Even though we haven’t had anything manage to sustain itself in the GLD CWA, there has been a lot of utility in the 1 minute visible imagery. Using imagery with coarser time resolution would almost certainly have us missing much of the (albeit brief) life cycle of those little pulses that tried to get an updraft going before getting sheared off.

Having such fine time resolution really helps to pick out which clouds might have the most promise of going up, and being able to see them begin to get sheared almost as it’s happening is valuable in assessing not just the individual cell’s situation, but the environmental conditions as a whole. Clearly, even though CAPE values were being shown as quite high, updrafts were not able to be sustained. Having real-time information on actual conditions was very helpful in having an idea of how the short-term would likely evolve, rather than simply relying on short-term model data and/or satellite imagery that only would come in every 15+ minutes.

Jason Williams