Storm Forecast
Valid: Tue 16 Jan 2024 06:00 to Wed 17 Jan 2024 06:00 UTC
Issued: Mon 15 Jan 2024 23:40
Forecaster: PUCIK/KUZMENKO
A level 1 was issued across SW Iberia mainly for marginally large hail, tornadoes and to a lesser degree for severe wind gusts and heavy rainfall.
DISCUSSION
... Portugal, SW Spain ...
A short-wave trough at 300 hPa is forecast to cross the area between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, along with an ill-defined and rather weak cold front. Combination of synoptic-scale lift together with steeper lapse rates in the core of the trough will yield skinny CAPE profiles and MLCAPE values up to around 500 J/kg over the area. Strong shear in the deep level suggests that well-organised storms, both supercells and linear segments, are likely. Low-level flow reaching up to 25 m/s is forecast along and behind the cold front. Forecast hodographs show pronounced curvature around 00 UTC with considerable values of SRH, reaching over 150 m2/s2 in the bottom 500 m. This would suggest threat of tornadoes with the storms. The limiting factor will be that the storms may quickly become elevated as they move inland, where the strongest low-level shear is forecast. Strong low-level flow also points to the threat of severe wind gusts in storms, but this threat will also be reduced by the presence of mostly elevated storms. Heavy rainfall may occur as well, but only marginal low-level moisture and also rather fast moving initation mechanism (the front) will reduce the duration of rainfall over particular areas. With CAPE located especially in the cold-part of the cloud, marginally large hail may occur with supercells. Skinny CAPE profiles and majority of shear being located in the bottom 1 km will reduce the hail threat. Given that all presented threats will face limitations from the environment, their coverage will be not be very high and Lvl 1 seems to be sufficient.
