I had meant to post this sounding from Springfield, Missouri, for 00 UTC April 25th. It fell between the cracks, and I'm putting it up now, just to call attention to its remarkable computed CAPE of over 11,000 m*2/s*2. It's obviously very bad data, but it was transmitted and likely went into at least some upper-air archives. So once again - users of NWS sounding data beware!
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Comment from someone in NWS Southern or Central Region: You'll be happy to know that this sounding was the subject of an email "nastygram" that made the rounds within the NWS, reminding people to not launch into thunderstorms. Apparently the observer called NCEP/NCO to ask if they wanted a 2nd release, and NCO told them to xmit the sounding as-is, since they (NCEP) can purge bad data before the sounding ends up in the models. (Note the wind looks good, but I wouldn't trust any of the T/Td profile, even below 700mb). The email mentioned that despite what NCEP told the observer, it is against NWS policy to transmit bad soundings** since the data goes to a variety of users without any further quality control. So, to the observer's credit, they at least sought guidance and did not just blindly send it out. (Hmmmm - can't resist that it sounds like blind leading blind here.)
Monday-morning quarterbacking it, I think they should've killed the whole T/RH profile and just sent the winds. ** = One could argue that almost *all* the soundings since RRS have had flaws of some sort, but we won't go there...
-From east of the Divide
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