Yesterday's convection over Florida and SRSOR 1-minute imagery

Yesterday was a relatively quiet day as far as weather is concerned, with the usual exception of Florida. Convection over the Florida Peninsula is a common occurrence on hot, muggy summer afternoons. Those working on the Collaborative Aviation Weather Statement had this area in mind as they begin working on their product. In the end they came up with the graphic shown here below.

202150813 1519 UTC issued CAWS for the Florida Peninsula

There has been a lot of discussion this week regarding the use of datasets in the 0-2 hour range, including satellite based tools like the CI, CTC, PGLM, SRSOR, etc. The ideal time period for issuing a CAWS is four hours, giving traffic flow managers plenty of time to adjust and generate a plan accordingly. However, it is well known that the weather does not always behave.

On Monday, for example, the CAWS participants were not expecting more then scattered coverage of convection over Chicago's airspace, but as it began to fire it was clearly more moderate coverage. It is in these situations when the above mentioned satellite tools would become useful, not for the impact that is already occurring, but for the reaction. How long will it last? Where is it headed in the next few hours and is it going to impact another area that could cause additional impact later in the day?

SRSOR would be one tool that could be helpful in this type of situation. Yesterday, however, was fairly well forecast. Coverage was perhaps more significant than expected, but because the Florida area airports are so accustomed to dealing with convection in their airspace that they can easily handle it 'ah-hoc' or essentially, as the need arises. Below is a loop of 1-minute imagery late in the afternoon showing this 'ah-hoc' reaction.

20150813 1733 - 1841 UTC SRSOR 1-minute imagery and ASDI flight tracks

The convection started out as relatively scattered and flight tracks adjust accordingly, shooting the gaps to get through. As it slowly filled in, the terminals implemented holding patterns, visible by the circles in the flight tracks in northern Florida. It appears that they also slowed traffic rates, particularly noticeable around Miami as flight tracks become more 'S-shaped' around the terminal.