Manda Adams

University of North Carolina-Charlotte

undergraduate/graduate level course in mesoscale meteorology

Students must have a good solid understanding of the environments in which supercell thunderstorms form. They must understand the importance of balance between CAPE and shear. They must also understand severe weather indices, and what physical characteristics those indices actually indicate.

This project is done near the end of the semester. It is completed as a group activity/lab and has 3 parts to it.

The content of this exercise focuses on the supercell environment as well as severe weather indices.

The higher order thinking skills of this exercise challenge students to quantify the relationship between shear and CAPE. Students also quantify the ingredients they feel are important for severe weather from two different perspectives: 1) creating the ideal environment and 2) identifying the ideal environment.

Students develop skills: working in groups, running a numerical model, giving an oral presentation, encourages creativity

Students are challenged to apply their knowledge of environments conducive to supercell development to create the ideal environment for a suprcell thunderstorm. The vertical profiles of temperature, moisture, and winds produced by the students is used to initialize an idealized simulation. Students then move from predicting the ideal environment to being able to quantify how to identify the ideal environment. Students create their own severe weather index, and use their newly created indices to test each others environment. After students have a prediction for each others environment, they present their hypothesis and then get to view in 3-d the results of the idealized simulations.

I look for students being able to articulate and quantify their opinions on what makes an environment conducive to supercell development.