mattb65

One of the remarkable things to me is how well the intensification we are seeing unfold right now was shown on models like the HWRF, HMON and the globals. They've been showing this rapid deepening leading up to landfall for many of the model runs once this track more toward SW FL locked in.

Edit: next 6-12 hours before landfall on models suggest this is the peak and going forward will be either steady state or slight weakening before landfall.

28 minutes ago, Kevin Reilly said:

It would seem to me that the models are really honking on a tremendous amount of shear and dry air located into the Southeastern states upon arrival of Ian to the Florida West Coast or up in the Panhandle.  There has been dry air up here in the Middle Atlantic and the dry air behind these troughs up here is very stout.

 

I mean it was 43 degrees here in Southeastern Pa with dewpoints running in the lower to middle 30's that type fo dry air means business, and I don't see any reason that the dry air would charge southeast towards Ian behind a trough leaving the Mid Atlantic next week.

Yes, combine that dry air with 40 kts of shear and the only natural expectation should be rapid weakening.

There are a number of people claiming the rapid weakening is implausible. I disagree. If the TC has extremely dry air from the surrounding environment ingested into the core combined with shear strong enough to decouple the LLC and MLC, then rapid weakening is exactly right and is the reason why it's shown by the most accurate hurricane models.

The environment leading to landfall would have to be completely different from what's being modeled for the storm to not rapidly weaken on approach. The tracks taking it toward Tampa aren't impacted as much by the shear in the Northern Gulf, and some that completely miss influence of the trough and stay further south and west in the Gulf might be able to maintain intensity.

With the storm all being so disorganized, it's very much a guessing game which track will end up being correct. My main point is that rapid weakening leading up to landfall if it follows the track currently modeled on the HWRF and GFS is not outlandish/wrong as some have indicated.

The low level cold is pretty robust and filtering in throughout the storm.  This seems to be the recipe for a significant ice event for someone if it comes in ahead of the precip which seems to be the solution models are converging upon.  Details on location TBD but seems to be CT up to Rt 2 is the corridor to watch.  Hopefully it's IP and not ZR.

9 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

Amarshall lost power already in Duxbury he said.   has arrived.

That area down there on the other side of the coastal front and into the cape is probably going to have some serious tree damage and power outages with the pounding snow and temps in the 30s plus wind.

16 minutes ago, IowaStorm05 said:

Guys, when you get a 20 inch snowfall in these conditions, what kind of drifting can I expect at 230' elevation here?

The parking lot in front of our building is literally a crescent-shaped bowl below the main road, within the shallow canyon. Snow has seemingly maxed out in the lot before. 

I was a senior at BC for the Jan 2005 blizzard with drifting to 5 ft blocking the front of our dorm in the morning. Plenty of cars on Comm Ave turned into snow blobs.

For Nemo I lived in JP and we had 4 ft+ drifts.

If you get 20+ with these winds the drifts will be solid

Edit: these are all at close to sea level so quadruple amounts for your elevation as others have noted. 

/s

Harwich, Cape Cod, MA crushed.

3 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Now post the RGEM sounding same time. LOL

Lol I don't want to upset the weenies. Their inner weenie anxieties are high enough without someone living in hawaii bumping up the worst model. 

I remember going to bed with all the models showing flush hits and waking up the day before a storm with a couple of models pissing in the cheerio bowl.

In reality, convective issues can happen and can steal moisture and screw around with cyclone development and precip distribution which is the one big wildcard that won't be sorted out until gametime.

This sounding for E MA from the 3k NAM during the height of the storm is nuts. DGZ from the surface to 500 mb.

11 minutes ago, HIPPYVALLEY said:

Even with 3" qpf it's tough because you need ideal snow growth for hours.   The winds will have a say in that. 

Winds and drifting are probably going to make it tough to measure accurately in this storm.  Having said that,  some of the soundings show an absurdly wide dendritic growth zone with huge lift especially in the deform band area. The ratios and rates for whomever gets lucky enough to get under this band will probably see extreme rates with high ratios.

I can't recall too many storms where the snow depth maps are significantly more than the 10:1 ratio maps. Wishing I could be back in Boston for this one. 

Seems to me that the cone is just narrowing, GFS on the eastern side of the cone and NAM/Euro on the western side of the cone.  Either track is possible and the two most likely outcomes are an E MA and Maine special or a more region wide impact. 

Even the eastern side has a mature cyclone, not some strung out POS so whomever is fortunate to be graced by the ccb or deform is going to be piling up lots of snow.

17 minutes ago, TheSnowman said:

This is an Absurdly Difficult Call.  

I would be pissing off about 40 different people in about 5 different friend groups, miss a Recording, miss a $1000 private gig, basically not get money back for the early returned rental car, Miss Sledding in the Snow at Mt. Whitney up Rte. 2 in LA, and Miss about 7 flipping meetings.  

Again.  Unless I'm 90% GUARANTEED 24", I can Not do this.  

You aren't going to have a 90% guarantee of 24"+ even with a perfect track.  Too much uncertainty in where banding will set up to predict who gets 24"+ with that level of precision.

I salute you for even considering pissing that many people off to chase a snow storm. 

On 12/3/2021 at 1:53 PM, mattb65 said:

Don't worry, we've got your snow in Hawaii. 

.BLIZZARD WARNING FOR THE BIG ISLAND SUMMITS...

HIZ028-040215-
/O.CON.PHFO.BZ.W.0001.211204T0400Z-211205T1600Z/
Big Island Summits-
311 AM HST Fri Dec 3 2021

...BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM THIS EVENING TO
6 AM HST SUNDAY...

* WHAT...Blizzard conditions expected. Total snow accumulations
  of up to 12 inches or more. Winds gusting over 100 mph.

Forecast was for 5-10" with lollis to 20"

Up to almost 8" on the day, 9" on the event, still pounding and radar looks like this #firehose 

Don't worry, we've got your snow in Hawaii. 

.BLIZZARD WARNING FOR THE BIG ISLAND SUMMITS...

HIZ028-040215-
/O.CON.PHFO.BZ.W.0001.211204T0400Z-211205T1600Z/
Big Island Summits-
311 AM HST Fri Dec 3 2021

...BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM THIS EVENING TO
6 AM HST SUNDAY...

* WHAT...Blizzard conditions expected. Total snow accumulations
  of up to 12 inches or more. Winds gusting over 100 mph.

6 hours ago, tamarack said:

BIL lives in Haleiwa - Oahu north shore - 20 minutes from Waimea Bay of surfer fame.  Only 10' breakers when we were there in March 2016.

It's a little bit of a crap shoot when a big storm is going to blow up and send a swell but usually late Dec, Jan and Feb are prime.  Last year late December had a 20 ft, 20 sec swell with waves completely closing out in Waimea Bay which doesn't happen often, and usually requires 40 ft+ faces. There were surfers paddling and towing in which I can't imagine. 

Haleiwa is a great town, really laid back.

BTW, the storm sending the waves this weekend also triggered the first winter storm watch of the season for the big island but not the first snow.  Current forecast is for up to 4 inches with SW winds of 50-80 G100 at the peaks of the big volcanos. 

@Ginx snewx i can tell from some of your posts that you love big waves,  if you've never done it before you should book a trip to Hawaii in the winter for a big swell, there's almost nothing like it. I live next to this beach,  expecting 25 ft bombs with light offshore winds https://www.surf-forecast.com/breaks/Pyramid-Rock/forecasts/latest

I think there's something messed up with the extrapolated pressure.  Not just being a weenie. The dropsonde from the last pass measured 936 mb with 13 kt wind (extrap was around 945).

There is no way the pressure has risen given the increased wind measured on this pass and satellite appearance to my eyes showing continued improvements. 

I've never seen a dropsonde pressure this much lower than the extrap. Is this legit? 935 mb on the dropsonde vs 945ish extrap.

On TT it shows 952 mb as the pressure on the map but the dropsonde is the one below,  I'm confused...

HWRF, HMON and GFS hurricane models all show pressure drops right up until landfall.  Given how it looks now, unless the pace of intensification levels off,  this will be right on the edge of CAT 5 strength at landfall. 

3 hours ago, Hoosier said:

Mattb65, might be time to sweat.  Cases UP slightly and still over 10k

 

I'm done,  just barely going to miss 10k, there's not much more that the high vaccination states can drop and the delta variant and sunbelt seasonality changes are going to do their thing.  I'll bow out for the next couple months. 

7 hours ago, winterwx21 said:

I've been going back and forth on it. It's a very difficult decision. I'd say I'm leaning towards getting vaccinated this summer, in case this delta variant becomes a bigger problem in the fall. But if I get vaccinated it would probably be the J&J vaccine, since that's a more traditional type of vaccine. It's true that side effects would tend to show up in the short term, but I think it's more important to have longer term safety data on the MRNA vaccines since it is technology that hasn't been used on people before. I'm not an expert obviously, so I don't know how legitimate Dr. Robert Malone's concerns are about lipid nanoparticles possibly causing cancer several years after vaccination. I don't think I would be comfortable taking that type of vaccine unless an expert can convince me that it isn't a legitimate concern.

If and when novavax gets approved in the US, I think it'll be the best fit for you based on everything you've posted. This is a really well written article about it. 

https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/619276/

1 hour ago, winterwx21 said:

What I find ridiculous is some people are trying to make it sound as if it's still just as risky for unvaccinated people now as it was several months ago when Covid levels were much higher. It's simple common sense that the unvaccinated are now at lower risk of coming into contact with the virus, now that Covid  has gone down to a much lower level. Obviously this is a tactic to try to get people to get vaccinated, the way that they're trying to mislead people into thinking the risk is just as high even though Covid has gone way down. If you're in a high vaccination state where there's only a small amount of Covid around, then of course it's much safer for unvaccinated people. Of course the risk isn't zero, but it's much lower. This isn't to say that people shouldn't still get vaccinated, but it's funny how they're trying to fool unvaccinated people into thinking it's just as risky now for them as it was when the pandemic was at its worst. 

If anyone is trying to use scare tactics to get people vaccinated at this point then they are a fool. 

The people who haven't been vaccinated yet are either hardcore against vaccination and fully bought in to some form of false information that is immovable and not worth investing time to discuss, or they are skeptical and have outstanding questions on the safety and efficacy. 

The significant number of skeptical people who have reasonable worries that the vaccines were discovered and tested in record time and are still under EUA instead of full approval. I think presenting the facts may be helpful for these individuals.  The data doesn't need any editorializing, it speaks for itself. 

Your point about virus prevalence is fair, but prevalence will constantly change and is influenced by the local circumstances.  There are a lot of communities with vaccine rates less than 40% where any vaccine introduction of these more transmissible variants will lead to a localized high risk situation often without warning. We are in the seasonal low point for the virus, it'll start rising again as we go into fall. 

There seem to be regular headlines stating that the overwhelming number of new covid hospitalizations are unvaccinated individuals.

The specific numbers should be reported, every day. Just like they report the number of cases daily for the past year, it should be.

1. Number of new cases if possible report fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated and unvaccinated as sub-groups of the new cases

2. Number of new hospitalizations including the number fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated and the number unvaccinated

3. New deaths - fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated  and unvaccinated

The CDC is gathering this data but it's voluntarily reported so not exactly a full picture - more for surveillance purposes to identify if there's a cluster that might indicate a concerning new variant - https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/breakthrough-cases.html

The hard data may be powerful enough to move some skeptics across the line to finally choose to protect themselves. I'm not sure if this data is being collected at scale though.

1 hour ago, Hoosier said:

I know Indiana has stopped reporting on Sundays.

The 7 day is down to 11,158 on worldometers which I think is partially from reporting changes, partially because this weekend became a partial holiday weekend from Juneteenth. If lawyer Craig updated today in pretty sure it would be sub 10k, I'll just have to settle for my celebration this Friday while I'll be on vacation in Maui, watching the sunset and drinking a Mai Tai. 

14 hours ago, BuffaloWeather said:

Quite a few of my friends are posting his stuff all over their socials in support, its the number one story over here. Lots of the Bills are anti vax. Beasley, Mckenzie, Poyer are really vocal and I'm pretty sure Allen and Diggs didnt get it.

Considering it's the Bills, what I could see happening is that they have another dominating regular season, their team looks great so long as everyone stays healthy.  Then come playoff time a covid outbreak sidelines all the anti vax players and they get knocked out. Not sure if this would embolden the antivaxxers because of "discrimination" or if it would be a wake up call that choices have consequences. 

Considering that Beasley would rather retire than get vaccinated, I'm pretty sure most will choose the former.

Choosing to retire from the NFL and forgo millions of dollars rather than get a vaccine, this is the hill and issue Cole Beasley wants to plant his flag on, what a world we live in...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/19/us/cole-beasley-nfl-retire-covid-vaccine/index.html