06/18/2026
Here’s the data from yesterday. We launched a weather balloon carrying instruments from Springfield, IL right as storms formed. It’s pretty exceptional.
This is a loaded-gun environment. CAPE (energy) is sufficient CIN (convective inhibition) is only -92. Any surface heating or lifting trigger will equal robust storms.
The kinematic picture is exceptional. That’s the hodograph on the right, it shows wind speed and direction with height. 0-1 km shear is 35kt with 0-1 km SRH of 447m2/s2, equaling extreme low-level rotation. The hodograph shows a looping curve (visible in the image as the purple-to-red-to-orange path through the low levels). 0-3 km SRH of 606 m2/s2 and effective shear of 64 kt both exceed supercell thresholds by a wide margin. Composite indicates like STP = 5.24 and 0-1 km EHI = 4.68 are both in the extreme category (top ~2% of historical tornado days).
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