Scattered Severe Thunderstorms Across the Northern Plains; Fire Weather Concerns in the Western U.S.

Scattered severe thunderstorms are forecast across central and eastern North Dakota, as well as far northwest Minnesota Saturday (Slight Risk level 2 of 5). Damaging wind gusts are the primary threat. Elevated to critical fire weather conditions will persist through the weekend across the Western U.S. Isolated dry thunderstorms could lead to new fire starts over portions of the northern Rockies. Read More >

First CG Lightning Convective Environment Browser

This study focused on the NWS Tampa Bay County Warning Area. NOAA RAP model analysis data was used to partition events into nine NWS Tampa Bay flow regimes (below left) based on 1200 UTC mean vector wind in the red box on the below right image. These regimes were the same ones used to create the Florida Summer Thunderstorm Climatology web pages. First Cloud-to-Ground (CG) and non-CG (null) events were identified for May-September (2012-2021) using USPLN lightning data between 1200 and 2359Z. Composite soundings display the mean and 25th/75th percentile vertical temperature and dewpoint profiles and composite mean convective parameters for first CG events in each regime one hour before a first CG event and at 1800 UTC for non-CG (null) events. Environmental parameter distributions use box-and-whisker plot approach for first CG events at -1 h and non-CG events at 1200 and 1800 UTC
Flow Regimes	Regime Analysis Box
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