Rain and Hail in Spanish Fork

It's raining and hailing in Spanish Fork...

Time: 18:50 UTC

You can see the cooler air accompanied by the storm from the temperature and dew point time series...Temperature goes down, and wet bulb (humidity) goes up. When the temperature and dew point temperature are the same that is about all the cooling that can be done by evaporation...a natural air conditioner.

There is some good cloud development shown up in the satellite images...

Time: 18:56 UTC
weather.cod.edu

One interesting aspect of this storm is how the HRRR model handles it. The latest analysis hour has the reflective in the right spot, but the HRRR model gets rid of the storm by the first forecast hour. The storm has lasted into that hour, and so this is a case that the HRRR model is not useful for a short term forecast of this storm.

Time: 17:00 UTC

 Now look at the one hour forecast...the hail storm has disappeared. Yep, not really a useful short-term forecast.

Time: One hour forecast valid at 18:00 UTC

Current NASA Earth Science Satellite Missions

From the TEMP talks http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/tempo/agenda.html

Box Elder County Fire

On August 4th a fire in Box Elder County made quite a bit of smoke. Here's a view from the Aqua satellite:

The smoke spread to much of the Wasatch Front. This picture is looking down State Street in Salt Lake... (no mountains!)

And driving into Cache Valley.

HRRR under-predicting temperature the last few days

HRRR Temperature Verification at KSLC and UKBKB between July 31st, and August 3rd, 2016.

The HRRR model is running an average of 3.4 degrees too cold over the last few days. Top shows the temperature observed at the SLC airport (red) and the HRRR analysis. Next is the HRRR temperature bias (HRRR-Observed)

On the other hand, the HRRR analysis for Spanish Fork (UKBKB) is much better, and is on average 1.1 degrees too warm...

 Bias:

July 2016 was a Hot One

Did you think July was hot?? It sure was! The second half of the month we observed higher than normal temperatures every day.