Tuesday's Aftermath

As forecasted by the Storm Prediction Center, severe weather rumbled across much of the East Coast yesterday.

A front spawned by a canadian low interacted with a plume of moisture associated with a low pressure system swinging up from the south.  These two systems merged and produced isolated, strong storms (in some cases supercellular) ahead of a broken squall line.  The line also produced severe weather in the form of damaging winds.

Overall, there were 155 severe weather reports - 154 of those being damaging wind, and 1 report of a tornado in NC.  In southeast PA, there were 11 reports of severe wind damage.

In retrospect, the storms did not blow up over PA as much as the SPC predicted they would.  Quite simply, this was due to the absence of CAPE, or available potential energy in the atmosphere.  No potential energy = not much storm development.  We did get some decent rain and some winds here in central PA, but that was due to the front moving through, which already had lift associated with it.  Had there been more CAPE, we would have seen more storm development.  The production of CAPE was limited throughout the day by cloud cover, which prevented significant boundary layer warming.

Overall, though, a very active severe weather day across the East Coast, with a total of 155 reports of severe weather.

Matthew Flournoy

Meteorology Major | The Pennsylvania State University
Schreyer Honor Scholar | Class of 2015