WxRecap: The Atmosphere Put on a Show

Holy mackerel this 4th of July was wild. First of all, I am not in Bowling Green currently, and am sort of sad that I missed out on all the action. Plus, the severe storms that came through my hometown early this afternoon came through while I wasn’t home.

What luck! Still a great day though. The convection from yesterday and last evening had reestablished the warm front/stationary boundary directly across southern KY during the overnight and early morning hours. This lead to weak precipitation being found along it as the weak frontal boundary moved north-northeastward through the morning hours.

The precip along the weak boundary moved north-northeastward quickly. h/t SPC

As this moved northeastward, skies cleared and a warm and moist airmass advected into the region. Dewpoints remained in the low to mid 70s, while temperatures quickly rose into the mid and upper 80s by late morning. Additionally, this advected in another pool of incredibly high PWAT values into the region after a window of lower values. All of this combined to yield a fairly unstable environment by late morning and into early afternoon.

Mixed Layer CAPE around midday, just ahead of the storms. Plenty to work with. h/t SPC

Upstream of this developing atmosphere was weak convection within a favorable region for lift. As this moved eastward into a fairly unstable and moisture rich environment, wind shear became high as well. Shear organizes convection, and separates the updrafts and downdrafts. Because the atmosphere contained this, the thunderstorms were much more likely to become organized and produce severe wind gusts than if shear was absent.

Effective bulk shear across the region. >30 knots is sufficient, and that was present across the region. h/t SPC

This led to the SPC issuing a Severe Thunderstorm Watch across all of southern KY until 8 PM ahead of the rapidly strengthening convection.

The thunderstorms quickly became severe as they encountered an environment that was fairly favorable for their development and sustainment moving through the region.

These thunderstorms produced ample amount of wind damage, lightning and heavy rainfall across our region. Check out some of the images.

Brownsville Independence Day Flash Flooding Photos:https://t.co/0boWJoJaEa #kywx #IndependenceDay pic.twitter.com/9LZ87RWBiW

— The Edmonson Voice (@edmonsonvoice) July 4, 2016

Eyes on the severe storm rolling into Allen County. Shelf cloud structure is legit. #kywx pic.twitter.com/xvsVF3UGSG

— Landon Hampton (@WxOrNotBG) July 4, 2016

Members still w/o power:
Grayson Co. 2,600+
Logan Co. 270+
Simpson Co. 280+
Warren Co. 300+
Edmonson Co. 130+
Total of 39 outages.

— Warren RECC (@WarrenRECC) July 4, 2016

Report of power lines down on Garrett Hollow Rd. due to a downed tree.

— Joe Imel (@joeimel) July 4, 2016

Round 4 arriving from the S side of Warren County. #kywx pic.twitter.com/SjxYPZHKjT

— Landon Hampton (@WxOrNotBG) July 4, 2016

It was a rough early afternoon and evening, but the skies were able to clear up enough for many to get their fireworks off. I’ll have a detailed analysis of the set up that led to today’s severe weather at some point tomorrow afternoon, and will have other content. Happy 4th of July, folks. Thank you to those veterans who have, and are, fighting for our freedom. My thanks are never going to be enough, but thank you for protecting my freedom, and the freedom of everyone at WxOrNotBG.