Archive for the 'Case Studies' Category
Massive squall line with embedded strong tornadic supercells blasted through the Plains
As expected, a cold front was racing SE-wards across the Plains during the afternoon/evening hours and overnight bringing all types of severe weather all the way from western OK NE-wards into western IL. For now, here are only a couple of satellite/radar images and satelite animations as I am running out of time. More details about this impressive setup with be added in the next days.
It just had to be noted, that tornadic supercells with several late afternoon strong tornadoes caused extensive damage in NE-ern MO while some tornadoes also occured over SE KS and w-cntrl OK after dark. Unfortunatelly, also at least three people were killed and several people were injured by the strong tornado that swept through city of Kirksville, MO. Numerous chasers documented large wedge tornadoes in that area, some of them were pretty close calls.
Anyways, here is a SFC analysis at 21z when the cold front was extending from central IA SW-wards through NW-ern MO and SE-ern KS into NW-ern OK and further SW into TX Panhandle where dryline was extending SSW-wards into W TX.
Weakening capping inversion and strong SFC wind convergence along the frontal boundary soon initiated storms. Frontal boundary was clearly visible on satellites and radar images as can be seen on the next images, extending from Kansas City to just south of Wichita and towards Gage, OK.
Due to extreme instability and strong shear overlapping ahead of this boundary across warm sector, storms very rapidly organized into supercells, some of them soon became tornadic. Especially over northern MO as wind shear and helicity were very high. Numerous storms fired up along the front from IL towards W OK.
On this radar for whole MO state, a strong tornadic supercell with strong tornadoes that caused fatalities in Kirksville can be easily recognized.
Given the strong forcing, very strong LL flow which tend to be parallel to the frontal boundary and weaker ML flow, supercell storms quickly went linear and several Q-linear mesoscale system started to form. As for around 00z, storms were already pretty linear which was clearly seen both on radar and satellites.
Later on, a massive squall-line formed all the way from IL across MO into SE KS and W-CNTRL OK and blasting SE-wards across the Plains overnight, causing strong winds and hail damage. This WV satellite shows this impressive linear MCS on going at 0245z.
A squall-line tend to be broken on its SW-ern flank and therefore a few discrete tornadic supercells were still ongoing near OKC and SW-wards towards Anadarko, which was damaged by a tornado and strong downbursts at late evening. Radar image shows this monster supercell in that area.
Here are also few animations of IR, VIS and WV satellite images, showing the evolution of severe storms along thr cold front and clustering into a massive MCS later on.
