The Initiation and Behavior of Severe Convective Storms

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9612674 Bluestein While much progress has been over the last decade in understanding the structural characteristics of tornadoes and their parent thunderstorms, many questions still remain unanswered. Among these are What are the critical factors that actually trigger convection and tornadoes? This is a three-year project whose objective is to understand better the ways in which severe convective storms form and behave. A combination of analyses of data from the Verification of Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment (VORTEX) conducted in the Southern Plains of the U. S. in 1994 and 1995, conventional data sets, and advanced mesoscale numerical weather models will be used to achieve the objectives of this research. Areas of focus include the effects of small-scale variations in surface characteristics and clouds on storms initiated near the dryline, tornadogenesis, and the relationship between the environment and the mode of initial storm formation on the subsequent evolution of severe convective storms. The results of this research will improve our ability to forecast severe weather in the Plains region of the U. S. ***