Surface Mesoscale Processes during the 1994 Palm Sunday Tornado Outbreak

Abstract

The tornadic storms that developed in the 27 March 1994 Palm Sunday outbreak were confined to a narrow zone extending from central and northern Alabama to western North Carolina. Analysis of surface observations and soundings is used to examine the mesoscale environment of the region starting 14 h prior to storm development. The evolution of a shallow front that formed the northern boundary of the outbreak region is tied to several diabatic processes including evaporation of precipitation and differential solar heating. The resulting front was found to both limit severe convection and focus supercell development later in the day. During the night before the outbreak, as copious widespread precipitation fell into dry air, evaporation maintained a cold air pool north of the front. By contrast, moderate southerly flow provided warm, moist conditions to the south. Precipitation-enhanced cold air damming along the eastern slopes of the Appalachians also may have provided a source of cold air for subsequent frontogenesis over areas farther west. During the daylight hours, differential solar heating across the front further enhanced frontogenesis. Intensification of convection just prior to the first tornadoes was found to be associated with areas of breaks in the overcast near and upstream of tornadogenesis. Similarly, cells that intensified were moving over a surface that had been thoroughly moistened by previous rainfall. Supercells that intersected and moved along the frontal boundary maintained their tornadic strength for many hours, whereas storms that crossed the boundary disintegrated. Blockage of inflow by upstream storm cells may also have contributed to the rapid reduction of intensity of one of the tornadic cells.