Another active day in Argentina yesterday
Supercells exploded once again northwest of Buenos Aires, Argentina yesterday, which seems to be a hot spot of late. An overshooting top of the strongest storm is clearly evident on the satellite image at right, courtesy of Matias Emanuel Bertolotti, also a meteorology student at the University of Buenos Aires. Matias' website is
http://www.weatherar.com, where you can find more interesting information on Argentina tornadoes. One thing I've noticed while watching these South American tornado outbreaks unfold is that they always seem cellular in nature, with a lack of the forced lines of convection we get here so often in the U.S. Great Plains. My thinking here is that Argentina does not have the massive Mexican Plateau to their west, which is the main source of warm air at the 850 to 700 mb cap level here in the U.S. When the capping inversion is too strong, frontal boundaries often force linear convection above the cap level, which is not conducive for tornadoes. In Argentina, capping inversions seem to be rarely strong enough to limit surface based convection, thus the mode is often cellular in nature. What do our Argentinian readers think about this???
http://www.tornadovideos.net/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1078-another-active-day-in-argentina-yesterday
