Relation of Local and General Wind Interaction Near the Sea Coast to Time and Location of Air-Mass Showers

Gentry, R. Cecil; Moore, Paul

doi:10.1175/1520-0469(1954)011<0507:rolagw>2.0.co;2

Cited by 36 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…The low-level synoptic flow plays a significant role in the formation and evolution of the sea breeze and its associated convection and lightning (e.g., Gentry and Moore 1954;Arritt 1993). Therefore, it is informative to classify each day according to its wind direction and to examine flash patterns as a function of the flow.…”

Section: A Individual Flow Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Warm Season Lightning Distributions over the Northern Gulf of Mexico Coast and Their Relation to Synoptic-Scale and Mesoscale Environments

Smith

Fuelberg

Watson

2005

Weather and Forecasting

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Cloud-to-ground lightning data from the National Lightning Detection Network are used to create a warm season (May-September) lightning climatology for the northern Gulf of Mexico coast for the 14-yr period 1989-2002. Each day is placed into one of five flow regimes based on the orientation of the low-level flow with respect to the coastline. This determination is made using the vector mean 1000-700-hPa wind data at Lake Charles and Slidell, Louisiana. Flash densities are calculated for daily, hourly, and nocturnal periods.Spatial patterns of composite 24-h and nocturnal flash density indicate that lightning decreases in an east-to-west direction over the region. Flash densities for the 24-h period are greatest over land near the coast, with relative maxima located near Houston, Texas; Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans, Louisiana; Biloxi, Mississippi; and Mobile, Alabama. Flash densities during the nocturnal period are greatest over the coastal waters.Lightning across the northern Gulf coast is closely related to the prevailing low-level synoptic flow, which controls the sea breeze, the dominant forcing mechanism during the warm season. Southwest flow, the most unstable and humid of the five regimes, exhibits the most flashes. In this case, sea-breeze-induced convection is located slightly inland from the coast. Northeast flow, the driest and most stable of the regimes, exhibits the least amount of lightning. The large-scale flow restricts the sea breeze to near the coastline.Geographic features and local mesoscale circulations are found to affect lightning across the region. Geographic features include lakes, bays, marshes, swamps, and coastline orientations. Thermal circulations associated with these features interact with the main sea breeze to produce complex lightning patterns over the area.

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Section: A Individual Flow Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Warm Season Lightning Distributions over the Northern Gulf of Mexico Coast and Their Relation to Synoptic-Scale and Mesoscale Environments

Smith

Fuelberg

Watson

2005

Weather and Forecasting

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“…Extreme skewness is observed in convective rain regimes, where a few outliers can contribute a large fraction of the total rainfall while numerous small rain events contribute little to the total rainfall. In convective rainfall regimes more than 50 per cent of the total rainfall is measured in less than 10 per cent of the rainfall period, irrespective of the duration of the rainfall F e h l , 1954;Garstang, 1972;Woodley et al, 1975;Cooper et al, 1982). Convective rain regimes also exhibit marked seasonal and diurnal variations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Florida summerthe convective rainfall distributions are quite different from winter frontal rain. Diurnal signals in summer are large, with almost no rain fdling in parts of the 24-h cycle over Florida (Neumann, 1951;Gentry and Moore, 1954;Frank et al, 1967;Cooper er al., 1982;Lopez et al, 1984).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulation of rain events from rain‐gauge measurements

Cosgrove

Garstang

1995

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Point rainfall as measured by a rain-gauge is examined in terms of a space and time dependent rain event. The rain event is determined such that the total number of rain events in any one year account for at least 80 per cent of the annual area rainfall. The remaining fraction of aunual rainfall is considered to be rainfall due to isolated unorgaukd rain systems. A 1-year record from 19 digital rain-gauge recorders over a 600 km2 area in the vicinity of the Kennedy Space Flight Center is used. Each tipping bucket rain-gauge has a resolution of 1 minute 0.25 mm.Rain rates, duration, areas and frequency of occurrence are presented for nearly 200 rain events identified in a single year.Strong seasonal signals are seen particularly in extreme rain events, which produce more than 90 mm of rain per event, account for 60 per cent of the total network rainfall but occur less than 22 per cent of the time. A simulation of the detection of the extreme rainfall events by a remote sensing system such as TRMM suggests that the satellite w i l l see only 10 per cent of the rainfall due to extreme rain events. The results illustrate the difficulties of sampling convective rainfall, especially over a continental tropical area such as Florida, by an orbiting platform.

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“…These results are contrary to those of Gannon (1978), who determined that maximum intensities of the east and west coast sea breezes in south Florida vary inversely with wind speed, meaning faster wind speeds are associated with less precipitation. Gentry and Moore (1954) also found evidence in Miami that weaker winds bring more showers later in the day. Atmospheric instability (measured by CAPE) is not always positively correlated with precipitation (Bluestein, 1993;Chaboureau, Guichard, Redelsperger, & LaFore, 2004;Dupilka & Reuter, 2006;Koch & Ray, 1997;Rasmussen & Blanchard, 1998; …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While analyzing severe weather in Florida, Collins, Paxton, Williams, and Noah (2009) also noted that the most severe thunderstorms occurred where sea breezes from the east and west coasts collide. Gentry and Moore (1954) recognized that the timing and location of sea breezeassociated rainfall are determined by the interaction of both the direction and speed of large scale and local winds. They concluded that the diurnal and spatial variation of precipitation in South Florida is dependent on the interaction of these prevailing local winds with the sea breeze.…”

mentioning

confidence: 88%

Explaining the spatial variability of summer rainfall in Pinellas County, Florida using ArcGIS

Schoonard¹,

Collins²,

Paxton³

et al. 2014

Physical Geography

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Pinellas County is a peninsula on the west coast of Florida that receives sea breeze driven convective rainfall during the summer months. To improve forecasting of local mesoscale phenomena, the spatial variability of summer rainfall in Pinellas was examined in relation to dominant wind directions and speeds, atmospheric stability, and atmospheric moisture content for the months of June, July, and August from 2003 to 2007. Radiosonde data from the Ruskin, Florida National Weather Service (NWS) Station, Pinellas County rain gauge data, and radar-estimated rainfall totals from the NWS Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service were used to examine different meteorological parameters and their relationships with the spatial variability of summer precipitation across the peninsula. Dominant daily wind direction categories were divided into six 60 degree increments: 1-60°, 61-120°, 121-160°, 161-240°, 241-300°, and 301-360°. Precipitable water had a significant positive correlation with precipitation in four of the six wind direction categories (61-120°, 121-180°, 181-240°, and 241-300°). Higher wind speeds associated with a southerly wind direction revealed significant positive relationships with precipitation. Composites of radar-derived rainfall estimates indicate that rain fell primarily in the center of the peninsula under a variety of wind directions, often with two daily maxima. Composites also show that the greatest potential for high precipitation amounts comes with westerly winds (241-300°).

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Relation of Local and General Wind Interaction Near the Sea Coast to Time and Location of Air-Mass Showers

Cited by 36 publications

References 0 publications

Warm Season Lightning Distributions over the Northern Gulf of Mexico Coast and Their Relation to Synoptic-Scale and Mesoscale Environments

Warm Season Lightning Distributions over the Northern Gulf of Mexico Coast and Their Relation to Synoptic-Scale and Mesoscale Environments

Simulation of rain events from rain‐gauge measurements

Explaining the spatial variability of summer rainfall in Pinellas County, Florida using ArcGIS

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