Intraseasonal Variability of Hail in the Contiguous United States: Relationship to the Madden–Julian Oscillation

Abstract

Abstract Climatologies have been developed to highlight variability of the frequency and intensity of hail in the United States. However, the intraseasonal variability of hail, including why one week might be active while the following inactive despite both having similar climatological probabilities, has not yet been explored. This paper presents relationships between spring-season (April–June) hail days and the leading mode of atmospheric intraseasonal variability, the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO). It extends recent work on intraseasonal tornado variability to smaller spatial scales. In April, May, and June, statistically significant variability in hail days was found for different Real-time Multivariate MJO (RMM) phases of the MJO. For April, the strongest correlations between hail-day anomalies and anomalies of the product of convective available potential energy (CAPE) and 0–6-km vertical wind shear were found in RMM phase 5, with above-normal likelihood of a hail day found in the south-central United States. For May, the strongest correlations were found in RMM phase 3, with below-normal likelihood of a hail day located over the north-central United States. For June, the strongest correlations were found in phase 8, with above-normal likelihood of hail in west Texas and below-normal likelihood of hail over much of the middle of the United States. In all phases, 300-hPa height anomalies in the United States formed part of a global wave train similar to MJO patterns in both modeling and observational studies.