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Above is a severe weather outlook issued by the Storm Prediction Center on Monday afternoon. Southern Kentucky was not in a slight risk (yellow), barely even within a marginal risk (hunter green). Why is this important? There was wind damage reported across the region, and some pretty significant damage across Bowling Green specifically.
Monday was a dreary day as a whole. It was cloudy and fairly rainy throughout. While we needed rain in a bad way, that doesn’t necessarily mean we wanted it in the form of a severe squall line. But there is another factor in this weather system’s setup: atmospheric wind shear. On Monday night, high values of wind shear were present…values that had not been seen around these parts in a long time.
Wind shear is very important in the organization of all thunderstorms, but especially severe thunderstorms. With that being said, there was no instability present across the region, because of the clouds and rain throughout the day. So…that leads us to the question, how could this line develop? Well, for one, there was more forcing within our atmosphere than the usual ole weather system has (especially those of the past few months).
A strong cold front at the surface combined with strong winds aloft, and favorable vertical (upward) motion, along with the strong wind shear, resulted in dynamics favorable enough to sustain a strong squall line that would move through the area Monday evening.
This wasn’t a world stomper by any means, but the line was bound to produce some strong winds. I mean, just 3000 feet off the ground, winds were ripping and roaring out of the south at nearly 90 mph. It doesn’t take a tall storm, or strong updraft to tap into that.
The line wasn’t producing widespread strong wind gusts as it moved towards BG, but it was consistently getting winds in the upper 40 mph range and into the low 50 mph range at some Mesonet sites. But once it hit BG, it became a classic squall line, unleashing some very intesne gusts. There was a recorded gust of 70 mph at the Kentucky Mesonet site on the south side of Warren County, located at the WKU Ag Farm!
Peak wind (mph) from the event via @kymesonet:
Allen Co: 33
Barren Co: 38
Butler Co: 31
Logan Co: .36
Simpson Co: 45
Warren Co: 70 – WOW pic.twitter.com/iNaAskNyTm— Wx Or Not BG (@WxOrNotBG) November 29, 2016
.@joeimel On scene at Middle Bridge & Shive Ln. #onassignment pic.twitter.com/6mUTeROXY3
— Daily News Photo (@bgdnphoto) November 29, 2016
#Briarwood neighborhood has numerous trees down on lines and across streets. Hampton is impassible. https://t.co/y3plgxyre8
— Doug Gorman (@DougGorman1) November 29, 2016
We now have over 7,000 without power. Please be safe, and know we are doing our best to restore outages.
— BG Municipal (@BGMU) November 29, 2016
The storm knocked out power to over 10,000 people, trees were downed and the storm snapped somehwere in the range of 10-14 power poles on Cumberland Trace. There were also a number of downed trees and power lines on the south side of Bowling Green, including Adams Street. Despite all of this, we only managed to find one trampoline casualty. That is somewhat of a win! The storm was pretty crazy, but was interesting to watch evolve on radar:
Overall, our forecast lined up well for this event. We called for the possibility of isolated, damaging winds early Sunday morning, based on the dynamical support alone. Gotta give our contributors/forecasters a pat on the back for that!
