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Check out the ‘wind belt‘ by Humdinger wind LLC. This inventor can create energy from a band set to resonate in the wind much like how the Tacoma Narrows bridge started vibrating.

The amount of solar energy hitting the earth every 40 minutes is equivalent to what civilization needs in energy consumption in a year. But the energy is distributed widely while our current energy industry paradigm is focused on concentrated production. Can the industry capture solar power in a distributed way? I think so. Consider Southern California Edison in this excerpt:

March 27, 2008

Will convert 65 million square feet of unused roofs into solar generating stations

ROSEMEAD, Calif., March 27, 2008 – Southern California Edison (SCE) today launched the nation’s largest solar cell installation, a project that will place 250 megawatts of advanced photovoltaic generating technology on 65 million square feet of roofs of Southern California commercial buildings – enough power to serve approximately 162,000 homes.

“These are the kinds of big ideas we need to meet California’s long-term energy and climate change goals,” said Governor Schwarzenegger. “I urge others to follow in their footsteps. If commercial buildings statewide partnered with utilities to put this solar technology on their rooftops, it would set off a huge wave of renewable energy growth.”

“This project will turn two square miles of unused commercial rooftops into advanced solar generating stations,” said John E. Bryson, Edison International chairman and CEO. “We hope to have the first solar rooftops in service by August. The sunlight power will be available to meet our largest challenge – peak load demands on the hottest days.” …. The rest is available here.

Distributed energy production like this is absolutely necessary.

Photovoltaics are coming down in price though we’ve yet to see the efficiencies that would make them a hit. Very expensive, single crystal silicon photovoltaics used for satellites can achieve a highly desirable 30% efficiency. However, I ran across one company, Wakonda LLC, that claims to be able to build a ‘virtual’ single crystal wafer for much less money and yet still achieve the 30% efficiency. They’ve raised venture capital from Waltham, Mass.-based Advanced Technology Ventures, Cambridge, Mass.-based General Catalyst Partners, Waltham, Mass.-based Polaris Venture Partners, Applied Ventures LLC — the venture arm of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Applied Materials Inc. — and the Massachusetts Green Energy Fund. I think they got an award from the National Renewable Energy Lab too. If they can demonstrate a capability to manufacture these, it could be a breakthrough. As Venturebeat magazine quoted, “Unfortunately, Wakonda isn’t giving many real specifics on its technology. Its credibility instead relies on an all-star cast of backers.” I also must trust that this is not just a fantasy announcement. Here’s the exciting quote from Venturebeat: “If Wakonda’s technology lives up to the early claims of thin-film manufacturing prices with over 30 percent cell efficiencies, it will not only leapfrog the existing solar industry, but will also be less expensive than any existing energy generation technology, including coal, natural gas and nuclear.”. That’s pretty serious potential. Keep a watch on Wakonda.

Wakonda may need to keep an eye on Sunrgi with their solar concentrator systems. They’re bulkier but more proven with efficiencies approaching 30%. Solar concentrators sound neat but since they require magnifying lenses to concentrate solar energy on PV’s, they need steering mechanisms. They claim they can build these to match 5-7 cents/KWh but we’ll see.

Boone Pickens is sure an obsessive compulsive. But if that means his attention is drawn to wind and away from how he made his riches in oil, so much the better. He plans 4 GW of wind energy in huge tracts of real estate near Pampa, TX and then a transmission line straight to Dallas. Mr. Pickens wants for the U.S. to install enough wind power to replace all natural gas electrical generation then convert all commercial transportation from oil-based to use natural gas. He’s not in it to save Earth from global warming, instead he’s more interested in reducing foreign oil dependency. I’d rather see more emphasis on reducing greenhouse gases in his plan and I don’t think converting transportation to natural gas will remove our dependency on foreign countries. Afterall, why are we building all these LG terminals in Louisiana? In related news, the Texas Public Utility Commission has also approved a $4 billion transmission line linking the eastern population centers to wind generating areas in west Texas. This commission has sole authority on making these decision which sets them apart from other states which depend on federal oversight. I’d like to know the authority behind that sovereignty.

Another well known person, Al Gore, has his own, even more audacious call, to convert all energy production in the U.S. to renewables by 2018! He likens the challenge to that of the Apollo plan in the1960’s. I’m all for starting on his vision as rapidly as we can manage. The technology exists and so does the room. We’ve already paved or roofed an area the size of Ohio. Covering all that space with solar energy systems should be enough to satisfy our energy needs for some time to come. The problem I see with his announced movement is that the average person will not take his timetable seriously. This transformation in our energy system is many orders of magnitude bigger than the Apollo program and it’ll take time. Ten years to me seems a bit fast considering but we should act like we only have that time left, and if many climate researchers are correct, then we don’t want to waste time wondering if we can. To the anthropogenic climate change skeptics, I say that if there is even a 10% chance that we’ve only got 10 years before it’s too late to stop a catastrophic climate change that an render most of the Earth uninhabitable, then you’ve got to take this proposal seriously too.

Perhaps more realistic a goal has been pushed by 20ercentwind.org.  http://www.20percentwind.org/default.aspx

Greensburg, Kansas suffered almost complete destruction from a tornado on 2007 May 04. Instead of accepting defeat at the hands of nature, the people in this plains town decided to rebuild as a model of green living for the rest of us to follow. See this webpage called Greensburg Greentown. When starting from nothing, it’s easy to rebuild the right way. What about the rest of us?

I’ll be building on this entry for some time to come.

It was a long time that Dylan would try to crawl but he just couldn’t get his legs to move properly. Meanwhile his arms would propel him backwards. Unable to return back to sitting once on his stomach, he would just lie there until he cried to be rescued. Then in the past week he managed to get his legs under him. Now in the past two days he got his legs moving left and right. He’s officially crawling. I’m sure Little Guy isn’t too thrilled about that. Click here for video.

He’s doing other interesting stuff too. Dylan’s putting things back where they belong. Well, not everything, just this ball. See here.

His first foray into a large body of water went pretty well too.

As part of an ongoing discussion on what is a tornado. I present this set of videos showing a vortex that appeared on the north side of Ralls, TX back on 2002 May 27 (2210 UTC). First, a small multicell, undergoing supercell transition, approaches us from the northwest with a pronounced flanking line above a gust front. You can see dust and occasional small vortices underneath the flanking line in this video (opens separate window). The updraft base of the flanking line approaches us in the latter part of the video and there was no cloud base circulation present.

This next video shows the vortex develop behind a house. The rotation appears quite strong. We’re very close to it, at least close enough to hear the swishing sound of the vortex. The latter part of this video shows the single cell vortex break down and then there are multiple vortices. One brief spinup at the end takes a chunk of roofing off the house in the foreground. The video panned out but you can see some of the debris. Not visible is the cloud base but I remember clearly not seeing any cloud base rotation overhead.

As this storm evolved into a supercell, there was real cloud base rotation as a low-level mesocyclone developed west of Crosbyton, TX. You can see circulation in the rain curtains around a vortex at ground level. This vortex is not something I’d call a tornado as it’s a bit broad and appeared to not be strong enough to loft debris. Nevertheless, this event was a true supercell mesocyclone.

The question is, what was the vortex that damaged the house? Technically it’s not a tornado since it did not reach cloud base. There was no low-level mesocyclone as there was later on It was reported as a tornado by a spotter and the LBB NWS office issued a tornado warning. The SPC log showed the tornado as seen in this entry of their events page. The vortex was damaging and the report verified the tornado warning. The storm data log entry in NCDC shows that this tornado destroyed a barn. Should this vortex have verified the warning considering that damage was done? What would this vortex have looked like if the cloud base was a lot lower? Would it be called a legitimate tornado then, everything else being equal?

Here’s a good example of a forward propgating, outflow dominated large multicell that is not propagating into the most unstable air.  The MCS is moving to the southeast through NW TX and SW OK.  But the most unstable air was off to the northeast.  Why did this multicell not move to the northeast into the most unstable air.

The motion of the MCS was 310 25kts. This motion was considerably different than the steering layer flow (210 4 m/s).  So propagation is dominating steering flow.  Would RKW theory using shallow vert shear exlain this motion? According to the RUC, the 0-1,and 0-3 km shear was oriented to the northeast (~225 deg 10 m/s, 240 deg 13 m/s respectively).  Propagation would favor the cold pool curling to the northeast according to RKW theory.  The deep layer shear, however was from the northwest and if you apply the principle that deepest cold pool lifting favors a positive shear in a deeper layer,then it would fit the observations.

Does motion favor going into the best instability.  According to RUC analysis, the best CAPE with minimal CIN lay over central OK.  Yet no part of the OFB heading northeast initiated convection.  In fact, the MCS proceeded happily toward diminishing instability.

The RUC instability field matches the surface dewpoints observations quite well.

So does this case show an example where deep shear favors shallow shear, steering layer flow,and instability gradients?  Well, I’m not totally convinced but indications so far point in that direction.

I’m not convinced yet because the late afternoon GOES visible imagery show the best boundary layer cumulus are focused entirely in northwest TX, and not OK, on the south side of  a stationary front.  An isolated small multicell near SPS indicated CIN was low along the stationary front. The lack of CU in OK suggests that the boundary layer was shallow.  Given the lack of development on the northeastern flank of the OFB suggests the CIN was too high to allow CI.  Perhaps if the OFB was deeper, or if the deep shear was more westerly, then it may have initiated more convection there.  If shallow shear was the most important determinant for CI on an OFB, then the northeastern flank of the MCS should’ve been the preferred area of new CI, and thus propagation.

Perhaps the anvil shading stabilized the air ahead in OK.  But the storm-relative anvil layer flow directed anvils right ahead of where the multicell moved.  If anvil shading was of dominant importance, the multicell would either propagate directly south or to the east into OK.

Last but not least, there’s the MBE vector.  From CDS sounding, the forward and backward propagation vectors both favor forward propagation.  The sounding from FSI and HBR show even more strong forward propagation components.

So what was important here?

• 0-6 or 0-8 km shear and/or MBE vectors.

• Possibly area of CAPE with the least CIN.

What didn’t work?

• CAPE gradient, 0-1 and 0-3 km shear

• Anvil cooling.

This is just one case for multicell propagation lesson in DLOC topic 7.

DLOC; DLOC topic 7; DLOC topic 7 lesson 13; multicell motion

Three interesting squall line events led to the wrong warning decisions between three central Plains CWAs. After midnight on May 2, the Kansas City area suffered a bow echo with tornadoes that caused up to EF-3 damage in the northern suburbs. No tornado warning was issued.

On May 7, a squall line segment approached Norman, OK from the south and produced a weak tornado <2 mi south of the NWC. No warning was issued and the only manifestation of the vortex was from the TDWR. Other tornadic QLCS vortices formed in western OKC within the PAR sector. TORs were issued up there. The OK mesonet data did imply strong vertical vorticity as the storms formed near the low center and helped accelerate strong westerlies through southern McClain and CLeveland counties.

You can see in the 4 panel Z/V from KTLX the E-W oriented boundary moving north toward Norman with strong southwesterlies south of it. The zoomed in version on the right even shows a hint of a vortex northwest of Noble. The picture above was taken about the same time. Meanwhile the boundary in OKC is oriented N-S and is also featuring strong vertical vorticity with associated convection.

Perhaps this event is not really a classic QLCS vortex event as the convection is relatively immature. The N-S boundary may be more enhanced by the synoptic low than by outflow. However the E-W boundary near Norman appeared to be enhanced by cold outflow as storms formed in drier air to the west.
On the evening of June 3, a big hail producing HP supercell in the OK panhandle morphed into a high end severe bow echo tracking along the KS/OK border near I-35. Later, it approached southwest MO where is began to dissipate. Nevertheless, a 7 county tornado warning was issued from SGF. No tornadoes were reported from the whole event. Earlier in the day the bowing line passed south of ICT appearing much more severe than later on. The image below shows that the line was quite severe with >70kt outbounds in the radial velocity. There were no major vortices but the gust front was well attached to the leading edge of the line - a common attribute to tornadic squall lines. However, the lifting above the gust front’s surface location was quite cellular as seen in this volumetric 45dBZ isosurface.

No tornado warnings were issued in this phase of the squall line though the severe thunderstorm warnings included the possibility, and the almost certainty of hurricane force winds. There was a 112 mph wind gust at an airport southeast of ICT.

As the bowing line approached SGF’s area, it appeared as in the image below. Only the leading edge of the line attached to the gust front survived. There certainly was severe winds associated with this line but it’s not typical for this type of line to be tornadic.

By 0504 UTC, this line was well within the dissipation stage as only a few cells managed to initiate behind the gust front (see below). I doubt that a dissipating line would carry any significant threat of a tornado and likely does not warrant a tornado warning. The real question would be whether or not this dissipating line was still severe?

There was significant shallow and deep shear but the thermodynamics must’ve become inhospitable for this line to continue.
On June 05, a small vortex formed on a line segment at 2250 UTC northwest of Wellington, KS. Despite a well defined hook and vortex, no tornado was reported to verify the TOR issued. However, significant winds (70-80 mph) were reported with this vortex. At 2240 UTC, there was a NW-SE oriented face to this broken line SSW of the KICT radar (see below). SRM data showed the bowing line gust front boundary to be colocated to the leading edge of the heavy precipitation.

Twenty minutes later (2302 UTC) the apex of the bow produced a vortex that entrained precipitation into a hook. The vortex was fairly strong though not gate-to-gate. However, with superrresolution data at this close a range, it would be hard to tell how often a gate-to-gate signature is common with even tornadic vortices. I suspect you’d still see such a signature for smaller tornadic vortices. Nevertheless, the rotational velocity of 40kts was quite significant and the vortex was over 14kft deep. A tornado warning on this event was certainly understandable given that the vortex was in the context of extreme low- and deep-layer shear, low CIN, and vigorous convection with a deep gust front directly under the deep updraft and just ahead of the intense core. The only negative I noticed was that the orientation of the shear vectors were not normal to the orientation of the line. However, they were normal to the orientation of the individual bowing segments.

Forward a few days to 0630 UTC on 8 June and there’s another line segment approaching OMA. A strong EF2 tornado was reported OMA from this mature segment with no warning. It’s understandable that no advance warning was issued since the TVS appeared right when the tornado began. Still, it took up to nine minutes for the warning to go out and by then it was over. This squall line also exhibited the fundamentals of being capable of producing tornadoes. At 0640 UTC, the line was west of OMA manifesting vortices all along its leading edge. The deep layer shear was oriented normal to the line. The shallow shear was exceptionally strong (>40kts) thanks to the LLJ. There was relatively minimal CIN. The line itself was almost unbroken and the gust front was constrained to the leading edge of the intense reflectivity.

At 0710 UTC, part of the reflectivity extruded ahead in a broad bow and all along that bow the velocity image showed evidence of a strong vertical vorticity, mostly due to what appeared to be line-parallel northwesterly winds (outbounds relative to the radar). There was no tight vortex yet but the background intense vertical vorticity along with the other squall line attributes should raise serious alarm that a transition to a tornadic phase was possible. This case was very similar to the first one presented, the Kansas City case.

By 0720 UTC, two intense vortices developed southeast of the radar, and over the township of Millard, NE. One of these produced a strong EF2 tornado with a damage path up to 0.5 mi wide. The tornado was reported at about this time and so waiting for the vortex/TVS to form would’ve left no lead time. Perhaps in this situation, the best course of action would be to have already composed a draft warning and then maintain the polygon.

These five events represent squall lines embedded in strong vertical deep layer shear and sufficient CAPE. Yet their tornado potential varied significantly. They’ll be good examples to show in DLOC and/or AWOC.
keywords: QLCS vortex; QLCS vortices; DLOC topic 7 lesson 10; tornado hazard detection; superres cases; TDWR; AWOC

A morning complex of storms initiated on a warm front on the KS/NE border north of MHT and then tracked southeastward toward Bates county MO by 1830 UTC. The reflectivity core of an HP supercell on the southwestward end of this complex at 1843 UTC was one of the most impressive I’ve seen. Max values > 70 dBZ rose to over 40 kft. One large three body scatter spike was observed in addition to significant reflectivity attenuation. See the 4-panel superres from KEAX below.

The SHAVE project found reports of just baseballs in this segment of the storm’s life. The Springfield NWS office got reports of baseballs and 80 mph winds. Needless to say, I would not be surprised if this storm produced a lot of hail bigger than golfballs based on the amount of attenuation, extreme reflectivities, and the big three body scatter spike. As a result of the huge volume of ice, this kind of storm is a high end wind threat, I’m talking hurricane force winds to more than just CAT-1.

This storm could be classified as a high precip supercell, however it exhibited obvious multicell characteristics where explosive initiation would occur on the south flank of the previous cell and quickly assume dominance. I’ll post a flash loop of it shortly. The multicellular characteristics of this supercell fits well with the fact that most supercells are multicellular in some way.

Check out the anvil of this event from the visible imagery.  This storm’s outflow dominates the synoptic flow most likely because the storm-relative anvil layer flow was quite weak.
keywords: DLOC topic 7; AWOC severe; supercells; multicells; attenuation; three body scatter spike; hail signature

Last night a tornado struck the small town of Arcadia, OH - the town that Daphne’s sister and family calls home. There wasn’t a watch but the northern Indiana office picked up on the circulation pretty easily with their superrez radar data and started issuing TORs (see start of the storm wide/zoomed). The Cleveland office followed suit once the storm crossed into their CWA. Those warnings woke up Daphne’s sister and husband thanks to a working NOAA radio whereupon they quickly headed to the basement with their two kids. They lucked out. There was heavy damage not one mile south of them. Here’s an image from last night just to show this storm’s unusual nature (look in northeast Hancock county). You can see it’s enhanced convection as embedded in rain as I’ve seen for a tornadic supercell (I’m thinking it’s supercell and not a line).

zoomed version

According to the SPC meso plots, the environment at the start of the storm in Paulding county, OH featured pretty good shear but really low CAPE. The level of maximum MUCAPE was pretty high, and so was the effective layer for SRH. While MLCAPE showed weakly positive values, the SBCAPE fell below the threshold at which SBCIN is calculated. There was no problem with the 0-1 km shear, however.

What looks like to be a worked over atmosphere with widespread rain, and elevated minimal CAPE, I’d be stretched to issue a watch for this event. It makes me wonder how much the general rainfall has also worked over the atmosphere above the ground for which the RUC would be unaware? I’m also not sure but it appears wind damage reports came in that prompted northern Indiana to issue TORs. I’m glad they chose TORs. They had high resolution radar imagery and I wonder how much that affected their decision to go ahead with a tornado warning? Nevertheless, an interesting case of an unusual environment of a supercell.

keywords:  DLOC topic 7; DLOC topic 7 lesson 9; DLOC topic 7 lesson 9 TVS identification; TVS identification; DLOC topic 7 lesson  7; supercell morphology: Velocity Structure; Super resolution; superres