Tornadoes, huge hail pound the Midwest, but bring little Texas drought relief
Severe weather blasted the Midwest again yesterday, with NOAA's Storm Prediction Center logging 32 reports of tornadoes, 399 reports of damaging thunderstorm winds, and 325 instances of large hail (including softball-sized hail of 4.25 - 4.5" diameter in Clarkesville, MO and Stringtown, OK.) Fortunately, no deaths or injuries were reported from yesterday's storms. The storm also brought the heaviest snow so late in the season to Green Bay, Wisconsin--9.9 inches. This brought the seasonal total for Green Bay to 92.4", the third most on record.
The storm responsible will trek eastwards today, bringing the threat of severe weather to regions of the Southeast hard-hit by last week's remarkable tornado outbreak. NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has placed a wide swath of the country from Eastern Texas to New Jersey under their "slight risk" for severe weather. According to the latest tornado tallies on the excellent Wikipedia page on the April 14 - 16 tornado outbreak, 128 tornadoes are confirmed to have occurred, with 39 of these strong EF-2 and EF-3 twisters. Remarkably, there have been no violent EF-4 or EF-5 tornadoes reported yet in 2011, despite the fact that the preliminary 2011 tornado count as compiled by SPC is 611, which will likely make 2011 the most active tornado season on record for this point in the year.
Figure 1. Satellite image taken at 8pm EDT on Tuesday, April 19, 2011, of the storm system that brought severe weather to the Midwest. Image credit: NASA/GSFC.
Figure 2. Severe weather outlook for today.
Yesterday's storms bring little drought relief for Texas
Yesterday's severe weather outbreak brought a few thunderstorms to the Dallas/Fort Worth area last night, with up to two inches of welcome rain falling in isolated areas. However, the rains missed the areas of Texas where the worst fires area burning, and strong winds associated with the spring storm helped whip up the fires. Winds will not be as strong today, and the latest 1 - 5 day rainfall forecasts show the possibility of isolated thunderstorms bringing drought relief to the same portions of Texas that benefited from last night's rains. These rains will not be enough to significantly slow down the record fires scorching Texas, though, and the latest 2-week forecast from the GFS model shows little chance of drought-busting rains over Texas into early May.
Figure 2. Total rainfall for North Texas from last night's storms brought only isolated drought relief.
Atlantic tropical disturbance
As a reminder that hurricane season is not that far away, an area of disturbed weather has formed in the Atlantic near 23N, 80W, about 700 miles northeast of Puerto Rico. This system is under a hefty 60 knots of wind shear, but does have a surface circulation. The disturbance's heavy thunderstorm activity has been removed well to the northeast of the surface circulation center by the high wind shear. The storm is expected to move northwest into a region of lower wind shear on Thursday and Friday, and should begin building more heavy thunderstorms during the next three days. The storm is not a threat to any land areas, and will likely be ripped apart by high wind shear this weekend. It has perhaps a 10% chance of becoming a subtropical depression before then. Climatology argues against this storm becoming the first named storm of the year; there has only been once named April storm in the Atlantic since 1851, Tropical Storm Ana of 2003.
Figure 4. Morning satellite image of the Atlantic tropical disturbance 700 miles northeast of Puerto Rico.
Jeff Masters
Wildcat Fire near San Angelo, Texas. Pictures taken between 3 and 4 pm just to the south and east of Orient, Texas.
Reader Comments
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And, once again, that "per capita" basis can be misleading. The US (last time I looked) was about 11th in that list (at 18.9). In 1990, our per capita rate was 19.1.
There are several countries, with populations less than ours, that have higher per capita rates, and rising faster than us.
Qatar is at the top of Wiki's list, at 55.4 per capita tonnage (up from 25.2 in 1990).
They were (as of 2007), emitting almost 3x the CO2 we are (per capita), and 11x the CO2 of China (per capita).
And WE'RE the "big hogs"?
We've managed to reduce our emissions by 5% since 1990, they've doubled theirs.
I don't mean any disrespect to the media's profession, but I had girl in one of my basic Atmo classes that just made me shake my head. Now she is on the channel three news here every night in Central Illinois as the weather gal. She struggled mightly in that class, but she majored as a journalist. It baffels me how she got the gig based on her "understanding" of weather. It's funny to see her on the news saying inaccurate facts on some of most basic weather conditions.
it has winds of 35KT in other words it is at TS status
Yea, a lot of news weather folks are not that good, there are some but very few
April 21, 2011 at 3:50 am
I posted on this a few days ago on weatherbell. Fact is that we had an April Storm in 2003 and Andrea in early May of 2007. If anyone should get the blame for stirring the pot, its me, not TPC.
Lets remember that tropical cyclones have been seen in almost all months of the year, including a development in late December 1954 then went into Jan of 55 ( Alice the 2cnd) So if anyone is to blame here, it is me and given the chance of quick feedback, borderline water temps ( near 25C) and the fact a low level circulation had developed over 48 hrs ago, I see nothing wrong with TPC outlining this before hand.
I will take full blame ( or credit) for this, but in the end it has nothing to do with global warming..
Now what would be interesting is if we had a classified system tomorrow pm, while its snowing and sleeting in the mtns of pa...
ciao
Saw this little gem in the comments section over at Watts' blog. (I'm not gonna link to WUWT though...)
Classic Bastardi!
Just because it has TS force winds doesn't make it a TS.
Plenty of extra-tropical storms hit winds up to hurricane force, doesn't make them tropical.
Yea, but wouldn't you think the convection and cloud cover would keep the waters cooler not allowing the sun to heat the waters as long as monster waves and convection constantly ride the Atlantic?...
There's certainly a lot coming off Africa, but it's very far south. Would need to be coming out a good bit higher to have a chance of spinning up though. Early signs of a busy Cape Verde season, nevertheless.
True enough. It'll certainly be interesting to see how far it gets....
News-Caster!!
That's the area I'm talking about, the MDR where they normally ride, if it looks like this 10 degrees north where it is now it would keep those water temps down,
agree there sammy but i think the nhc will wait 6 to 12 hours if it holds they would prob call it and thanks taz
Or (and I want to be the first to say it)...."This season was a bust!) LOL
A bit further west and north and the shear should fall, with SSTs still around 25 degrees celsius. I think it'll get to the point where it could be named, but it's more a matter of whether or not the NHC decide to. There isn't really a certain point at which it will be named, it's pretty much down to the opinion of the NHC.
Looking forward to it!
Wow, lay off, it would make history by being named, not becoming anything more then a weak system.
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