Nocturnal Elevated Convection Initiation of the PECAN 4 July Hailstorm

During the Plains Elevated Convection at Night (PECAN) experiment, an isolated hailstorm developed on the western side of the PECAN study area on the night of 3-4 July 2015. One of the objectives of PECAN was to advance knowledge of the processes and conditions leading to pristine nocturnal convection initiation (CI). This nocturnal hailstorm developed more than 160 km from any other convective storms and in the absence of any surface fronts or bores. The storm initiated within 110 km of the S-Pol radar; directly over a vertically pointing Doppler lidar; within 25 km of the University of Wyoming King Air flight track; within a network of nine sounding sites taking 2-hourly soundings; and near a mobile mesonet track. Importantly, even beyond 100 km in range, S-Pol observed the preconvection initiation cloud that was collocated with the satellite infrared cloud image and provided information on the evolution of cloud growth. The multiple observations of cloud base, thermodynamic stability, and direct updraft observations were used to determine that the updraft roots were elevated. Diagnostic analysis presented in the paper suggests that CI was aided by lower-tropospheric gravity waves occurring in an environment of weak but persistent mesoscale lifting.