at 9:09 AM by Landon Hampton

HP Supercell Impacts Butler & Warren County

South central Kentucky was impacted by an intense round of thunderstorms yesterday evening.  The weather feature that captured most of the spotlight was an HP supercell that impacted Butler & Warren County.

This storm produced a number of downed trees, power outages, along with dime & nickel size hail.  A supercell thunderstorm is defined by the National Weather Service as follows:

“Potentially the most dangerous of the convective storm types. Storms possessing this structure have been observed to generate the vast majority of long-lived strong and violent (EF2-EF5) tornadoes, as well as downburst damage and large hail. It is defined as a thunderstorm consisting of one quasi-steady to rotating updraft which may exist for several hours. Supercells usually move to the right of the mean wind.”

The “HP” is used to describe a High Precipitation Supercell.  This means that the area of rotation on the cell was wrapped in heavy rain, making it difficult to see.  I was out chasing yesterday and managed to grab some great photos.  Others sent in some great photos as well:

We were very lucky that the rotation never made it to the ground.  This is hands down the greatest structure I’ve ever witnessed in our area.  I almost thought I was out on the plains again!

Check out the following youtube video, captured by Dr. Joshua Durkee, an Associate Professor of Meteorology at Western Kentucky University:

He also put together this great time-lapse from the skycam atop Van Meter Hall at WKU:

Be very thankful for the outcome of this event.  We may not be so lucky next time…whenever that may be.