For this lab I decided to revisit lab 5, where I looked at a hail storm last summer in Illinois. This storm caused considerable damage across the state. As I showed in my lab 5 post, the hailstones were really big, some of them got as big as 2 inches in diameter.
Figure 1 shows the true color satellite imagery at 15:30 Z. While this is a few hours before the radar data I used in lab 5, convective clouds are still present at this time.
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| Figure 1. Terra Modis True color 15:30 Z |
As seen in figure 2, the clouds seen in northern Illinois are pretty high, with some values near 15 km. These higher heights are seen in the center of the cloud, which is evidence of convective plumes. Although we don't have complete data for this place and time, it's enough to get a good picture of the environment at this time.
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| Figure 2. Aqua/ARIS Cloud Top Heights |
Using cloud top temperature, as shown in figure 3, we can get a slightly higher resolution picture that we can use to determine deep convection clouds. Colder cloud top heights are associated with deeper clouds since they reach higher in the atmosphere. Most of the cloud structure is at a temperature around 200 K, but there are a few small areas with temperature minimums closer to 150 K. This is again evidence of convective plumes in these areas.
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| Figure 3. Aqua MODIS Cloud Top Temperature |
As seen in figure 4, most of the clouds are ice clouds. This makes sense because of how high the clouds are in the atmosphere. Frozen clouds are also needed to form hail. Hail likely formed from the convective updraft that carried the precipitation particles into the ice before reaching the ground.
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| Figure 4. Aqua MODIS Cloud phase (Light blue: Ice, Dark blue: liquid water, yellow: uncertain) |
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