Learning Learning about weather (soundings, H5, etc..)

[Myfrotho704_]

Welp here we go, first time ever posting a thread, but anyways here’s the learning thread !

 

[Myfrotho704_]

I guess I’ll go ahead and start the basics,
This right here is a snow sounding, whole column is below freezing and the dendritic growth zone (on the left) is moist, if you see a dry dgz even with a sounding that would support snow, you’re either getting freezing drizzle, freezing rain or rain/drizzle, snowflakes cannot form in a very dry DGZ

 

[Myfrotho704_]

This is a sleet sounding, there’s warm air advection around 800-850 hPa allowing for a melting layer, then right below 850 hPa to the surface things go below freezing again, raindrops are able to freeze in this layer allowing sleet, you can see the wind barbs on the right, there suggesting winds from the w/sw, almost 100% of the time, that means your getting WAA

 

[Myfrotho704_]

Here’s are most common sounding in the SE, a rain sounding, everything from 700 hPa to the surface is above freezing, there is no refreezing layer so it stays liquid, now freezing rain happens when the surface temp is below freezing (32F), temp in this sounding is 35 degrees so it’s a very cold rain but not freezing

 

[Myfrotho704_]

Here’s something you may have seen on a sounding before, it used to confuse the hell outa me lol but this is pretty much the amount of lift you getting in the atmosphere, if you see this inside the DGZ with a snow sounding, that typically means your getting a good burst of snow, the bigger the bars/more negative numbers you get into, that means more lift, just think of this as lift

 

[proud dad]

I think this is a great idea and I hope some of the severe weather guys will chime in too!

 

[Tagat]

Great start. Thanks for taking the time.

Sent from my LGL64VL using Tapatalk

 

[Myfrotho704_]

This is a thunderstorm sounding, when you see those dotted lines in a sounding, that normally indicates cape, CAPE is basically the amount of energy A parcel would have if lifted up into the the atmosphere, in this sounding, there’s 2267 jkg of CAPE, that’s pretty unstable, the higher the CAPE, typically you end up with more explosive updraft development, but that’s if you have some type of forcing (outflow, cold front, warm front, lee trough, etc

 

[Myfrotho704_]

why was there thunder when it was cold as heck outside yesterday/this morning !? Something called elevated convection, they develop differently then surface based thunderstorms, they mostly develop off of MUcape, in this sounding there is a inversion, the thunderstorm develops above this inversion because above 850 hPa the air is unstable until it hits the equilibrium layer (layer where air become stable and convection stops). With these types of storms they can’t develop from the surface because the inversion is stable meaning IT can’t support storm growth, The reason for the unusually loud thunder is sound getting trapped under this inversion, thunder can sound enhanced with this in place and can have the typical rolling sound

 

[metwannabe]

@Myfrotho704_ instead of liking each post I'm just going to say thanks man, your visual explanations are fantastic. Way to get it going

 

[proud dad]

@Myfrotho704_ instead of liking each post I'm just going to say thanks man, your visual explanations are fantastic. Way to get it going

Yes this is why I have always loved this site. Instead of a bunch of snarky comments, I believe this is very important to a lot of people on this board.

 

[Arcc]

Saw this on tonights GFS and just wanted to point it out. See the inversion right above the surface?(The little sharp turn to the right with the red line) Its called decoupling the boundary layer which kills low level instability and laspe rates. The GFS has a bias in wrongly doing this during severe weather events.

 

[pcbjr]

Once this thread gets a tiny bit more populated, I'm going to get it archived in a choice spot in our Wiki ...

 

[Arcc]

Here is the perfect example of a "loaded gun" sounding.

A few things of note. Deep moisture from the surface to 700mb, with a strong EML and cap on top. It also has almost 90 degrees wind turning with height with the 500mb wind out of the WSW. High cape numbers and very high surface laspe rates.

 

[Myfrotho704_]

Good stuff @Arcc , anyways a EML is a important part of severe weather, Normally it occurs with Capping, once the CAP breaks explosive/violent updraft development is typical, this Can isolate storms more often aswell leading to more discrete activity, normally with a EML you get dry air aloft and a area between 3km-6km with a “near dry or dry adiabatic lapse rate” , typically chances of severe is increased like arcc mentioned with this, typically the stronger the EML, the less mixing you get which mixing kills CAPE, EML’s originate from the desert SW, no wonder it’s somewhat common in the Great Plains during severe WX, but it can make it to the east coast, it won’t be quite as strong/the same tho as if it was in the desert SW/plains

 

[pcbjr]

Folks,
Some really, really good info here ... but more is needed to fill this out ... Please contribute ...

 

[Myfrotho704_]

Why do the storms in the summer have such strong winds with them even without the shear ? Term called a wet microburst, often times lower levels (sfc- range from 850-700 hPa is saturated altho you may have a little bit of a inverted V but that is more typical with dry microbursts, anyways above that moist layer, there’s dry air entertainment, dry air aloft typically gets “entrained” or pulled into the downdraft, this can cause a lot of evaporative cooling, that then causes negative buoyancy (think of negative buoyancy as sinking ), this causes a stronger downdraft and what’s called a “wet microburst” these are often mistaken for tornadoes sometimes, they mostly correlate with straight line wind damage, these events are also a danger to airplanes, it’s somewhat typical to get a shelf cloud with these events aswell
you can tell sometimes that a storm is producing a microburst by rain near the ground appearing to look “spread out” due to the amount of downward energy and the act a gravity pulling those raindrops/wind down and it hitting the ground so it looks spread out

————————————————————-Here’s a good example of wet microbursts on radar, sometimes you can tell there’s a downburst if the storm has a 55+ DBZ core, but you can really see downburst signatures on base velocity, you can see the strong wind/rain divergence on base velocity, normally tho microburst are short lived and die out but can release a new outflow to allow another storm to form ————————————————————-heres your average wet microburst sounding, Higher CAPE can aid stronger downdrafts (more rain/hail falling into dry layer), you can see that dry air above 750 hPa, note the more moist layer below it and that tiny little inverted V, bottom line, if you see a sounding with decent CAPE, dry air above a moist layer, know there’s a chance for a strong storm with a chance of a downburst

 

[Myfrotho704_]

There’s also something called a “dry microburst”, those are pretty rare in the SE, typically with dry microbursts you get a big “inverted V and it’s very dry at the low levels but mid levels are more moist, mid levels can be dry but the more saturated mid levels are the more of a dry microburst threat you have, with these events you typically get high cloud bases, rain/hail falls into the dry layer (inverted V area) and causes evaporative cooling, this causes negative buoyancy (sinking) and causes strong winds to plummet to the ground and spread out, normally no precipitation makes it to the ground making these events really dangerous with dust, spreading fires caused from Cloud to ground lightning, threat to airplanes, these are more common in desert climates

 

[Myfrotho704_]

Just gonna leave a reminder to myself over here to break down HP supercells, LP supercells and classic supercells tommorow

 

[PEA_RIDGE]

IN THE MOST REDNECK TERMS POSSIBLE CAN SOMEONE BREAK THIS DOWN? IM TRYING TO EXPLAIN IT TO A FEW COWORKERS BUT HAVING DIFFICULTY

 

[Myfrotho704_]

IN THE MOST REDNECK TERMS POSSIBLE CAN SOMEONE BREAK THIS DOWN? IM TRYING TO EXPLAIN IT TO A FEW COWORKERS BUT HAVING DIFFICULTY

View attachment 16506

Decent CAPE sounding altho it is on the lower side, decent 0-6km shear aswell, storm relative helicity is pretty high, but this sounding is lacking in richer moisture supportive of tornadoes at the surface through the column, also storms would move due west based off storm slinky, and oh yeah 0-3km lapses/CAPE is lacking aswell which is another limiting factor

 

[PEA_RIDGE]

Decent CAPE sounding altho it is on the lower side, decent 0-6km shear aswell, storm relative helicity is pretty high, but this sounding is lacking in richer moisture supportive of tornadoes at the surface through the column, also storms would move due west based off storm slinky, and oh yeah 0-3km lapses/CAPE is lacking aswell which is another limiting factor

WHEN YOU GET TIME CAN YOU POINT OUT THE CAPE, SHEAR, HELICITY, AND OTHER PARAMETERS SO THEY CAN UNDERSTAND WITH A VISUAL AIDE? WANT TO MAKE SURE IM TELLING THEM THE RIGHT INFO

 

[metfascination]

This is a great contribution for those like me that are climbing a steep learning curve. Much thanks!


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[Shawn]

Here is a video from Rich Thompson from the SPC & soundings (severe weather):

 

[Shawn]

You can learn a good bit of stuff from TIm Vasquez here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/timwxx/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=1

It's older stuff, but he goes over a lot of things in his videos.

 

[Myfrotho704_]

I found a really good website on 3 types of supercells, HP, LP and classic, I’ve been real busy lately and have lots of work to make up so here you go
https://www.weather.gov/media/lmk/soo/Supercell_Structure.pdf

 

[tractor girl]

This is a thunderstorm sounding, when you see those dotted lines in a sounding, that normally indicates cape, CAPE is basically the amount of energy A parcel would have if lifted up into the the atmosphere, in this sounding, there’s 2267 jkg of CAPE, that’s pretty unstable, the higher the CAPE, typically you end up with more explosive updraft development, but that’s if you have some type of forcing (outflow, cold front, warm front, lee trough, etc View attachment 16211

I notice several CAPE values at the bottom of the chart: SBCAPE, MJCAPE and DCAPE. What is the difference between each? Which should we look first when looking at a sounding?

 

[Arcc]

I notice several CAPE values at the bottom of the chart: SBCAPE, MJCAPE and DCAPE. What is the difference between each? Which should we look first when looking at a sounding?

View attachment 17416

Its really convective energy at different levels and points for layman terms. For instance SBcape stands for surface based cape which is the convective energy starting at ground level. DCape is downdraft cape which us used to determine the strength of downdrafts. Presence of MLCape with low SBcape tells you that there is a cap and any convection at that point would be elevated.

I look at SBcape first and then on most soundings you will see 0-3km Cape which I look at next.

 

[John Jaye]

Thanks for the great information and explanations. I have been seeing these graphs for years and never could quite grasp what it was telling me. After this thread, I have a much better idea. Still not all the way there, but gaining on it.

 

[Rain Cold]

Thanks for the great information and explanations. I have been seeing these graphs for years and never could quite grasp what it was telling me. After this thread, I have a much better idea. Still not all the way there, but gaining on it.

Welcome aboard!