A few weeks ago, the result of a significant hail storm in Northeast Iowa was featured by showing the impact on vegetation. Another major hail storm left a similar scar over Central Iowa on Sunday and its effect can be seen as well. The featured image transitions from the Terra MODIS imagery to NEXRAD maximum reflectivity composite. Like with the previous feature, you can see the correlation between the highest reflectivites and the damage on the ground.

Voting:
Good = 20
Bad = 5

Tags:   satellite   nexrad   hail  

Last Friday, an extremely strong thunderstorm complex dropped a bunch of large hail over NE Iowa and SW Wisconsin. The NWS has an excellent summary of this event here and here. The featured image is a combination of Terra MODIS satellite for yesterday and maximum NEXRAD reflectivity for the event. The area shown initially in gray is unfortunately massive crop damage as the green leaves were shredded by the large hail and the area no longer appears to be lush green from space. You can see the streaks in the damage as the storms moved off to the southeast.

Voting:
Good = 39
Bad = 3

Tags:   hail   nexrad   satellite  

On April 1st, National Weather Service Offices in the Central Region will be changing its severe weather warning criteria for hail size to one inch and larger (previously was penny sized 0.75). Some details behind the reason for this change can be found with this NWS webinar. The featured pie charts attempt to look forward to one probable outcome of this change, a decrease in the number of warnings. Of the 2200 warnings issued in the past two years, 24% of them were verified by only hail stones that would no longer justify a warning. The lower pie chart details the initial justification for issuing the warning based on product text. Please note the warning may have included a justifcation of damaging wind as well as hail, but this analysis only worries about what hail size was included. Half of the warnings issued mentioned hail sizes that will no longer be severe, again there may have been damaging winds mentioned in those as well.

Voting:
Good = 36
Bad = 18

Tags:   hail   nws  

Wow, what a afternoon and night on Thursday. The atmosphere was primed for a supercell party and our guests showed up bringing gifts. These gifts are shown in the photo. Baseball size hail was reported in numerous locations along with very gusty winds. Our chances for storms continues today before it quiets down for the weekend.

Tags:   hail