Severe Convective Storms
While the southeast United States has the highest risk of tornado impacts due to its higher population density and rate of poverty, this area sees the high climatological risk of tornadoes.
What is...
The Great Plains.
Lines of constant pressure change.
What is...
Isallobars.
Providing a focal point for convective initiation and creating areas of localized higher shear/vorticity, these features are extremely important in severe convective storm forecasting.
What are...
Boundaries.
These plots of wind shear with height are powerful tools to help understand storm structure, behavior, and mode.
What is...
The hodograph.
The name of the level 4 out of 5 SPC risk.
What is...
Moderate.
This body of water provides low-level moisture that when coupled with dry, continental air a loft makes the United States the world leader in severe convective storm climatology.
What is...
The Gulf of Mexico
2AM is the often observed maximum intensity for this synoptic-mesoscale feature.
What is...
Then low-level jet (LLJ)
These features are lower tropospheric, cloud street features commonly seen on satellite and radar prior to deep convection.
What is...
Horizontal convective rolls.
Named after Matthew Bunkers, this estimate can tell you a lot about a supercell to the right of the mean wind.
What is...
Bunkers Right Motion.
This wind speed is considered "severe" by the National Weather Service.
What is...
58 MPH
This region of the Contiguous United States has the highest "risk" of EF1+ tornadoes.
What is...
The Southeast.
This LLJ theory, known as the inertial oscillation, suggests that the BLWM is caused by decoupling from the surface at night and wind acceleration due to a nearly-frictionless surface.
What is...
Blackadar Theory.
This part of the atmosphere is strongly influenced by the surface.
What is...
The planetary boundary layer (PBL)
Vorticity oriented parallel to the velocity vector is known as
What is...
Streamwise vorticity.
Amount of days SPC issues convective outlooks for.
What is...
8 Days.
These large, complex, and extremely damaging storm systems often have strict definitive criteria such as a spatial width of 100 km and a lifespan of at least 3 hours.
What is...
An MCS.
Due to the stronger temperature gradients, the polar jet is stronger in this season.
What is...
Winter.
This conceptual skew-t situation involves a EML atop a deep, moist boundary layer and often results in significant severe weather.
What is...
Loaded gun sounding.
This advecitve regime is represented by a veering hodograph wind profile.
What is...
Warm Air Advection (WAA)
Amount of severe thunderstorms that occur in the United States each year.
What is...
10,000 severe thunderstorms.
Supercell mode (LP, HP, etc.) is related to this important atmospheric feature(s)
What is...
Mid (to upper) level winds.
The __________ thermal circulation is characterized by the exit region of a jet streak.
What is...
Indirect.
This measure of updraft velocity neglects effects of water loading, entrainment, and vertical perturbation pressure, thus making it overestimate by nearly double.
What is...
wmax
Purely crosswise vorticity tends to lead to this severe hazard...
What is...
Hail.
This city is the namesake for the most recent EF5 tornado in the United States.
What is...
Enderlin.
Robert Maddox created specific criteria to deliniate mesoscale convective complexes using what remote sensing tool?
What is...
Satellite.
The difference (or shear) between a lower- and upper-level geostrophic wind vector
What is...
Thermal Wind.
These mesoscale processes acts to destabilize the environment, modify the wind shear, and ultimately enhance the convective potential.
What is...
Preconditioning.
Bounded between bunkers RM vector, Storm relative inflow, and the curve created by the hodograph, this parameter measures the corkscrew nature of a thunderstorm updraft.
What is...
Storm-relative helicity.
The highest estimated value of surface based CAPE in the State of Illinois during the March 31, 2023 tornado outbreak.
What is...
2,000 j/kg
The atmosphere can overome a capping inversion through synoptic scale lift, low-level warming, and...
What is...
Low-level moistening.
The approximate height (in meters) of the core of the Great Plains nocturnal wind maximum.
What is...
800m
This layer of the PBL is sandwiched by the nocturnal boundary layer and capping inversion. It contains characteristics more reminiscent of the dominant mixed layer found during the day.
What is...
The residual layer.
This vector identifies the direction of tornado motion that is no longer moving with the parent mesoscyclone (i.e., it occluded).
What is...
Deviant tornado motion vector (DTM)
The fastest 500mb wind speed between the two synoptic hours (12z and 00z) during the April 27, 2011 superoutbreak. (in knots)
90 kts.