The Initiation of Moist Convection at the Dryline: Forecasting Issues from aCase Study Perspective

Abstract

Abstract The processes that force the initiation of deep convection along the dryline are inferred from special mesoscale observations obtained during the 1991 Central Oklahoma Profiler Studies project, the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 1994 (VORTEX-94), and the VORTEX-95 field projects. Observations from aircraft, mobile CLASS soundings, and mobile mesonets define the fields of airflow, absolute humidity, and virtual temperature in the boundary layer across the dryline on the 15 May 1991, 7 June 1994, and 6 May 1995 case days. Film and video cloud images obtained by time-lapse cameras on the NOAA P-3 are used to reconstruct the mesoscale distribution of cumulus clouds by photogrammetric methods, permitting inferences concerning the environmental conditions accompanying cloud formation or suppression. The results of the present study confirm the classical notion that the dryline is a favored zone for cumulus cloud formation. The combined cloud distributions for the three ...