@mattwilsonwx
Generic Boulder meteorologist. PhD/MS from UNL, BS from Valpo. Would rather be on a mountain or watching a wall cloud right now. Opinions my own (or stolen from a nearby marmot).
Unfortunately I can't watch it from the plane because Frontier gave me a fake window seat.
This fairly impressive dust devil on the DIA tarmac is a good start for my trip to the AMS Madison Summit.
With CC that low aloft I wouldn't be surprised to see some 4"+ hailstones from this storm.
Ran SPORK for this case for comparison and got a ZDR column area of 89 km2! I did have to turn off the random forest QC since it has trouble with ZDR columns that extend a long distance down the flanking line.
If we limit our tornadic sample to EF3+ storms, the aforementioned differences are even clearer (but sample size could be an issue for both the EF3+ and false alarm datasets). 7/x
Intriguingly, there also appears to be a signal for higher reflectivity behind the rear flank of the sigtor cells, in the same location @cameronjnixon.bsky.social documented neighboring cells to preferentially be located in EF2+ producers (left figure from journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...) 5/x
Differences are less subtle when we compare significantly-tornadic supercells to the false-alarm composite. The sigtor storms have larger / better organized low-level mesos and ZDR arcs that continue to extend further into the meso / below the ZDR column than the false-alarm storms. 4/x
However, things get a bit more fun when we define the ZDR arc with TRENDSS ZDR anomalies instead of unprocessed ZDR. ZDR enhancement (and inferred size sorting) is centered closer to the meso in the tornadic cases and extends further below it! 3/x
Decided to have some fun plotting meso-relative PMM composites of low-end tornadic (EF0/1) and false-alarm warning (TOR warned / never produced a tornado during its whole lifecycle) supercells. Each storm's rotated so its forward flank Z gradient is in the x direction. Differences are pretty subtle.
Quite the absurd temperature gradient between Gunbarrel and Longmont this morning.
Dear tech support, When I asked for a new mouse, this isn't what I meant.
The world would be a better place if we all spent more time looking at cool stuff in the sky.
So this volcanic island in Iceland has a favorable RF nudger @cameronjnixon.bsky.social