Development of mesovortices and tornado-like vortices within idealized high shear, low CAPE simulations

High shear, low CAPE (HSLC) severe weather represents a considerable operational challenge across the United States, particularly in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic states. Despite recent work geared towards improving operational skill in HSLC environments, little research has focused on improving the understanding of storm-scale characteristics of HSLC convection. This work documents the evolution of convection within idealized simulations initialized in HSLC environments, including the development of mesovortices and tornado-like vortices. Mesoscale sensitivities to thermodynamic profiles, hodographs, cold pool forcing, mid-level dry intrusions, and the Coriolis force are explored, focusing on changes in storm morphology and the strength of updrafts and low-level vortices. Ongoing research within the group will attempt to explain the origins of low-level vortexgenesis within these idealized HSLC environments through Lagrangian vorticity analysis. This will lead to a comparison between vortexgenesis and vortex maintenance within HSLC environments consisting of hybrid convective modes and more conventional high CAPE supercell environments.