On WeatherBrains Tonight: Super(cell)models

Tonight’s WeatherBrains show will be really brainy and really interesting. Supercells are the Kings of Thunderstorms. They produce the majority of the violent tornadoes. But the majority of supercells produce no tornadoes at all. Only about 20 percent produce tornadoes. What makes them different from the ones that produce no tornadoes or weak tornadoes?

One scientist is trying to unlock that mystery using supercomputers to model supercells. His recent work on the Blue Waters supercomuter has produced amazing visualizations that may illuminate what is going on behind the tornadogenesis process.

TONIGHT’S GUEST WEATHERBRAIN
Tonight’s Guest WeatherBrain received his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 1997. From 2003 – 2015, he was a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences in, and recently Chair of, the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Central Michigan University. In August 2015 hereturned to the UW as an Associate Scientist working for the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Systems (CIMSS), part of the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC). His research focuses on severe weather, including supercell thunderstorms, tornadoes, and downbursts. He is especially interested in obtaining new insight into the atmosphere by efficiently utilizing high-performance computing (HPC) resources. Dr. Leigh Orf will join the show tonight to talk about his exciting research.

TONIGHT’S GUEST PANELIST
Tonight’s Guest Panelist is making an encore performance after appearing on last week’s show. The gang wanted to get into his validation work on long range forecasts, but didn’t get to because the discussion with Jim Williams from HurricaneCity.com went long. Tonight, we welcome Mark Jelinek from the What Is It With the Weather Podcast.

Join the fun tonight live at live.bigbrainsmedia.com or on the James Spann 24×7 channel on cable or over the air on the dot 2 channel. Watch it after the fact at WeatherBrains.com or listen on the various podcasting platforms, such as iTunes or Sticher.

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