the 2020 severe season started and ended in 45 minutes.
4/7 was okay locally, and 5/23 was fair. But the census for this season yields 2 mediocre severe events, and one exceptional one. I'd honestly trade the derecho for more/better tornado days than we had this year.
Food for thought. I wonder if the dry air in vicinity is actually helping the current convective burst by allowing for steeper lapse rates (on the order of ~6.5c/km), much steeper than the typical 5s you'd expect in a moist neutral profile. More robust updrafts in the short term yielding a better radar configuration than you'd otherwise expect given IR appearance and environment???
That said, that same dry air almost certainly brings this to an end fairly soon here.
Looks intriguing, but environment as a whole is still rather unfavorable, so I have my doubts that this feature will have any meaningful persistence. It'll be very easily disrupted.
I think that's probably our window for real storm. There will be a period of strong shear and poorly favorable conditions starting late tomorrow and persisting through the weekend. Flow is a bit better aligned as this thing turns around and heads east.
The environment down the line for this one is not especially conducive. While models do show development, I’ll be surprised if this becomes more than a minimal cane. Fropa in a few days will introduce dry, stable air into the area in association with 20-30kts of shear.
The T/Td intersection below the EML is cloud cover, and one of the reasons why I’m not at all confident in initiation. That and the stout EML above it are extremely problematic. Regarding the hodograph, veered flow probably isn’t an issue here as the flow aloft is NWly and the resulting hodograph is quite tasty imo. I don’t have many concerns about the parameter space not being able to support a severe/tornado threat. For me, it’s more of what is the chance we get a robust updraft?
Some models either do initiate or become extremely close to initiating a storm in this environment. E IA/N IL. I still don’t like EML strength(14c 700s) and subsidence in IA. But far E IA and IL might have a chance....
Michael is my ideal hurricane. Fast moving, landfall at 90 degrees, in an area thats not too populated, in the middle of the day, clear eye/intensifying into landfall, in the US, the list goes on.
Most models look like that sunday in Iowa. Huge deal if they somehow end up uncapped, but with a reservoir of 14c 700s to the west AND westerly 700mb flow, that's probably not happening.