StormWatch: Douglas County, Minnesota storm

Here at USA Weather, we like to look into storms happening across the country.  This morning we were surprised to find a few warnings out, so we took a look into one of them in Douglas County, Minnesota.  First, a reflectivity image:

When I start WeatherSchool, I will teach you guys all about radar.  But for now, we'll just say that reflectivity shows rain and hail intensity.  We can see a core of heavy precipitation in the northwest quadrant of our storm.  Next, we have base velocity:

This is an interesting product that doppler radar measures, showing the winds inside of a storm.  We can determine the potential for wind damage with this.  There is a small red dot pointing out the highest wind intensity.  The winds here are above the ground though, so winds right around severe are expected, not quite as high as the image indicates.  Now we use a new product called Vertically Integrated Liquid Density, or VILD:

This product has become known as one of the better hail size forecasters out there.  The highest value is around four.  This is a high total that is generally conducive to three inch plus sized hail.  However, don't worry.  I am not expecting hail that big.  This is NOT a favorable time for large hail like that.  We'll call this "old school" hail forecasting.  It's cool, but only semi-accurate.  Now we'll move on to "new school" hail forecasting:

The image above this text is called POSH, or Probability Of Severe Hail.  There is a roughly 70% chance for severe hail next to that orange diamond that overlays the image.  That is where we see potential for severe hail.  Next, we use MEHS, or Maximum Estimated Hail Size.  The radar is basically predicting the hail size:

Values top out at around 1.50" near the orange marker.  We estimate hail will be around that size with this storm.  Lastly, a volume scan:

The pink areas are potentially hail stored inside of this storm.  This could be a nasty little storm.  It is important to note that all images are from GR2Analyst.  Stay tuned!