Day 101: VORTEX II Preparations
As some of you know, I’m heavily involved in the VORTEX II project, which this year begins on 1 May and runs until 15 June. Additionally, I’m heavily involved in the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) and Storm Prediction Center (SPC) Experimental Forecast Program (EFP) which begins 17 May and runs through 18 June. As you can imagine, I’m up to my eyeballs with respect to all the things that still have to get finished before the start of these projects. Since the weather has been rather tranquil of late, I’ve tried to get a lot of work done for VORTEX II and the NSSL/SPC EFP. This way, when the weather becomes active again, I can devote some attention to the blog. (Yes, this is why the blog posts have been rather short of late.)
The image above is screenshot of one of the projects I’m working on for VORTEX II. It takes some of the data feeds we have here at the NSSL and SPC (particularly the mesoanalysis data) and converts into an overlay for the Gibson Ridge radar viewer(s). The image above depicts the amount of Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE). A simple way to understand CAPE is that the greater the amount of CAPE, the more energy thunderstorms have available to them. Thus, they can become stronger. However, a large CAPE value does not mean a thunderstorm will develop (just look at the image above; the storms aren’t located in the maximum CAPE values!). That’s an entirely different question altogether! This tool will be one of many used by VORTEX II personnel in trying to identify where the strongest thunderstorms will develop, and differentiate between those that are more likely to produce tornadoes and those that are not.
