| Summary: | A sounding climatology of a variety of parameters commonly used to forecast deep, moist convection using upper-air observations is developed. The data set includes 0000 and 1200 UTC rawinsonde data (approximately 3629 soundings) from Laughlin AFB, TX from April-September 1995-2004. Cloud-to-ground lightning data, surface observations and severe weather reports from the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) SeverePlot2 Program were used to categorize soundings as representative of conditions for no convection, light convection, convection within vicinity, moderate severe convection, or severe convection. Indices, including convective available potential energy (CAPE) and mean layer CAPE (MLCAPE), along with sounding parameters and combinations of such as 0-2 and 0-6 km bulk shear, 700-500 mb lapse rate, lifted condensation level (LCL) and mean layer LCL (MLLCL) heights, are examined in an attempt to distinguish between moderate and severe convection. The results show that the 0-6 km bulk shear along with the MLCAPE and LCL height indicate some discrimination between the moderate and severe categories. The best discrimination comes from the significant severe parameter (defined by calculating the product of the 0-6 km bulk shear and MLCAPE), and the 0-6 km bulk shear versus the MLCAPE, and the 700-500 mb lapse rate.
|
|---|
