Denver Weather, Severe Probs, and Australian Tornado

Last night at 8PM (MDT), the temperature outside my apartment was 20ºF. Two hours later, it was 36ºF (10PM). While KAPA had been in the 30's all afternoon and into the evening, other stations such as KBKF and KDEN were still inverted. I had made pleas to the universe in general yesterday to have the southwesterlies break the inversion just for a spell. For a brief period last night, they did just that. It was down in the 20's again this morning when I awoke.

We had a brief burst of snow here near Centennial Airport today. I did see some cumulus this afternoon which made apparent the instability today. It made me think of much warmer times ...

Speaking of warmer times, I'm keeping my eyes on the trough portrayed by the models that should plow its way through the south this coming weekend. The models aren't quite lined up yet and vary a little run to run, so I'm not going to call anything yet. Indications are that the Gulf of Mexico will open up, though.

Here's a look at the CAPE on the WRF 84hr. (Friday evening)



Current tropical activity:





Looks like Billy might make a name for himself. After an initial landfall in Australia, he's emerging out into favorable strengthening conditions. We'll have to keep an eye on him.

Satellite imagery used with permission; courtesy of IPS Meteostar Inc. Click for larger images.

And finally, a nice tornadic storm is caught on camera in Australia:
Link to large picture.
Discussion on The Australian Severe Weather forum.
Canberra Times article.

Dann.

Late December Severe Event?

Well, well, well, what have we here? Chaser friends are abuzz with a late December chase possibility. I will, of course, be enjoying the company of my family seemingly above the Arctic Circle in Montana. If the models verify, we will have a strong weather-maker crossing the CONUS. It looks squall line-ish, but you can't rule out some spin-ups, especially if we can work out some supes just ahead of it. It will be interesting to watch for the next few days.




SPC even has a Day 5 out on the situation already. I haven't seen one of those in at least a month.


And one final thought ... current tropical activity.





Satellite imagery used with permission; courtesy of IPS Meteostar Inc. Click for larger images.

Dann.

Cold Cut Switchblade

Well, it's getting a little chilly here again tonight in Denver. As it stands, it's 16ºF with a light breeze at my apartment. The sun was out most of the day, but it never really got much above 30ºF. While that doesn't seem all that cold, the wind sure had a knack for cutting right through me.

Montana is seeing very cold weather again. Temperatures dropped below -20ºF in many locales yesterday and have returned that low already tonight. The GFS and WRF did not show the quick drop in temperature tonight for the area. I wonder if they are having trouble with the timing of the system in the northwest. The warming in Montana just doesn't seem to have begun just yet. In fact, there are some readings below -25ºF currently and even one (Kevin, MT) at -31ºF.

Last night (Friday, the 19th) was the third installment of Convergence! The AMS Club at Metro State was kind enough to host the event and it took a slightly different turn than normal. Instead of just hanging out at the bar and swapping stories, we had a forum to share media. It was a lot of fun (-beer).

I was asked to fill some time so I did a presentation on the Alta Vista Tornado. More specifically, I wanted to talk about how sometimes storm chasing is just about going out and working with what you have. It seems like a lot of attention is paid to the moderate to high risk events. Well, in this case, we saw something happen one day, saw the same pattern the next day, and got lucky. I also wanted to show people that a non-traditional storm (in this case, a VERY LP-supercell) can still tornado under the right circumstances. I tried to cover this as best I could given the documentation that I had. However, my power-point presentation did not make it to the event intact. Unfortunately, I only linked the diagrams and pictures instead of inserting them. So, of course, nothing showed up. Luckily, I was able to talk my way through with some stuff I had uploaded to the infobahn and a couple secondary things that I had remembered to bring. Hopefully people enjoyed the talk.

Tony Laubach was up next and he presented the May 29th chapter of his latest chasing DVD. I had already seen it, so I knew what to expect (though thoroughly enjoyed it for the third time!), but it was cool to hear the oohs and ahhs from the audience.

Next up, we got to see some of the May 22nd chapter of the latest Carlson Chasers DVD. I had seen some bits and pieces before but it was nice to see the full presentation. I still need to pick up a copy of their DVD.

Cameron Redwine then wowed us with some slide of his storm photography. He doesn't have much material online or I'd link him, but he has some fantastic shots. He's been chasing in Colorado since 1997 and has documented completely with use of a film camera. It definitely gave me an appreciation for the film quality.

Kendall LaRoche was next and he showed some pictures of his front porch storm spotting, which was cool. I had the pleasure of bringing him along on his very first storm chase back in April. You should have seen his face the first time we saw lightning on that particular day.

Finally, Dr. Richard Wagner (from Metro State) did a presentation of below-zero climatology for Denver and finished it up by talking El Niño and La Niña trends here.

There were some new faces there, which was nice. Some of them were chasers and some of them not. All in all, it was a fun night.

The next event is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, January 31st.


A couple days ago, I promised some shots from our grauple/thundersnow event. Though I didn't hear thunder, there were several reports in the metro along with some lightning strikes showing up.






I've enjoyed putting the information on the tropics in my posts for the past week. For some reason, the last couple years have seen me more excited about the Southern Hemisphere season than the more "local" events. I guess if you're reading this, let me know if you like seeing the tropical weather on here.




Satellite imagery used with permission; courtesy of IPS Meteostar Inc. Click for larger images.

And finally, Michael Carlson posted this link on Storm Track recently. I figured I'd share it as well.

The Big Picture (2008 Year in Photographs)
Part I
Part II
Part III

Dann.

December Convergence! & The Tropics

December's Convergence! is tonight.

It will be held at the Tivoli Student Union Building on Auraria Campus. I will be doing a short presentation on the Alta Vista Tornado. It's nothing special really, I'm just trying to help fill time. It will focus on some of the mesoscale features and be filled with pictures and video.

Starts at 5:30PM tonight (hopefully I can get there on time!).

Did I mention free food and drink?


Also, I've been enjoying the tropical cyclone season in the Southern Hemisphere, so here is an update.

Satellite imagery used with permission; courtesy of IPS Meteostar Inc. Click for larger images.





UPDATE on yesterday: The snow came quick yesterday and was gone. There were some reports of thundersnow east of town and lightning detection did show a couple strikes.

I'm not sure how much updating I will be doing over the next week and a half. I have a busy weekend ahead and two long days in the office, Monday & Tuesday. I will be traveling to Montana for Wednesday through Monday and my parents have dial-up. :)

Dann.

Nature Is Go'n'a Get Ya'

Nothing ground-breaking to say today, so I'll let the pictures and video do the talking.

I stumbled upon the following graphic on AOL News yesterday and it gave me a little chuckle. There have been several other versions of this map published in the past 24 hours, but I think this is one of the more simple ones to look at and understand. It basically describes how likely you are to be "dead by nature" by region.




The cold air has moderated over the last couple of days. The storm system that brought snow to Las Vegas yesterday has also plowed over most of the west. Everybody seems to be getting snow. We have a few showers in the Denver area right now, but nothing to write home about.

The situation developing in the midwest and Ohio Valley should be interesting over the next few days. Death, destruction via ice and snow. Prepare for those headlines.

... but, the cold air will return to the northern Rockies as exemplified in this forecast pulled from the Butte, Montana NWS point forecast page.



Looking in on the warmer latitudes ...




Satellite image used with permission; courtesy of IPS Meteostar Inc.



On the lighter side, this was posted over on Storm Track today.


Weather Channel Accused of Pro-Weather Bias




UPDATE:
We just had a nice graupel shower a minute ago. I took some pictures but don't have my cable with me. Hopefully I'll have them up tomorrow.

UPDATE 2:
Quite the wave of showers that have just come off the mountains. We could be seeing some heavy snow with embedded small to moderately sized graupel. I wouldn't be all that surprised to see reports of thundersnow. Lightning is quiet for the time being, but I'll keep my eyes out.



Dann.