Day 188: June’s Severe Weather

Posted by on 7 Jul 2010 | 4 comments

Author’s Note: It was only after writing tonight’s post that I learned about Tropical Depression #2. I’m sure I’ll be blogging about that tomorrow.

As I was preparing to head home this afternoon, I received an email from the Storm Prediction Center’s (SPC) Warning Coordination Meteorologist (WCM), Greg Carbin. He had created a cursory overview of June 2010′s severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings. In my conversations with Greg this week, he informed me that Monday (5 July 2010) was the first day the SPC had not issued a watch since 15 May 2010. That means the entire month of June had at least 1 severe thunderstorm or tornado watch issued per day. That’s very impressive!
Day 188 (a)

All severe thunderstorm warnings issued during the month of June are plotted above. The darker the shading of blue, the more times a given area was under a severe thunderstorm warning. It is quite apparent that the central plains east into Ohio had a very active month, with numerous severe thunderstorm warnings issued for most areas. There are several states in this swath that were almost entirely covered by severe thunderstorm warnings.

All tornado warnings issued during June are plotted below. Once again, the darker shading indicates the more times a given area was under a tornado warning. The same area from central plains east toward Ohio stands out once again. However, in this plot the northern Minnesota and eastern North Dakota areas also stand out. Most of these warnings were issued on 17 June 2010, when a very large tornado outbreak unfolded across the northern United States.

Day 188 (b)

As a plug, I should point out that these images were created using the Python programming language – a favorite of mine! If there is the slightest of chances that you might need to learn to program at some point in your career (note: this includes ALL METEOROLOGY STUDENTS, undergraduate and graduate alike) this is one language that you need to have under your belt. It’s very easy to learn and very powerful!

  • http://corymottice.com Cory Mottice

    Patrick,

    Are there any particular books that you would recommend for learning Python?

  • zeke

    Is that use of vpython? I took FORTRAN classes in college. Do they still teach that? For a met, it comes in handy at NCEP but not so much elsewhere!

    After looking back at my education, I wished I had taken more statistics/data analysis with a meteorological slant to it.

  • http://www.patricktmarsh.com pmarsh

    Hi Cory,

    The O’Reilly “Learning Python” books are really good. However, you can probably do a Google search and find Python tutorials online. If you can’t find one, let me know and I’ll send you some links.

  • http://www.patricktmarsh.com pmarsh

    Hi Zeke,

    These images were created using pure Python along with the Matplotlib, Numpy, and Basemap modules. All are free and open source. As for FORTRAN, they do not teach it at OU, but I have heard that some other schools still teach it. I only use FORTRAN sparingly and that’s mainly for brute forcing my way through long loops. The beauty of Python is that I can write the loop in FORTRAN and then wrap it into Python so I can get the flexibility of Python but the speed of FORTRAN. It’s quite nice!

    As for the stats/data analysis. You are absolutely correct! I don’t think you can ever have too much of it!

    Thanks for the comments!