Since we are relatively limited with the products we can use today as the meso sector doesn’t fully extend down into JAX’s area, I will be mainly using LightningCast and MesoAnywhere today. We are able to use the CONUS sector for GREMLIN, though I’m not too sure how useful it will be today with good radar coverage via KJAX. However, there are some more storms moving in from TAE’s area and with KVAX out for the day, it could prove useful.

There is already some discrepancies with the event so far with LightningCast V2 being slightly more bullish with the threat at the Alligator Wrestling event this afternoon as shown below in Figure 1.

Figure 1: LightningCast V1 (left panel) compared to V2 (right panel).

The LightningCast dashboard also shows this discrepancy (Figure 2) with a notable spike in probabilities from V1 followed by a significant decrease and a pretty gradual increase for V2.

Figure 2: LightningCast dashboard comparing V1 (warmer colored lines) and V2 (green line) over time at the event.

Additionally, MesoAnywhere has proven useful since we do not have a meso sector today. I found that it has been pretty good identifying more dominant storms in decaying clusters with pretty good lead time compared to using 5min imagery. Pretty obvious that this would be useful, but I see it as a pretty great tool as a former Florida WFO meteorologist. A lot can happen in 5 minutes and I see this being quite useful for summertime pulse convection.

As of 4:10PM ET, Lightningcast V2 continues to remain more bullish than V1. Figure 3 shows the contours in AWIPS and Figure 4 shows the dashboard. Both versions appear to be on a steady incline, though V2 is noticeably higher.

Figure 3: AWIPS LightningCast with V1 on the left and V2 on the right. The 30% contour is noticeably further south toward the Gator Wrestling Match and also has higher probabilities off the coast of St. Johns county.

Figure 4: LightningCast dashboard showing the probabilities across each version. As of typing this, both have begun to even out.

However, it does appear that V1 did a better job at picking up on the lightning threat for a storm over in TAE’s area covering Berrien and Lanier counties in GA. In Figure 5 below, both versions had a 90% contour over the developing storm with lightning following not too long after.

Figure 5: LightningCast V1 and V2 indicating the threat of lightning for a storm over Lanier and Berrien counties in GA.

In Figure 6, LightningCast shows the threat decreasing accordingly with time as the storm begins to ingest some cooler air, likely outflow from the southern storms. This product appears to be quite good with initiation and I hope we get more cases like this over the next couple days.

Figure 6: The storm over Berrien/Lanier counties in GA showing less of a signal for lightning over the next 60 minutes as it weakens.

Regarding the Gator Wrestling, chances have decreased to zero over time. Both V1 and V2 remained on the lower end for probabilities and verified well with only one GLM strike within 10mi (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Not a whole lot going on at the Alligator Wrestling Match.

Without the use of radar out of Duluth more reliance was given to Satellite derived observations and satellite derived output.

Below is the OCTANE cloud top cooling and cloud top divergence product.  You may notice in an area of moderate but increasing instability there is convective initiation ahead of the main line of convection.  However, you can notice early in the loop that there is convective cooling indicated in the south-central portion of the CWA and the far SE portion of the CWA.  Notice how in the far SE portion of the CWA there is the purple shading indicating cloud top divergence.  And in south central portions there are “hotter” yellow and tiny red(s) (may be hard to notice due to scale) pixels indicating cooling cloud tops, but with no purple shading and thus no meaningful divergence at the cloud top.  This is indicative of orphan anvils. The moral of the story here is that without radar the OCTANE product heightens your attention to the cells in the far SE portion of the CWA, and this would be where to consider SVR or SPS product release, with the activity across South Central portions of the CWA failing to produce significant convection at this point in time despite moderate to strong instability.

Further southeast however notice that there is stronger instability over SE portions of the CWA, thus the OCTANE product is giving you a result which coincides with where there is higher instability (higher MLCAPE – see SPC mesoanalysis).

Lightning Cast continued to show high confidence of lightning over the next 60 min with the linear MCS moving into western portions of the CWA.  This lead to high confidence in forecasting lightning for a DSS location (Solana State Forest) during this event.

Steady behavior with the greater than or equal to 10 flashes in the next hour.

High probability of 1 flash of lightning in the next hour, increasing then holding steady

Here (below) is the Lightning Cast and GLM dashboard output comparing the forecast to the GLM flash count.  Note: the dashboard was down initially but came back online

Thus we were able to give a high confidence lightning forecast for DSS.

Here is the GLM Flash Extent Density at the time of the Lightning Cast 1 hour forecast.

– 5454wx