Watches, warnings and advisories

With the "interesting" weather we've had over the past few days, I thought I'd take a moment to give you the inside scoop on watches, warnings, advisories, what they mean, and who does what.

Let's start with watches, when they're issued, it means the condition is POSSIBLE within and close to the watch area. They're issued by the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

If the conditions develop, a Warning is issued, meaning that the severe thunderstorm, tornado, or whatever is imminent or occurring. They're issued by the local National Weather Service Forecast Office. In our case, it's the one in Pueblo, though warnings for Elbert and Lincoln county are issued by the Denver/Boulder office, and for Cheyenne and Kit Carson counties, it's the NWSFO (an abbreviation of the above title) in Goodland, Kansas.

Advisories are for conditions not quite as life and property threatening as a warning, but weather conditions that are intense enough to impact your life. They also come from the local NWSFO. Occasionally, if we get public reports about storm conditions in a given area and nothing has been issued for it, we'll break into programming to let you know.

Interesting to note that there are no "official" watches, warnings or advisories for lightning or heavy rain, though if the rain is heavy enough and persists long enough to cause local flooding, there ARE advisories and warnings for that.

That last note was prompted by a storm that moved across Canon City on the night of July 31st, with (from local reports), LOTS of lightning, and the caller was stunned there was no warning or advisory for it....and the reason is that there IS no official category for that particular weather phenomenon.

Can it really be this cold in July?

After the attention-getting severe weather on Tuesday and Wednesday, the cold settled in on Thursday, July 30th.

The process began with 48 degrees to start the morning in Colorado Springs, shattering the old record of 49, set in 1971....and then it stayed cold.

Colorado Springs went on to set a new record low maximum with a high of 60. The old record was 63 degrees, set in 1936.

Pueblo was close. The official high was 68, and the record low maximum for the date was 67 set in 1925. ("Missed it by that much").

This summer feels a lot like the summer of 1997 did to me (I was bicycle-commuting at the time). It will be interesting to see if the comparison continues into the Winter.

Let's see, other things going on. The Summer semester is winding down at Pikes Peak Community College. 2 finals down, and one to go on Saturday, then a short break before Fall semester kicks in by the middle of August. (Still some openings in my Meteorology and Astronomy 102 classes....BLATANT PLUG).

So just what IS a severe thunderstorm?

With the impressive storms we've seen in southern Colorado over the past few days, including some with heavy enough rain for Flash Flood Warnings in El Paso and a number of other counties, some of you have been wondering "why wasn't there a severe thunderstorm warning in effect for that storm over my house? it was the biggest one I've ever seen!!"

It's a good question, and the answer comes in multiple parts
1) Who issues local watches and warnings? The local National Weather Service Forecast Office. Ours is in Pueblo.
2) What's a severe thunderstorm? To be "severe" a thunderstorm must have any or all of the following..
a) Hail 1" in diameter or greater
b) Winds 58 mph or stronger
c) A tornado (Kind of a slam-dunk on this one).

If the storm doesn't achieve the criteria above, it isn't severe....it's just a really big storm. The weather service can issue advisories and warnings for some of the side-effects, such as flash flooding or urban and small stream flooding, which they did.

One thing to keep in mind is that tornadoes develop from severe thunderstorms, so keep your eyes and ears open during severe weather, it could get even more interesting before it's over.

Keep those questions coming!

Flooding, Flash Flooding and severe storms

Interesting day on Sunday, July 26th, with lots of water remaining in the air from Saturday's storms, and an upper-level disturbance moving through from the northwest to trigger it.

As a result, Flash Flood warnings reached from El Paso county to Las Animas county during the afternoon and evening...Here are a few rainfall and flooding reports from the event.

.72" - 1 SW of rye
.90: - 1 WSW of Colorado City
.92" - SW of Beulah
1.32" - 1 SE of Fowler
1.40" - 7 E of Colorado Springs; 1 S of Beulah
1.46" - 3 South of La Veta (+ pea size hail as the storm began)
1.50" - 6 NE of Colorado Springs
1.60" - 4 NNE of Colorado Springs
1.61" - 6 ENE of Colorado Springs (in one hour)
1.85"- 5 NE of Colorado springs (in one hour)

Flooding Reports (Courtesy the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Pueblo)
2:53 PM - 8" - 10" of water at the intersection of Tutt and Constitution
2:59 PM - Water from curb to curb on Tutt Blvd. from Constitution to North Carefree
3:07 PM - Significant street flooding 4 ENE of Colorado Springs
3:20 PM - Creek out of its band and flowing across the road at Galley and San Miguel
4:30 PM - Several roads on the south side of Canon City closed due to Flash Flooding.

There were a few Severe Thunderstorm Warnings as well, but no reports of damaging wind or hail at this point.

Another round of showers and thunderstorms will develop on Monday.

The rains are back in southern Colorado

A weak cold front + more water in the air = buckets of rainfall on Saturday, July 25th.

There were several severe thunderstorm warnings, but few reports of 1" or larger hail.

In the rainfall department, however, the big winner was Canon City, with .93" in 45 minutes.
Other totals included...
.58" at the Air Force Academy
.52" at Coronado High School
.36" in Woodland Park
.35" in Manitou Springs

There were also reports of a mudslide closing LaVeta Pass.

Another image of the hole in Jupiter's atmosphere

I ran across the best image I've seen yet of that hole punched in Jupiter's outer atmosphere, discovered on 19 July. To see it, try this link..http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/jupiter-hubble.html
Still not a lot of information about the object itself, but it appears it may have been as large as several football fields, and probably a piece of a comet or an icy asteroid.

One of my engineers here at the station keeps me up to date on the latest developments and images, and I'll pass them along to you. (It makes it an exciting time to teach astronomy!!).

Oh, he also brought me this statistic...your odds of being struck by lightning are 576,000:1, but the current odds that a comet or meteoroid will strike the earth and cause global catastrophe in the next 100 years is 5,000:1.

On to other items...I'm not the only mike madson out there. One of the other ones online is my son, Mike Jr. who's fantasy novel, "The Lady in White" is about to be published. His blog is www.michaelmadson.com, for much deeper thoughts than you'll get from me, as he polishes off his undergraduate degree, moves on for his Masters, and heads full-tilt for his PhD.

Final thought..I celebrated another birthday on the 16th and celebrated with a potpourri of my favorite foods...corn dogs, pork rinds, cosmic brownies (the ones from Little Debbies, not the other kind) and Coca Cola bottled in Mexico....Before you bemoan the lack of "organicness" (my own new word, what do you think?), keep in mind that this is the diet that has gotten me to AARP age, and I'll probably outlive you. Yes, it was OUTSTANDING. (Now, all I need to make the celebration complete is a good "all you can eat" Chinese (sort-of) buffet.

Tornado or Landspout?

The National Weather Service issued a Tornado Warning for parts of Kiowa and Prowers counties, and a trained weather spotter reported a "tornado".

I broke into programming, just to be sure viewers in that area knew there was a dangerous storm in the area, but looking at the echo on FirstAlert Doppler, it had the wrong shape and intensity to be a tornadic storm, and there was no shear (winds at different speeds or directions at different levels of the atmosphere...and you need that to get a good rotating tube of air in the updraft of the storm = tornado).

Then it struck me.....I think it was a "landspout". Here's the definition...

Landspout tornadoes are formed by thunderstorms that do not have rotating updrafts (BINGO). Wind shift lines in the lower atmosphere, such as local topography may produce, cause VERY WEAK (caps added by your author) spinning vertical tubes of air.

When a thunderstorm updraft forms over one of the weak spinning tubes of air, the tube is stretched. Stretching a rotating tube causes it to spin faster, forming a short lived and relatively weak tornado.

That seems to meet the criteria, and the bottom line is that it was NOT a "Wizard of Oz" Great Plains tornado, but it was an indicator that a storm strong enough to take notice of was moving across the eastern Plains.

As we're in the season, I'll let you know if anything of note is moving in your direction, and will NOT make the description of every storm sound like "the biggest, baddest storm that's ever hit southern Colorado".

I'll tell you about another variation, the "gustnado" in a future blog.

Landspout tornadoes are most commonly found near coastlines and along the Colorado front range.