Spatial Distributions of Tornadic Near-Storm Environments by Convective Mode

The characteristics of near-storm environments have been elucidated by several studies of observed soundings near reported tornadoes (Maddox 1976; Kerr and Darkow 1996), all soundings for multiple severe weather hazards during a complete year (Rasmussen and Blanchard 1998), or long-period samples of soundings associated with severe thunderstorms (Craven and Brooks 2004). Meanwhile, much attention in recent years has focused on convective mode and its influences on severe thunderstorm and tornado events. For example, Trapp et al. (2005) examined tornado events attributed to quasi-linear convective systems (QLCS) across the contiguous United States. Gallus et al. (2008) looked at a range of convective mode categories associated with severe thunderstorms across the Midwestern United States. Later work by Duda and Gallus (2010) examined severe weather events with radar-observed supercells in the Midwestern United States. Grams et al. (2012) combined environmental data with simple convective mode categories to compare tornado and significant severe thunderstorm events across the CONUS.