The Precipitation Life Cycle of Mesoscale Convective Complexes over the Central United States

Abstract

The mesoscale convective complex (MCC) is a common and particularly well-organized class of meso- it persists and becomes increasingly dominant as convective activity subsides during the latter stages of the life cycle. Averaged mappings of the precipitation data show that throughout the MCC life cycle, the heaviest rainfall tends to be displaced 50?100 km south of the cloud-shield centroid, while the stratiform pattern tends to be more MCC-centered. A statistical analysis of these precipitation characteristics, derived individually for each case, provides an estimate of the natural interstorm variability for typical summertime MCCS. A comparison of various composite subsets of the sample reveals several interesting tendencies: 1) smaller, less-organized systems tended to be ?drier? than similar-sized but better-organized MCCS; 2) large systems were "rainier? than smaller ones through much of the life cycle, not only in terms of A and V, as expected, but also in terms of R; 3) large systems tended to be ?rdnice? in the eastern part of the sample domain than in the western part, but this was not so for small systems; and 4) the eastern systems: both large and small, had a more coherent and intense core of heavy precipitation through their life cycle than the western systems.