Severe Weather

I know I've been missing here lately, but I am back. My posts are probably going to be once a week for now. I post on other social media platforms every Monday at 10:00 EST, so I think I will do the same for my blog. 

I'm not sure when my love for weather, storms in particular, happened, but I do love learning about them. I have several radar apps I've purchased and found a few weather YouTubers I enjoy following. Ryan Hall Y'all became one of my favorites because he would teach about the storm setup and show pointers of things to look for when looking for tornadoes. I've learned quite a bit from him. 

I thought I would share some of my process as we were originally in the slight risk with this system.

As it gets closer to Springtime, I typically start checking the severe weather outlook on the Storm Prediction Center's website.

This just shows the severe storm risk. If we are in the slight risk or higher, then I start looking at other things. 

After checking the SPC severe weather risk, I go to Pivotal Weather and click on Models. I start with HRRR. On the left-hand side, I scroll down to the severe weather and click on significant tornado parameters. Since I am not a meteorologist, I am unable to determine tornado parameters on my own. I would love to be able to forecast on my own, but I haven't taken time to truly learn how to do so.

You can click on any county and it will pull up hodographs, which I am still unable to read, but in the bottom right corner it will list the risk.

In this example, there is a possibility of a tornado. I also like to check the NAM as it shows different results. Another good thing to check is the supercell composite.

The date and time of the event is listed in the upper left-hand corner. You can google z weather times, but I will say I have not been able to get my times to match an actual meteorologist. I really like Ryan Hall's supercell setup because the cells show up as dots and it gives a better representation of where the supercells will be.

Dew points are another factor as to whether a tornado could spin up. If you have dewpoints in the 60's or higher that is one ingredient that is needed.

Once storm day has arrived, I utilize Radarscope and Radar Omega apps. These are both paid apps, but so worth it if you love weather. This is where Ryan Hall Y'all has helped me the most. I will try to capture screenshots to share to make it easier to follow.

Before I continue, I want to add that I started writing this post Friday before the storms rolled through. I used the storms to gather my screenshots. The storms were horrific in Mississippi and my heart breaks for all the people that were impacted. I've been learning how to read the radar for a few years now and I have never seen storms like these. 

Once storms get started, I periodically look at the mesoscale discussion on the SPC website. This will let you know if they are planning to add a watch to your area. 

In this example the circled area was expected to have severe storms develop with tornadoes becoming more likely late in the day.

This is typically my set up during severe weather. Anytime Ryan Hall Y'all is live I try to watch and follow along so I can learn. This screenshot is a PDS (particularly dangerous situation) tornado warning. This would be the storm that went on to produce the horrific tornadoes in Rolling Fork, MS. This is the velocity of the storm. When the red and green are touching and is tight that shows there is rotation.

This is the correlation coefficient. The ball that is northeast from the tornado symbol would be what meteorologists call the CC drop. This shows there is debris in the air. There was another tornado that hit the northwest section of Amory, MS. The correlation coefficient was huge! I thought I took screenshots of it, but apparently, I was so shocked in what I was seeing I failed to do so.

This is another Velocity scan that shows rotation. The red and green heart shape is where the rotation was, and I'm pretty sure there was a tornado on the ground here.

This is another velocity scan that shows two separate areas of rotation. One is above Tchula and the other above the 17. I cannot remember if there were truly two tornadoes on the ground, but if there were this is what it would look like. 

These are the things I have learned so far. I still have some learning to do. 

I think it is super important to listen to your local weather people. If they say prepare, make sure you have an action plan in place. I know meteorologists get a bad rap because it seems they are wrong more than they are right. The issue is they are sharing what they see in the model runs. I have seen models change within minutes, so I can't imagine trying to forecast days in advance. 

We have a lot of access to resources we didn't used to have. Ryan Hall Y'all is a great YouTube channel to watch if storms are expected to be bad. Dr. Reed Timmer is also another great resource to utilize. He streams on social media a lot. A few other storm chasers I have started following are Brandon Copic, Brad Arnold, Vince Waelti, Chris Hall Y'all. Andy Hill is a great meteorologist that just started his YouTube channel recently. He is active on Twitter as well.