looking at the radar this morning - the CAPE was shown as high - 2000+ in my area - ( on post code zoom ) now i have read of people getting very excited when these figures are noted - but just how valuable are cape figures ?? ( it just rained )

opinions please

Brett

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How long have you got?

CAPE stands for Convective Available Potential Energy, and is a measure of the buoyancy of a layer. The greater the CAPE value (in joules/Kilogram), the greater the potential speed of the updraft.

0001-1000 J/kg: Marginally (Weakly) Unstable
1000-2500 J/kg: Moderately Unstable
2500-3500 J/kg: Very Unstable
3500 J/kg and higher: Extremely Unstable

This may help Relative buoyancy?

Then there is the different types ( all are calculated differently)

MLCAPE: Mean Layer CAPE sometines refer to as Mixed Layer CAPE
Calculated using a parcel consisting of mean layer values of temperature and moisture from the lowest 100 mb above the ground level.

MUCAPE: Most Unstable CAPE:
Calculated using a parcel from a pressure level in the lowest 300 mb that will give you the most unstable CAPE there is.

SBCAPE: Surface-Based CAPE
Calculated using a surface based parcel.

DCAPE: Downdraft CAPE used to estimate the potential strength of rain-cooled downdrafts

NCAPE: Normalized CAPE is CAPE that is divided by the depth of the buoyancy layer.

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