re: Let's Do It Again: Severe Threat 3/30 - Line of Severe Storms leaving SELA. AL in it now

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There's a good correlation out there that plots gate to gate wind speed (how fast the radar says its spinning) vs how high in the air the debris goes using CC on radar.

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I don't think we are anywhere near where we need to be in judging ultimate intensity by the CC presentation. I just don't think we understand it enough, yet. How does distance from the radar/tilt height change presentation and how does it correlate to ground truth? Then, there's the particulars of what is actually hit and how it presents on CC that needs to really be studied. A Fall tornado that hits trees or forested areas can present a TDS comparable to a violent tornado due to the nature of the debris in the air, that's particularly evident with debris fallout.

I think we will see the day when radar and CC becomes advanced enough to where we can have a decent idea what was likely hit. We can then judge the height against that and have a much better "guess" as to the strength of the tornado we are dealing with in near real time.

We'll get there, but slowly.

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I don't think we are anywhere near where we need to be in judging ultimate intensity by the CC presentation. I just don't think we understand it enough, yet. How does distance from the radar/tilt height change presentation and how does it correlate to ground truth?

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I'm saying you find the tilt on CC that shows you the highest point of the CC dropout. You can use that to know the height of the debris. This has been shown to work reasonably well to estimate strength of a tornado if you have the gate to gate to compare it to.

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A Fall tornado that hits trees or forested areas can present a TDS comparable to a violent tornado due to the nature of the debris in the air, that's particularly evident with debris fallout.

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The leaves are still off the trees here in Bama so maybe it was easier to kick up ground debris and that's why there were two really nasty looking debris signatures on radar Wednesday.

I haven't been to JW's in a while! I'd swing by if I weren't already in Florence.