A Comparison of Rapid Update Cycle (RUC-2) Model Soundings with Observed Soundings in Supercell Environments (Also to be presented in an oral session, Paper 2.6A)

Model soundings from 00 UTC runs of the Rapid Update Cycle 2 (RUC 2) were collected for 40-50 supercell events where collocated observational soundings were also available in the surface warm sector. Various parameters from these model and observed soundings are analyzed and compared to help evaluate the representativeness of the RUC-2 atmosphere in meso-alpha scale supercell environments. Further, one-hour forecast soundings were taken from the 23 UTC RUC-2 model runs for some of these events. These short-term forecast soundings – which did not incorporate 00 UTC observed upper air data – will be similarly analyzed and compared with the 00 UTC RUC-2 and observational soundings.