Disheartening

Today will go down in the record books for tornadoes, and could vault this month to the top of the worst month in regards to severe, ever. Before I write about the outbreak, I want to express my heartfelt sympathy for the people of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, etc. There has been a great loss of life today.

This morning started out with an expected high risk from the SPC. For the Mid-South we had very high forecasts of Bulk Shear, and Storm Relative Helicity values. In the picture that follows (18z Birmingham, AL Sounding), the things that are so noticeable are: significant CAPE, backed LL winds, strong LLJ around 850mb, coupled with a relatively strong jet streak around 400mb, and great moisture. We had values ranging anywhere from 200-500+ m^2/s^2 for SRH, and Bulk Shear above 65 knots. Those two ingredients alone are downright scary. When you add it all together, you have an atomic situation; one which supports large, long track tornadoes. And that is exactly what happened.



The follow radar pictures are associated with some of the Mississippi and Alabame storms, they have the tightest couplets I have ever seen on any supercell. And, every storm which fired was discrete, and every one of them were supercells.







Luckily, the SPC has been great for the whole duration of this event. My hat is off to them! Here is a picture of all the reports: