Cloud Properties in Hailstorms Over the Contiguous United States: A Perspective From GOES Advanced Baseline Imager's One-Min Rapid Scan

Abstract

The mesoscale domain sector (MDS) of GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager offers 1-min rapid detection, providing significant advantages in analyzing the evolution of cloud-top properties in severe storms like hailstorms. This study investigated the spatiotemporal evolution of five cloud-top properties in 6,847 hailstorms over the CONUS from 2020 to 2022 with gridded MDS’ observations. In the 0.1° × 0.1° area centered around the hail report location and within 121 min around hail report time, macroscopic cloud-top features (such as cloud depth) typically exhibit single-peaked characteristics, reaching extreme values around the hail report time (0th min). Cloud particle size (CPS) gradually increases before the hail report time, then decreases and stabilizes after the 24th min. The region experiences cooling before the 1st min, which then shifts to a warming trend. The hailstorms with different intensity showed discrepant temporal evolutions. Generally, the large hail has lower minimum cloud-top temperature (CTT), higher maximum cloud-top height (CTH) and stronger updraft than the small hail. Cloud-top properties also exhibit variations across different seasons, with winter demonstrating earlier occurrences of minimum CTT and maximum CPS. Spatially, the grid with minimum CTT and maximum CTH firstly moves southeastward and then moves northeastward. These analyses on the evolutions of cloud features in hailstorms could promote the understanding in the rapid developments of severe convection and the monitoring of severe weather.