Monday, August 16, 2010

Severe TS watch, but a BIIIIG hole in the convection

I've edited the above radar grab to indicate my normal targeted chase area:  south of I-66, north of I-64, east of the Blue Ridge and west of U.S. Rte 301.  (I do stray outside of this box but it represents 90% of my chases.)   Does anybody notice a little problem?  (NOTE:  The entire area is under a severe TS watch.)  Nothing happened in this area!!!  I started in Culpeper and determined that the cells near Charlottesville were going to move out of reach, especially if they turned right and went severe like the complex to the west of Richmond did.  I then headed north to Bealeton and waited on the towers building in the Shenandoah Valley before determining it would likely be midnight before they approached my position (okay, so I exaggerated slightly).  So I scooted south to the Fredericksburg area to intercept a couple of cells that fired on a northward moving outflow boundary from the I-64 cells but all I saw was dissipating towers and disgustingly heavy traffic.  Right now there is a slowly moving cell headed away from the Blue Ridge toward Culpeper, but the radar history shows a lot of starts and stops with the intensity of that cell.  I am inclined to already label today a B-U-S-T, altho' there is still an hour or so of daylight left.  What a waste of a perfectly good severe TS watch!

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