Heat Burst Strikes Salisbury, MD Saturday Night

UPDATE: The NWS has also issued a blog on this event, with some nice radar images.

Katie posted this Comment on my blog yesterday:

Good call, Katie. I believed at first it was a gust front. And it was, but a specific type of event called a "heat burst." You can get more info from WikiPedia & Habyhints, but basically it's the "hot" version of a typical gust front - air falls out of a thunderstorm, hits the ground and spreads out. After coming to this conclusion, I Googled a bit and found other weather bloggers agreeing at MyFoxPhilly and Phillyweather.net. There were no official news articles on the topic.

There was a single storm report was issued 2 miles east-northeast of the city, saying "NUMEROUS TREES DOWN AT OLD OCEAN CITY RD AND SHAMROCK RD." at 05:50 GMT, or 1:50 AM. The radar shots above were taken at 10:15 PM and 2:00 AM, showing a thunderstorm moving east-southeast then dissipating before it got to Salisbury - I'm not sure what we're seeing on radar at 2:00 is actually the gust front or just what was left of the storm.

The local weather stations caught the gust as well, and the associated temperature drop. Above is a graph from MD037, a Maryland D.O.T. station which jumped from 76 at 4:50 AM to 87 at 5:50! It also shows two wind gusts which is interesting. (See also KSBY - the airport which gusted to 52 mph!) Here is a map of temperatures at 2 AM from MESOWEST (The Government Mesonet), notice how localized the event is!

*Quicktime required. "Save Target As" required for IE.