at 9:21 PM by Pierce Larkin

WxRecap: Severe Thunderstorms Struck the Region

A panoramic pic I took of the underside of the shelf cloud at the beginning of the storm.
A panoramic pic I took of the underside of the shelf cloud at the beginning of the storm.

As was predicted this morning, and has been for the past few days, severe weather struck the region this afternoon and evening. It was a difficult forecast, but it panned out as I expected. It wasn’t world ending, but it did give us some issues, and caused some damage across the region.

Today's storm reports. h/t SPC
Today’s storm reports. h/t SPC

The atmosphere was primed thermodynamically (the part of the atmosphere dealing with temperature and moisture) speaking, at least. Clouds actually hung around pretty tough this morning, hindering the rising of temperatures for a few hours. However, after they cleared, temps quickly rose into the upper 80s and the lower 90s across the region, and in combination with 70 degree dewpoints, the atmosphere destabilized very quickly.

Highs for across the state today. h/t Ky mesonet
Highs for across the state today. h/t Ky mesonet

By the early afternoon, we had plenty of moisture, instability and an outflow boundary in eastern Missouri to work with. All of this combined to quickly produce a line of gradually increasing storms, that organized into a wind damage threat as it moved to the east and southeast.

This was the culprit this afternoon. h/t Radarscope
This was the culprit this afternoon. h/t Radarscope

It continued to intensify, and actually developed a cold pool. A cold pool is essentially just rain cooled air behind the gust front, and this is a key portion of any squall line that produces widespread wind damage. This helps to organize, accelerate and strengthen the squall line/MCS as it propagates along its path.

The black circle shows the contrast between the developing cold pool (76 line behind the storms) and the environmental temps near the storm in the 90s (purple line ahead of the storms). h/t SPC
The black circle shows the contrast between the developing cold pool (76 line behind the storms) and the environmental temps near the storm in the 90s (purple line ahead of the storms). h/t SPC

This cold pool strengthened as it moved into Tennessee, where temperatures were higher and had longer to increase after the morning cloud cover. This greater temperature contrast between the two air masses allowed the gust front to be a bit stronger over a larger area in Tennessee, and produce more widespread wind damage. Check out some of the tweets from across the region!

With the Morgantown Flooding yesterday, and this today, this week is the exact opposite of what last week was like. And we aren’t necessarily out of the woods tomorrow. A cold front will be dragging into a region with very warm temps (mid to upper 90s!), and still a fairly moist atmosphere as well. This should yield high instability values across the region, leading to the potential for isolated severe storms again for tomorrow. Be sure to follow the latest from @WxOrNotBG on Twitter and to keep up with the forecast post tomorrow morning!