Tornadoes in Hurricane Harvey

Details

• Journal Title:
  Weather and Forecasting
• Personal Author:
  Nowotarski, Christopher J. ; Spotts, Justin ; Edwards, Roger ; Overpeck, Scott ; Woodall, Gary R.
• NOAA Program & Office:
  NWS (National Weather Service) ; SPC (Storm Prediction Center)
• Description:
  Tropical cyclone tornadoes pose a unique challenge to warning forecasters given their often marginal environments and radar attributes. In late August 2017 Hurricane Harvey made landfall on the Texas coast and produced 52 tornadoes over a record-breaking seven consecutive days. To improve warning efforts, this case study of Harvey’s tornadoes includes an event overview as well as a comparison of near-cell environments and radar attributes between tornadic and nontornadic warned cells. Our results suggest that significant differences existed in both the near-cell environments and radar attributes, particularly rotational velocity, between tornadic cells and false alarms. For many environmental variables and radar attributes, differences were enhanced when only tornadoes associated with a tornado debris signature were considered. Our results highlight the potential of improving warning skill further and reducing false alarms by increasing rotational velocity warning thresholds, refining the use of near-storm environment information, and focusing warning efforts on cells likely to produce the most impactful tornadoes.
• Keywords:
  Atmospheric Science
• Source:
  Weather and Forecasting, 36(5), 1589-1609
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1175/waf-d-20-0196.1
• ISSN:
  0882-8156 ; 1520-0434
• Format:
  PDF
• Publisher:
  American Meteorological Society
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  Grant no. NA19NWS4680007
• Rights Information:
  Other
• Compliance:
  Library
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:591bd69c9ed6285f0a2b85fb9a7259951b4de5980d4ebdd87db70c45aa0049fe
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/60146/noaa_60146_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 3.60 MB ]