important, and we may be starting to understand why. Those going to the Iowa Severe Storms Conference will get to hear more!
That's a wrap for me at #AMS2026 -- here's the work we presented last night at the student poster session: Can we increase predictability of TC-tor events *prior* to landfall via airborne observations? Here's the poster. It was a pleasure to see everyone! Keep in touch!
How it started, vs how its going. Its way....WAY too humid here. #AMS2026
Who all is going to AMS? I'll be co-presenting some ground-work for "Convective Environments Preceding Landfall in Tornadic Tropical Cyclones: An Analysis of Airborne Observations" during the Sunday 7-9pm poster session. See ya there!
Super excited to now have a copy @shawnmilrad.bsky.social's brand new edition of "Synoptic Analysis and Forecasting, An Introductory Toolkit" textbook featuring TONS of SounderPy soundings! This is a great intro to synoptic meteorology and forecasting! Thanks for sending it, Shawn!
A couple years of work, lots of learning, lots of trial & error, and endless support from ya'll have culminated into the news I got today: SounderPy is officially a peer-reviewed, published software. This couldn't have happened w/o yall -- thank u 🤍 joss.theoj.org/papers/10.21...
sorry sir, we don't do that here. Left, right, doesn't matter. That's un-American.
The 12z observations from BIS (Bismarck, ND) this morning are the 16th coldest (at the sfc, -33.3F) of the 53,970 soundings on record going back to 1948. #NDwx