Today’s environment is ideal for all types of severe weather. Unsurprisingly, the ProbHail algorithm indicates high probabilities of hail with most of the storms. Here I’ll use dual-pol interrogation to investigate ProbHail performance and include a few  additional observations.

Of particular note is the evolution of a storm object in the mind of the ProbHail algorithm. The algorithm seems to handle merging and splitting remarkably well for both the northern-most storm and the line of storms that results at the end of the loop in the SE part of the CWA. This performance in a highly-complex radar display is promising for more isolated storms. Let’s zoom in on the southeastern storm near Wellington:

The reflectivity signal in the hail core is not particularly anomalous (~50 dBZ), but ZDR near zero and reduced CC indicate high confidence in hail production at the surface. The ProbHail shows a 98% chance of hail in that storm. We would expect high confidence and this algorithm performs well. Baseball size hail was reported with this storm! -Atlanta Braves