Case: 19 April 2018

Summary

Multi-day open cell event featuring sparsely distributed cumulus cell organization

Description

This was a multi-day event that featured open cell cumulus forming in a postfrontal environment. As compared to other open cell events in the LASSO-ENA catalogue, the cells on these dates were relatively sparsely distributed. Cells that developed in the post-frontal environment exhibited signatures of light precipitation, with the strongest cells we observed over the ENA main site occurring on April 19th. Winds throughout this event were from the west. The melting level (approximately 1.5 km AGL or lower throughout the first half of this event) was typically well below the observed cloud echo top heights for these cells. The melting level was slightly higher (~2 km AGL) and near to, or eventually above, observed echo top heights during the second half of 19 April.

Available assets

Standard ARM profiling assets, SEVIRI. SACR. RLPROF-FEX

Critical period: 13:00-15:00

Brief transition to a closed cellular stratocumulus behavior over the ENA site

Figure 37 True color afternoon MODIS AQUA image with overlaid LES domains. The image domain corresponds to the size of the model forcing domain.