Those of you that monitor RADAR reflectivity loops every day have likely noticed the weird storm motions this month. Typically storms travel from the southwest toward the northeast, but the past days have seen storms travel west, northwest, south, and about every other direction. The featured chart attempts to illustrate these odd storm motions by plotting a histogram of Des Moines NEXRAD storm motion tracks. The top panel shows the combined May and June climatology and the dominance of storms travelling from the southwest is obvious. The bottom panel shows the histogram for storms this month and it is about the antithesis of climatology. The reason for these weird storm motions is the very blocked up upper level flow pattern that currently has weak westerly moving flow over the state. The hope is that this pattern will break next week and we can start getting into more typical June storm patterns with stronger flow aloft.

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Tags:   stormmotion