GOES R-CI has had a tough time detecting CI across eastern portions (rectangle) and far NW portions of the CWA so far due to more in the way of convective debris and cirrus in these areas. Those areas are where the severe storms have occurred.

It has done well detecting null areas for development. CI has never gotten above 60 percent in the “clearer” areas (scalloped area)…which based on skill threshold should not have had CI.

Pickles

2225z super rapid scan with overshooting top (OT) performed fairly well for a long lived cluster of severe storms across southern Oklahoma. However, it missed one persistent OT (circled).

Quarter size hail was reported by this cell at 2145z in Kaufman county. This was coincident with a collapse in lightning activity after an earlier significant spike.  The lightning collapse and coincident severe reports has been evident in a couple of marginal and severe storms across eastern portions of the cwa. The short-lived activity across eastern portions of the cwa makes sense because of the weaker deep layer shear and therefore more pulsey behavior.

Pickles

A potentially severe storm (seen below) tracking through Young County…with 70 DBZ at 35 kft. -20 C level which is at 24 kft. Warning was issued at 2125z based on this intensity.

ENI is maintaining a significant thunderstorm alert on this storm (lower right panel of 4 panel seen below). This may be due to overlapping cell polygons (upper right panel of 4 panel seen below). The combo of the two cell flash rates would have put it over the 40 flash/min at 2018z (threshold for a dangerous thunderstorm alert). CIMSS svr prob has been steady at 94 % since that time..

Lightning flash rates (below) with this cell have been pulsing with an upward trend…but there have been some noticeable spikes.

Pickles

&A confirmed large tornado near the Red River matched very well with the ENI lightning data, showing two minimums when the radar SRM data was strongest (corresponding to when the confirmed tornado reports were coming in).

The image below shows SRM at 2059z when the rotation signature was strongest. The time series below a local minimum at 2055 to 2100z. This fits the conceptual model.

Image of a severe thunderstorm in Young county in the extreme northwest portion of the DFW CWA.  This cell had a 94% SVR PROB rate with 62 dbz to 45000 feet.  This cell also saw a good spike in the Earth Networks lightning time series.

About 21Z as storms develop in Castro County and Lynn County

Click to animateAnd about 2130Z as anvil blows off in Lynn County

-Holaday

CI at 2045UTC showed areas in LUB CWA with 83% and 87% probability of initiation. Both of these developed into cells at 2100UTC.

-snowstrm

This region of partly cloudy skies in the northwest section of the DFW CWA remains relatively untapped.  Latest GOES-R super rapid scan shows more clearing in this area and will monitor for potential development.  NUCAPS data after modification shows steep low level lapse rates…so convective initiation should be rather easy.

Using ENI cell polygons and cell flash rates to monitor for severe storms can be challenging if the cell definitions change to many times during a storms lifecycle. The loop below is a nice example of a supercell storm with a tornado confirmed where the cell definitions kept changing from one to two. Cell trend time v height plots would stop plotting and the user would have to reset the display. Possibly allowing a larger areal extent to a cell would allow isolated storms to remain as one defined cell, making the algorithm data easier to use. The loop below illustrates this well for the storm in question.

Further, I seem to be drawn to the cell flash rate plots for lightning interrogation.