Overnight (June 7th, 2009) a rare atmospheric phenomenon occurred in south-central Oklahoma. No it wasn’t a tornado, it was much more rare than that – even during 2009! Suddenly at about 3am CDT in Jefferson County the air temperature became very hot and dry, the temperature shot up to 97 degrees F, literally within minutes. The event that happened is called a Convective Heat Burst, it happens when a parcel of very cold and unsaturated air within a dying storm descends very rapidly and warms due to compression (at a rate of 9.8C per 1,000 meters) and overshoots its equilibrium level and reaches the surface.

Take a look at this meteogram from Waurika, OK:

Using the above meteogram the hour of day is marked across the top, notice the first image shows a spike in temperature just before 3:00 AM, the temperature rises to about 97 degrees F. Just as interesting you’ll notice the dew point dropped at the same time to about 37 degrees F. It is obviously not natural even in the heat of the day for such rapid temperature increases – but can you imagine what it must of felt like to anyone that was still awake and outside in Waurika at the time?

Here is another meteorgram, this one is from Newport, OK located in the neighboring county to the east:

Just to make the comparison much easier, I’ve put the two together and matched up the times:

So was there dying thunderstorms in the area? Yes! And, I wish I had timestamped these radar images, but you’ll just have to trust me that they are from the correct time and date (I’ll follow up with a timestamped satellite IR image below the radar).

Notice the storm that forms near Walters and quickly falls apart as it moves to the SE towards Waurika? This is likely the culprit that created the Convective Heat Burst.

There was a “non-thunderstorm wind gust” report of 58 mph in the area at the time of the temperature spike. These events don’t happen too often, usually just a few times a year. On August 3rd of 2008 near Soiux Falls, SD a convective heat burst occurred where the temperature went from the low 70s to a record high temperature for the day of 101 degrees F in just a few seconds. There was also some wind damage that happened with the South Dakota event. And even though the goal of Vortex2 is to sample supercells and tornadoes, this would have been an excellent event for the team to have sampled due to it’s rarity and lack of understanding.

Tags: convective heat burst, news, oddbeats, weather