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Severe Weather Threat - May 6, 2024

Tempestas Tonitrua said:
Someone more knowledgeable can chime in, but I think it was just wonky, unhealthy supercell dynamics.

Poor lapse rates can usually show up under a stout cap, but the dryline seemed to have decent enough LLLRs and was uncapped for storms to fire off and sustain themselves for a while. As the cap eroded in the OWS, storms were still able to take off (Barnsdall). That low level instability can be very important though as high 3CAPE values can aid greatly in stretching and tornado-genesis.
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I'd like to see Trey do a case study on this (or just anyone else, frankly) to see what really went wrong.
The High Risk was very clearly warranted based off of models and morning/afternoon observations, and yet almost everything still went wrong.
 
Maxis_s said:
I'd like to see Trey do a case study on this (or just anyone else, frankly) to see what really went wrong.
The High Risk was very clearly warranted based off of models and morning/afternoon observations, and yet almost everything still went wrong.
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Yeah, most storms clearly struggled with regards to tornado production. There was also the quick, destructive transition to a linear line for that first batch of supercells. Some of the CAM solutions of a very quick linear transition turned out to be correct.
 
What somewhat confuses me is how OUN was certain that it wouldn't go linear early on, and yet it still did. They also mentioned that if it became linear, it wouldn't affect the tornado potential. Maybe that second point remained true, since the storms on their own still didn't produce many tornadoes, but still, very confusing.
I know @joshoctober16 has an experimental tornado risk calculator with several things on there, and it mentioned BRN as a problem and that it would lead to a much more linear mode due to not enough 0-6km shear combined with the extreme CAPE values. Perhaps it wasn't wrong in that regard?
 
Tempestas Tonitrua said:
Someone more knowledgeable can chime in, but I think it was just wonky, unhealthy supercell dynamics.

Poor lapse rates can usually show up under a stout cap, but the dryline seemed to have decent enough LLLRs and was uncapped for storms to fire off and sustain themselves for a while. As the cap eroded in the OWS, storms were still able to take off (Barnsdall). That low level instability can be very important though as high 3CAPE values can aid greatly in stretching and tornado-genesis.
Click to expand...
From soundings there was quite a bit of 3CAPE, so something else might've been going on. Main things I've heard thrown around is maybe cells moving parallel to shear vectors and, what seems perhaps most significant, the dry air aloft. Either way, I look forward to other folks' in-depth analysis on this event, and I'm certainly glad that storms out west didn't intensify, because we may have seen a lot more of what happened to Barnsdall last night.

Edit: Meant to say parallel, rather than perpendicular.
 
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Clancy said:
From soundings there was quite a bit of 3CAPE, so something else might've been going on. Main things I've heard thrown around is maybe cells moving perpendicular to shear vectors and, what seems perhaps most significant, the dry air aloft. Either way, I look forward to other folks' in-depth analysis on this event, and I'm certainly glad that storms out west didn't intensify, because we may have seen a lot more of what happened to Barnsdall last night.
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Yeah, we really had a best-case scenario last night, except for the Barnsdall storm. Thank god it wasn't as bad as it could've been.
 
Tempestas Tonitrua said:
I think this also shows you can have the most high end thermodynamic environment and parameters off the chart, but if the smallest factor is out of whack or a healthy supercell isn’t in the area to take advantage, it doesn’t matter
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Saw Brandon Black (MOB forecaster) suggest that it may have been too moist at the low levels (to add to the theories of parallel movement and dry mid-layer). Either way, shows how incredibly delicate the balance is for these freaks of mother nature.
 
Clancy said:
Throwing a wrench into pretty much all of those theories. Agree with Halbert, I think the X-factor is still uncertain for this event.
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Yeah I guess there’s also the “we don’t actually know why some supercells produce tornadoes and some don’t” aspect of it. Even on high-end days you usually don’t have every single cell putting down a long-tracker. Maybe there’s just some aspect of the process that we don’t understand yet?
 
warneagle said:
Yeah I guess there’s also the “we don’t actually know why some supercells produce tornadoes and some don’t” aspect of it. Even on high-end days you usually don’t have every single cell putting down a long-tracker. Maybe there’s just some aspect of the process that we don’t understand yet?
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Oh absolutely. There's still a lot to learn.
 
man this really became just like the may 20 2019 high risk event....

i also notice a lot of these events we call bust tend to be storms making a mess.

its strange how it seems in the open no one is making some sort of way to check if its going to be a mess or not (qlsc and outflow and no space at all)
 
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