National Weather Service United States Department of Commerce

Powerful Pacific System Impacting the West; First Significant Snow for Portions of the East

Power Pacific system will continue to bring significant impacts for Pacific Northwest into northern California the remainder of the week. Dangerous coastal affects, heavy rain, flooding, strong winds, and higher elevation mountain snow continues. Meanwhile, a storm across the east is set to bring the first accumulating snow to many higher elevations of the Catskills into the central Appalachians. Read More >

Automatically generated image showing areas of surface-1km vertical shear.

 

Thumbnail of an automatically generated image showing areas of surface-1km vertical shear. Thumbnail of an automatically generated image showing areas of surface-1km vertical shear. Thumbnail of an automatically generated image showing areas of surface-1km vertical shear.
Hour - 1 Hour - 2 Hour -3

4 Panel Display | Animated Loop

Shear (0-1km) 

Surface-1-km Vertical Shear is the difference between the surface wind and the wind at 1-km above ground level. These data are plotted as vectors with shear magnitudes contoured. 0-1-km shear magnitudes greater than 15-20 knots tend to favor supercell tornadoes.

Back to Convective Parameters Home