Severe Weather Looming
The SPC has issued a level 2/5 risk for tomorrow (Thursday) for the area between Omaha and Kansas City. Looking forward, lower end severe chances, currently not really mentioned by the SPC yet, include Friday, perhaps in Iowa, and Saturday, in the Iowa/Illinois region. Official risk areas are back on the map for Sunday and Monday. With these severe weather chances comes potential use-cases for our equipment.
Taking a look at Thursday, main risk looks to be hail greater than one inch. Doubtful of tornado chances, but they are non-zero.
SPC Risk area for Thursday
Taking a look at the HRRR future reflectivity (radar) product in the RadarOmega application, we can note a few clusters of storms over the region around 9PM central time. Doesn’t look too significant or organized, as you can see below.
RadarOmega shows the HRRR model for around 9PM Thursday
Project staff members are really on the fence whether this will be a deployment attempt or not. On one hand, it would be an easy, slow-paced opportunity to test equipment, but on the other, there has yet to be much model support saying a 8-10 hour drive is worth it when we could focus on expanding the fleet to get ready for the weekend severe risk. It’s to be determined, but it looks like overnight model data will be the deal maker or breaker. This is in range for a morning drive, so we have 12 hours or so at the time of writing this to make a decision.
Sunday: SPC outlines a large area for potential severe storms.
SPC risk map for Sunday
It’s still too early to make decisions this many days away, but it’s reasonable to expect a more noteworthy severe weather episode to take place in this large risk zone. Right now, models seem to suggest the Arkansas/Memphis/Mississippi area as being the target zone, but that will get narrowed down and adjusted with time. This day looks like almost a given in terms of a Project deployment.
Severe Risk Moves East: Monday
SPC Risk area for Monday
Finally, whatever is left of the Sunday event will move east on Monday. Re-development is also possible, but as you can imagine, the outcome of Sunday will strongly influence Monday.
Get Ready: Download RadarOmega
As you probably know, the best way to watch live Project WeatherEye streams is directly in the RadarOmega app. You can get it on Windows, Mac, iPhone, and Android. When our devices get deployed and go live, you’ll see them pop up on the map, as long as you have the CyclonePort layer enabled. To do that, you’ll need to go to the menu, scroll down and find “CyclonePort Network,” and then toggle it on. If you just downloaded the app this will be on by default. We’ll be showing the cameras ‘Picture in Picture’ on our YouTube stream (SeeTheStorm.net), but you can pick and choose which one (or all of them) to display on your device at any given time, as well as overlay radar, lightning, warnings, and more.
