re: Major Severe Weather Outbreak: March 14-16, 2025

The I-30 corridor in central Arkansas (Benton, Bryant, Bauxite, Alexander) seems to be what steers any tornadic cells coming through there throughout history. They usually come right up the corridor or parallel with it within a couple miles, and that's where any cell that's going to be tornadic seems to intensify and kick off.

Lots of local Mets and others interested in the science think it's topography related, as that area of the corridor is extremely flat and the interstate construction itself opened up a perfect SW to NE "funnel" with no obstructions. This is where both tornadoes that ultimately hit Vilonia and left a path of destruction started to intensify. Same with the tornado on March 31st two years ago that went through LR and NLR proper.

If you look at the maps of all recorded tornadoes throughout history you can definitely see trends of clumped together lines running NE in certain areas in all states. There's also big gaps in some areas with little to no recorded tornadoes. I'd be really interested to see the results of an extensive study on this phenomenon

Tornado warnings in our area of western PA, not so fun.

Lots of delays building this afternoon, getting pretty windy here in FL and now the northeast is having visibility issues so JFK, LGA, and EWR all with ground delays. Just had a fire watch pop up in FL as well. That line of storms is moving closer to Orlando, another ground stop until 3:30pm now FAA. 21 planes and counting in line to take off at Orlando currently, only 2 flights to miami and one to san juan have taken off in the last half hour

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Orlando MCO Ground Stop

16/2:00 PM EDT—16/3:30 PM EDT

Departures to Orlando International are grounded due to thunderstorms.

Probability of extension is high (greater than 60%).

Grounding applies to departures from ZTL ZDC ZHU ZJX ZMA ZME ZID ZFW

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Anything trying to fly to Florida is getting delayed on average 164 minutes/nearly 3 hours

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FCAJX3
Airspace Flow Program

16/9:00 AM EDT—16/6:59 PM EDT


Flights crossing the Flow Constrained Area (FCA) will be delayed an avg. 164 mins. or routed around due to thunderstorms. FCA applies to southbound departures.

Altitude Floor/Ceiling: 180/600

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It’s crazy to me how an ef2 with 110mph does that shite, but a cat 4 hurricane with 140mph winds and the damage is like “dang I lost my roof”

Ha nice. I figured somebody would get it. I have family in SOSO and its such a blip on the radar.

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Interpreting radar images is a perfect example of a task where AI will outperform humans.

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Intriguing concept that doesn't work with the NWS NEXRAD systems.

Designed in the 1980's, deployed 1990's, single-beam array scanning, stepped at discrete elevations, creating a 3D volumetric image of certain atmospheric observables. Been a few decades since my e.e. days with microwave systems, had to briefly read up on NEXRAD.

Has improved electronics and synthetically derived products from differing signal signatures that enhance interpretative fidelity.

NEXRAD suffers from the usual confounding variables inherent in all 3ghz single beam imaging systems: absorption coefficient ambiguity, signal-to-noise floor limitations, latency (a biggie) to name just a few. Pretty good for what it is, not state-of-the-art.

See an Aegis Class missile cruiser phased-array weapons radar for an example of what's possible, a technology direction I believe NWS is working towards.

The physics of RF propagation are fixed: a higher frequency equals greater resolution yet shorter range, with the inverse being true. How many CONUS radar sites are needed? Don't know.

My point, to be clear, is even A.I. needs coherent data to quickly resolve high fidelity images. Interpreting a "blob" of a radar return doesn't work. In the signal-to-noise paradigm, incoherent noise.

Can we extract usable microwave radar data from "noise?"

Yes, but not with present NEXRAD technology; the solution, phased array, spread-spectrum systems, is complex and expensive, assuming wide scale deployment.

TLDR: Not Yet

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Legend, RTR, Bobby and Boat, and others weighing in even to say your location is ok, my heartfelt thanks.

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Not sure if it’s been posted or not, but the tornado NW of Diaz in Arkansas has been rated an EF4. Estimated wind speeds of 190mph