HOUSTON – Photo thanks to Fran Lippens Jacoby from Facebook. Arlington Heights subdivision.
I learned in my early days a simple rule of thumb: If a storm is strong enough to produce hail, it's strong enough to produce a tornado! Why? For hail, a storm has to get that rain way up in the atmosphere in order to freeze it and that requires strong upward winds, or updrafts. Tornado formation requires the same thing.
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In fact, a greenish color sky before a tornado is actually the hail in the storm refracting the sunlight. Green sky = Watch Out!
Of course, you have to get the storm system going in the first place and ingredients yesterday aligned perfectly. Temperatures cooled very quickly with height...approximately 80° at the surface, 60° a mile up, 40° two miles up. With storms building five to six miles high, it doesn't take long to get below freezing!
That kind of cooling does two things: as the warm air rises and cools quickly it releases its energy that much faster which means explosive storms are going to form. And what goes up, must come down and as those winds go down through those cold slices of air they accelerate producing downburst straight-line winds easily to 100mph. We had plenty of those as well as one confirmed tornado in Pasadena. And we also got the hail.
This photo is from the Baybrook Farmers Market. No one was hurt.
Thanks to Shelly Smith via Facebook
In addition, the jet stream, the faster moving air up where airplanes fly, was right over the Rio Grande to our south. That helped start the original cluster of storms that then moved quickly toward us, fueled all the way by warm Gulf moisture. The storms moved quickly so flooding rain wasn't an issue. The downside is strong wind.
Yesterday's Jet Stream
We could be in for another round of severe weather this coming weekend. Our forecast is here.
Speaking of airplanes flying, I literally felt the pain of the airport yesterday: a four hour delay in Puerto Vallarta before we were able to board. But I will say that United kept us well-informed and because of that upper just stream we made record time getting back to Houston---about an hour and forty five minutes in flight. Nonetheless, all's well that ends well. Behold the Saturday Sunset with a sweet moon from our hotel balcony:
Cheers,
Frank