After an extreme supercells over Austria and Czech Republic a day before, also in Slovenia some action was expected. But looking at analyse for CAPE (around 500 J/kg) and Lifted Index (around +1°C) it wasn't really a good sign.
Surprisedly around 03:30 UTC first strong cells were formed in the SE Friuli, Italy. In the next hour many cells were quickly formed in SW Slovenia over Karst. Radar shows these intense cells, some of them had reflectivity over 60dBz!
These cells then merged into a squall-line which was progresing over Karst in SE directions. Meanwhile this merging cells I also noticed some rotation (which is seen on the next pic) and there was also a small funnel cloud visible about 3km to the W. Unfortunatelly I didn't have a camera in that moment. Looking towards WSW (Time: 04:25 UTC):
Merging cells caused that updraft spreaded horizontally in the middle, so there were easily formed
'Sc undulatus' clouds including 'Cb pannus' as well!
Looking towards E-NE directions (Time: 04:27 UTC):
There were 'Sc undulatus' all over the sky in the next 10min, cloud-base was lower than before (Time: 04:37 UTC):
Few minutes before 05:00 UTC finally started to rain even at my place (marked with blue dot), max RR was around 70mm/h. Radar image shows squall-line which is progressing towards SE over Divaca, Senozece and the surrounding area.
There were many lightning strikes, especially in NNE directions. Some reports said there was also some hail included with heavy downpours in those cells.
Actually I had a pretty bad luck with these cells and rainfall in the morning, looking at radar accumulation from 02-08 UTC shows this:
These storms are also excelent visible on the satelites, temperature of cloud tops were around -65°C, so approximatelly at 12km:
Then storms moved inland towards central Slovenia, here the strong wind ('Bora') with gusts up to 80km/h started to blow after this, until the evening, when again some supercells formed in the North Italy. Looking at analysis for CAPE (~300J/kg) and Lifted Index (+5°C) gives really a slight chance for thunderstoms, I honestly didn't expect anything more after having Bora (Foehn wind) for whole day!
But surprisedly in The Friuli new cells were formed and all looked like it will go towards East. But no, at around 18:30 UTC another squall-line was formed around 15km S-SW of Nova Gorica, near Molfancone city in Italy. It was progressing towards ESE right over Karst and towards me! The storm with really intense downpour including some hail hit me at 19:25 UTC. The max RR was almost 300mm/h! In the 10min lasting downpour accumulated rainfall was 8.8mm (average rainfall ~50mm/h!).
The front-line (Cb arcus) was really quickly progressing towards me, also fallstreaks of rain are great visible on this image (Time: 19:17 UTC):
There was surprisedly a lot of intense lightning strikes, which is great visible on these two maps for accumulated strikes.
From 18:50 to 19:48 UTC over SW Slovenia:
From 19:30 to 20:00 UTC:
:
I managed to catch many of these intense lightning strikes:
(Time: 19:18 UTC):
(Time: 19:19 UTC):
(Time: 19:22 UTC):
(Time: 19:23 UTC):
The only problem was the quick progress of storm towards ESE. The location where I was doesn't have a good view towards
ENE directions, so strikes were already behind trees.
(Time: 19:20 UTC):
(Time: 19:20 UTC):
The lightning strikes were now extremely close, this one was less than 1km away! (Time: 19:27 UTC):
Then I moved to a different location, but I caught just this CG strike before the intense downpour hit/flooded me (Time: 19:31 UTC)
I went home then, put a tripod on my window and caught these strikes in ESE direction (Time: 19:41 UTC):
(Time: 19:42 UTC):
(Time: 19:42 UTC):
(Time: 19:43 UTC):
(Time: 19:43 UTC):
All images in this chase log are also in my galery.
Radar, satellite and other images are taken from websites: Meteocentre.com, OSMER, Wetterzentrale, Naval European Meteorology and Oceanography Center, L.a.M.M.A., Weather Online and Alpenflugwetter.com.
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