| 2008-06-29 | A severe weather event impacted central Pennsylvania on Sunday 29 June 2008. Several distinct echo types were observed including supercells, bow echoes, and pulse type storms. Despite the variety of storm event was rather modest over central Pennsylvania with only 24 severe reports across the State.
The first supercell over central Pennsylvania to affect the State College Forecast Area formed west of State College and moved over the north side of State College, passing over both the airport and the National Weather Service Forecast Office (WFO). A wall cloud was present and there were reports of funnel clouds. The storm tracked across Centre, southern Clinton, and Lycoming Counties. Despite the rotation in the storm, the storm produced no reports of severe weather.
Two bow echoes to the west of State College were also produced no reports of severe weather. The majority of storms which produced severe weather did have 50 dBZ cores over the -20C level, about 24 to 26KFT over central Pennsylvania on this particular date.
Perhaps the storms with the structures, to include distinct bows and cyclonic rotation were too shallow to produce severe weather. It is an interesting if not challenging problem to identify storms which are more likely to produce severe weather. But clearly on this day, elevated cores to the -20C level were better indicators than more classic storm structures.
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