Crazy supercells in NE-Slovenia on June 23rd

Favourable conditions in NE-Slovenia brought us some spectacular supercells. Some monsters were also in Austria and Hungary. I have never seen a more structured supercell in Europe. LP supercells at its finest.

Links to photos: http://forum.zevs.si/index.php/topic,3741.0.html

http://forum.zevs.si/index.php/topic,3735.0.html

http://forum.zevs.si/index.php/topic,3733.15.html

http://www.szupercella.hu/node/944

Here are some webcam screens from ARSO:

June 6th - Classic supercell south of Krško/Brežice

I saw a lot of potential for E-Slovenia today (see previous posts), but the morning GFS and WRF models put me in a bad mood because they were seriously downgrading deep layer shear to the point where I saw no potential anymore. Later on, it got a tad better. A potential storm formed south of Novo mesto, and I jumped on it because I knew it could get strong given the moderate CAPE and better shear values further north. I was north of the cell the whole time. I tried to get east of the cell to get a better look, but the cell was moving sharply right and the Gorjanci mountain range (about 1000m high) limited my movement. I would waste an hour to get on the other side. I was hoping the cell would get into the Krško-Brežice valley where the conditions could be very good. That did not happen, it tracked right over Gorjanci and tracked eastward and slightly to the north. I only got one good look at it because of bad road connetions and hills on the south side. And it was a pretty one. It didn't look good at first, only the inflow banding was giving me some hope. At some point I was already contemplating about returning home, but the view got better so I waited a while and got rewarded with a nice classic supercell with a "barber pole" updraft. The supercell never looked very good on the radar, but it had nice structure nevertheless. On the radar image below you can see a significantly stronger cell some ten kilometers to the north, but the terrain there is awful, not chasable at all. So the supercell south of Krško and Brežice was probably the storm of the day.

 I was desperate to get east of it, so I went as far as the Croatian border, but at that point the storm had already dissipated once I got a better look at it. No other significant storms were in the area later that day.

Here it already had a nice inflow, but I was way too far north
to see anything else. Here I'm racing eastward.

Very nice wall cloud. Later on, the rain hide the
structure so had to race eastward again, with no luck.

August 24th 2010 - Supercell near Udine

A short report from a supercell near Udine last year. Wasn't much of a storm but it cooled the boundary layer all over FVG so no more storms that day. :(


(Author: Nejc Ucman & R. Pucer)

August 8th 2010 - Supercell with lightning in central Slovenia

From Medvedje Brdo.

August 5th 2010 - Possible supercell near Novo Mesto

Got run over at home with a nice cell in the line. I liked the moist east wind on the ground before the storm. Veering was pretty good in combination with the jet from the south. A nice wall cloud. Could not really tell if the thing was rotating because it was too far away. Pretty dynamic. Higher CAPE would definitely help.

August 3rd 2010 - HP supercell in Slovenia

I had to core punch this supercell but I never got a good look at it. It was really rain-wrapped. A high precipitation supercell with bad structure.

June 6th 2009 - Great day in FVG with supercells!

The forecast was good so me and two friends decided to chase in FVG (Friuli-Venezia-Giulia). Starting point was in Sežana then we proceeded to catch the first thing that came into our range. It was already spectacular on the radar when we started. We caught it close to city Udine.

On the road, still in Novo Mesto.

First supercell on a gas station near Udine. Nice inflow banding. Too bad there were stratus clouds all around us so we didn't get to see much other then the wall cloud and circulation.

Awesome view of the wall cloud.

Spectacular rotation. Too bad we were a little late so we head to do most of our shooting from the car.

Once again the awesome structure of the wall cloud. RFD is now obvious.

On a toll booth, in traffic ... RFD was really cutting into the wall cloud as seen here. Obvious lowering, it was trying to produce a tornado here but it couldn't.

This storm then hit the hills east of Udine. I'm certain that it would produce tornado if there weren't any hills on the way! Next supercell please ...

From the car.

Close to Palmanova. This supercell already dropped 2 tornadoes, one of them F3 with 10.5 km lenght and 250 m width ... Too bad we missed this one also.

Back north.

Interesting structure.

On the same gas station as before. Awesome view!

All over the sky. Nicely illuminated.

Panorama...

Successful stormchase, too bad we missed the tornadoes but that's how it is. Maybe with better CAPE ...

Author of the video : Peter A.

May 25th 2009 - Monster Ljubljana supercell

This was a supercell that really surprised us all. I didn't even went to chase, kinda got caught unprepared but I took some photos from my home in Novo mesto. This supercell dropped 6-7 cm hail in Ljubljana. I wanted to intercept it in Novo mesto but it kinda dryed out, so no specatular photos for me. My friend got a couple of fantastic photos of the mesocyclone in LJ. Check them HERE. Inflow easily seen more than 70 km far away.

It was more than 2000 J/kg CAPE that day with 20 m/s DLS but no low lever winds thus no veering and helicity so I did not expect such a supercell forming!