Making Accumulating Hailstorms More Forecastable:

Going Beyond Nowcasting

Author: Austin Jerke, Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences

Mentor: Dr. Adam French, Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences

Deep surface hail accumulations impose significant threats to property, local economies, and the well-being of an affected region. Hail accumulating storms are defined as severe weather events that produce copious amounts of small-diameter hailstones. In recent years, researchers have made significant steps towards understanding accumulating hailstorms, but current knowledge is still limited. Current research identifies conditions that occur only within hours of a hail accumulating storm’s occurrence. Therefore, it is difficult to prepare for these storms before they cause significant damage. This project focuses on identifying and comparing accumulating hailstorms to large diameter hailstorms. These events are then compared to climatological data. By comparing different types of storms, it is possible to find forecastable parameters to identify hail accumulating storms before their occurrence. Soundings produced by SHARPpy provide key information about the state of the atmosphere in each case. By comparing these environments, we have found that there are differences among hail accumulating storms’ atmospheric environments. The results have shown hail accumulating storms have anomalous amounts of convective available potential energy (CAPE) and several different moisture parameters compared to large diameter hailstorms and climatology. The possibility of forecasting future hail accumulating storms can result in reducing local economic loss, protecting property, and reducing the threat on human lives.