Case Study: July 2, 1997
< under construction! >
On this day, tornadoes occurring in central and southeastern Michigan produced heavy damage and ? fatalities. A line of supercell thunderstorms formed just ahead of an unseasonably strong cold front during the afternoon hours. As the line of storms, including a tornado, passed across the Detroit River to northeast of Windsor, the tornado lifted. Wall clouds were still reported as a supercell storm crossed Essex County. A few weak tornadoes are thought to have developed as storms moved into Kent County.
The conditions on this day have been modelled using MC2 on a 5 km grid.
There is no convective parameterization scheme available for this grid
size so there are no precip data (drat!). The following are some preliminary
results:
18 UTC - thunderstorms just beginning to pop up across central
Michigan
Surface divergence and 10m winds - lake breeze front segments off SW corners of lakes
Vertical motion at 750 m with cross-section arrow
Cross-section through lake breeze fronts - take a look at those gravity waves!
MSL Pressure and 1000-500 mb thickness
21 UTC - storms moving into the Detroit area
Surface divergence and 10 m winds - lake breeze front segments now joined along Michigan coast
Vertical motion at 1000 m with cross-section arrow - lake breeze front north of Lake Erie too
Cross-section through lake breeze fronts - gravity waves still hangin' in there!
1.5 m temperatures - Detroit - Windsor in the hot zone
1.5 m dew point temperatures - lots of moisture too!
Boundary layer
heights - big difference downwind of the lakes in southwestern Ontario
00 UTC on July 3rd - line of storms has moved off to
the east
MSL Pressure
and 1000-500 mb thickness - cold front moving through
To come: more model output, comparisons to observations, links
to official July 2 doc's, etc.
