[FRIAM] This morning's hailstorm

Tue May 6 14:41:44 EDT 2025

*To the Non-Santafeans on the list:  Third day in:  cold overcast morning.
Light snow. It is may.  May! Many of you have lived here and you know how
weird it is. Normal pattern is dry and warm.  *

Steve,

I would love to see a map of your topography.   Some SW you get is actually
E in origine, or even NE.  Cold dense air comes around the bottom of the
Sangres, and then flows northward in the canyon.

So here is my morning report for all the thousands of you who are waiting
with 'bated breath.

[image: image.png]
Even I can see that this is a very different sounding.  Note the difference
between the blueline and the redline.  On this sounding, the redline is
(almost) always tothe right of the blue line.  This means that as the air
is lifted, it will not be heated by condensation.  CAPE  = Convectively
Available Potential Energy -- is negligible.  No Hail Today. Well, hang
on.  This is a 4 am sounding.  If we got breaks in the sun, the blue line
would move to the right.   So.

Here is the surface map.  It doesnt have much to say about S F , but the
low pressure area in west texas is developing nicely, pulling warm air up
from the gulf and packing the dryline.  F or some reason, the dryline seems
to be represented as a cold front.
[image: image.png]

For comparison with abq, look at this sounding from the big bend area.
That whole area where the blue line is to the right of the red line is CAPE
, energy available for convection.  I haven't looked at the forecast yet,
but I guess I am just as happy I am not in STX  this afternoon.  If you
look at the wind vanes, there seems to be ample directional and velocity
sheer.

[image: image.png]

So here is the warnings plot for today.

[image: image.png]

And here is the key
[image: image.png]
Apparently tornados on the ground atm east of WACO

* Gotta stop!!!!!!!!!!!! *

*N ick*

On Mon, May 5, 2025 at 1:32 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> so, as the Chief Weather Nerd on the list,  I thought I  ought to be able
> to say something about this morning's hail storm.  I can't really.  I can
> regale you with this morning;'s skew-T diagram from ABQ which would tell us
> something if we understood it.
>
> [image: image.png]
> Notice that there is some CAPE and that and that most of it is above the
> freezing level.  I send this along in the hope that I will entrap others in
> guessing what these things mean. Notice that the the airmass in the top
> half of the atmosphere seems quite different with strong sw winds, low
> dewpoints, and a cap.
> Here is a  surface map for this morning:
>
> [image: image.png]
>
> --The dry line is pretty well developed in southern NM, but very diffuse
> up where we are, so I don't think that's playing much of a role.
>
> To get a sense of the big picture,look at this radar mosaic.
> https://radar.weather.gov/region/conus-large/standard
>
> And then compare it in your mind to this 500 mib chart.  Wierd.
> [image: image.png]
> I really wish we had a proper meteorologist on this list.
>
> Talk about complexity.,
>
> N
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
>

-- 
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
nthompson at clarku.edu
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20250506/a717aeab/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 497334 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20250506/a717aeab/attachment-0008.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 233468 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20250506/a717aeab/attachment-0009.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 370268 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20250506/a717aeab/attachment-0010.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 475015 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20250506/a717aeab/attachment-0011.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 460231 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20250506/a717aeab/attachment-0012.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 379006 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20250506/a717aeab/attachment-0013.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 236418 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20250506/a717aeab/attachment-0014.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 72406 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20250506/a717aeab/attachment-0015.png>