CTC and CI diagnose convective development south of Houston Center

As the convection over eastern TX dissipated earlier this afternoon, its outflow boundary continued to drift south. It was anticipated that some new convection would re-fire along this line. While well away from both Houston and Fort Worth Centers, there was the possibility of the convection affecting flight routes between Houston and the West Coast. Shown below in Figure 1 is the GOES-R CI from 1602 - 1815 Z this afternoon.

Figure 1. 20130816 1602 - 1815 Z GOES-R Convective Initiation

Towards the beginning of the time period, the CI detections increased in probability, going from dark blue, to light blue, to green, to orange, and subsequently the growth of those convective clouds was notable. However, by 1732 Z, signals returned back to dark blue, or low probabilities within the next three scans. This indicated that while there was some growth in the clouds, it would quickly dissipate. In this case the GOES-R CI did a very good job of indicating the convective behavior along that outflow boundary.

Figure 2 shows a loop of the Cloud Top Cooling for the same time period.

Figure 2. 20130816 1602 - 1815 Z Cloud Top Cooling

At 1645 Z the CTC began to show cooling signals along the outflow boundary, increasing in coverage along that line through the next few scans. However, by 1745 Z those signals began to decrease in intensity, eventually disappearing completely. While not as evident as in the GOES-R CI, the CTC also did a good job of indicating the dissipation in this area.