An Idealized Modeling Study of the Nontornadic and Tornadic Supercells Intercepted by VORTEX2 on 10 June 2010

On 10 June 2010, the second Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment (VORTEX2) armada collected a rare set of observations of a nontornadic supercell and a tornadic supercell evolving in close proximity to each other near Last Chance, CO. An observational study of why one supercell produced no tornadoes while the other produced at least two suggested that a combination of an evolving storm environment and differing impacts of a storm merger on both supercells likely played a significant role. For this case, idealized simulations using CM1 are being conducted to further investigate the impacts of: (1) increasing environmental low-level shear (over time) on the nontornadic supercell (i.e., would this storm have produced a tornado had it not been prematurely killed by the merger?), (2) the merger on the tornadic supercell's tornado production (through potentially changing baroclinicity and/or convergence), and (3) the merger on the nontornadic supercell (how precisely did the merger kill this storm?). Using trajectory/circuit analyses, we are exploring the results of these simulations to gain better insight into the evolution of the storms, their environments, and the production of the tornadoes.