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55 right now

Saw some lowering as a rotation signature moved to my northwest. Then the gust front hit with 50-55 mph winds. Lots of good CG lightning.

Wow, it's like a whole different world up there. Nice vid. Finished with 0.78" rain for the day here. That brings April up to a healthy 6.68", and 7.09" since March 31st.

Sadly the rains were meager if even that for the midstate. The winds were some of the most intense I’ve experienced. I was driving home from seeing my daughter at college. My wife was scared at how bad it got. It does appear the drought is taking hold & usually dominates the wx when they do take hold.

Tornado Warning!

1896? Wow. Well done? RECORD EVENT REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PEACHTREE CITY GA 0834 PM EDT FRI APR 17 2026 ...RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE SET AT ATLANTA... A RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 90 DEGREES WAS SET AT ATLANTA TODAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 89 DEGREES SET IN 1896.

Yeah I don’t mean to be sounding critical and this isn’t really on the spc, the warning was justified. This is more on my city specifically. I get it, tornado warning is issued so they sound the alarm. But then 90min (not an exaggeration) elapsed and they never sounded them again. Meanwhile Libertyville’s automated alarm system kept going off well after the threat had passed.

Here we got them for such a long period because DeKalb was right on the border of two different polygons separated by some time and the mixed E and NE motion of the squall line made them challenging to draw.

Ours went off 90 min ahead of time then never went off again when it finally hit, and there was definitely radar indicated rotation when it did arrive. Plus it was the 4th day in a row our sirens have gone off way too early. Being right next to the lake we are always at the tail end of these warnings. The general public has to be so irritated at this point. I get they want to give as much warning time as possible but 90min and then not sounding them again when the threat is imminent is not ideal.

We got tornado sirens for about an hour here because of the orientation and timing of the warnings. No real wind here but great summer like squall line light show even into the cold pool.

Watching the line come in on the screened in porch. Lovely breeze and a chorus of crickets, frogs & rolling thunder. S tier entertainment.

My son captured this lightning strike from his front door.

Don't see many Jumbo Shrimp lines like this one has been in April. July maybe but few in April. Pretty impressive.

Nice storm

The lightning has been pretty wicked the past hour or so back here in the trailing anvil rain. Lots of multiple repeating ultra bright flashes, followed by super long rumbles of thunder occasionally shaking the house.

IIRC Birmingham or Huntsville also did that during the evening of 4/3/74. James Spann essentially did that for 4/27/11 when he told his viewers in advance there were going to be so many tornadoes and warnings it would be tough for them to keep up, so to treat any storm that approaches as dangerous and take cover as if it had a tornado (which on that day in Alabama, it probably did).

Anyone have thoughts on this? So far I am not a fan. Mundelein had their sirens go off on Tuesday for a severe thunderstorm warning that didn’t really amount to anything. Today Libertyville had their sirens go off an hour before a warning was ever even issued, then went off 2 more times during and then again after the threat had already passed. Not sure having sirens go off for severe thunderstorm warnings is a great idea. People are just going to start ignoring them more than they already are. I understand the desire to automate them but I’m not sure it’s working all that well right now. We all know the story about crying wolf.

Probably about an hour to hour and a half until arrival here. Shall see if it still can throw some punches.

Jonas…. Son of a bitch.

Reminds me of the story of the 1965 outbreak and Northern Indiana issued a blanket tornado warning for every county because it couldn’t keep up. Completely different set up and reasoning but still gives me a chuckle

That is a huge tornado warning polygon south of Kankakee.

@radarman I see this bird migration stuff from CornellLab a lot and I see UMass-Amherst as one of the contributors. Are they honestly using ground clutter from radiation inversions for this? That’s the impression I get from their daily tracking loops and examples. I thought maybe you would know more. https://birdcast.org/a-primer-for-using-weather-surveillance-radar-to-study-bird-migration/

I think this qualifies as the most ridiculous squall line in the history of squall lines.

Yeah, folks think he's bad now, he's actually mellowed. Well, let's just say he's aged like Ripple missing the bottle cap. Way back when there were no cameras around he was the WORST! I swung on him in a hotel parking lot after happy hour and missed 30 years ago lol

That’s a lot of tornado warnings