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May 2021 Discussion Thread
- Thread starter SD
- Start date
What's the entire NOAM/NHEM?
The irony on that date too. May 5th... talk about timing if this comes to fruition.
This is a pretty good look into the 1989 outbreak as well as other strong tornadoes that have affected the western Carolina's. Just goes to show that we're definitely not immune from strong/violent tornadoes. We have just gotten lucky. 2011 could have been equally as bad if the timing of that system would of slowed down, literally a few hours later we would have been the epicenter of that outbreak.
Didn’t see this answered, two things;
One, dry air aloft in base terms allows the surrounding air to cool as warm parcels rise through it. Pretty much the same thing as evaporative cooling. With a strong EML you get much better lapse rates.
Two, helps weed out weaker convection. Usually the EML comes in with dry and warm air aloft.
Yup. If you get low level shear to strengthen you have at least another event like last weekend if not worst. These low amp/westerly 500mb events are eventually gonna pop us.
Awesome and easy way of explaining it, just recently did I learn the term and still always learning.
Yeah EMLs often increase the risk of severe wx in certain ways especially hail
It should also be pointed out that this particular outbreak proved you don’t have to have a full day of sunshine to heat things up to get violent storms here. It poured rain for basically the entire day with that outbreak... in fact KCLT’s daily rainfall record for that date is still 1989.
Speaking of the Euro, it would support supercells for close to 24 hours straight across most of AL. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that. It also has cape of 1600-2400 across AL even during the overnight. Wow.
Oof 
Lock it in 
Eric
Member
I missed the Union County tornado by about five minutes as I was returning from my dinner break back to work at the United Carolina Bank Operations Center(now Southern Piedmont Community College) on Old Charlotte Highway. As I was driving back to the Operations Center through downtown Monroe, a light rain was falling and the sky was greenish in color, which was amplified by the sun peaking through the clouds. I started noticing leaf and branch debris on the highway as I got near Airport Road. When I made the turn into the driveway of the Operations Center, I noticed the the trees and lamp posts that lined the driveway were damaged. My supervisor, who was outside at the time, told me that a tornado had hit the building. The windows in several of the offices were blown out. Some of my co-workers who were eating dinner in the cafeteria when the storm hit said a whirling mass of white came across the parking lot and hit the corner of the building. They ran to the double wooden doors to exit the cafeteria to seek shelter in the hall, but the suction made it impossible for them to open the doors, so they dove under the tables for protection. Some cars in the parking lot had their windows blown out. I was always puzzled why the Operations Center and Charlotte Pipe & Foundry, located across the highway, sustained damage that seemed to be confined to that general area; whereas the destruction from the F4 tornado was further up the road between Sun Valley and Indian Trail, but then I read that strong tornadoes sometimes have smaller tornadoes that dance around the main circulation. It was probably a smaller tornado(F1) swirling around the parent tornado that hit the Operations Center and Charlotte Pipe & Foundry. A F4 tornado along that same path through Western Union County would be catastrophic today with all the growth that has taken place in that area over the past thirty years. On a side note, my brand new Jeep lucked out that day, but the luck ran out in September that year with Hurricane Hugo.
We better get a decent storm within the next 7 days. This weather is downright miserable. No storms to track, no rain, horrific pollen levels. Del Rio seems like a good move at this point. It's like an endless conveyor belt of severe storms! #jealous
Thank you for sharing! I love hearing personal stories, especially when it pertains to weather. Sounds like you got lucky! 5 minutes could have been a matter of life and death. I really wish people (aka... the general public) would realize the mountains don't protect us from tornadoes. I can't tell you how often people think that.
JHS
Member
That was a rough evening from near Gainsville GA northeast to Winston-Salem NC. Chesnee SC and north Cleveland county in NC really hit hard. If I remember right Union county NC also had a tornado earlier that day along with the big one later that evening.
JHS
Member
Yep very little sun that day here and a batch of storms just after noon. All we got here from the big line was about 10 minutes of very heavy rain with little lightning and no wind. None at all.
Kind of makes me wonder what would have happened with full sun that day. Not sure if we had a CAD boundary nearby or not that day.
I work in that area near Sun Valley High School and it is an absolute nightmare to imagine an EF4 hitting there now.
Looking at the temperature and wind observations at KCLT that day it look like there was a wedge boundary in place across the area that was likely the trigger point for the Union County tornado during the day. The winds shifting to a gusty SW direction late afternoon and put the whole region in the warm sector to set up the evening tornadoes. It does look as though there was a fairly strong cold front coming through as highs the following day at KCLT were only around 60 and if memory serves me correct I even think there some flurries in the mountains that day.