CheeselandSkies

You can tell there is not enough going on with the weather again. This thread was a lot slower during the epic winter stretch Jan-Feb. It's nice but not nice enough to do much outside unless you're a die-hard...that should change by Sunday. Still need some potential to track.

Very interesting pair of analogs because those years behaved very differently during the spring and summer here in the upper Midwest. Very wet/stormy with numerous tornadoes and widespread flooding problems ('08) vs. exceedingly warm and dry ('12).

Not a lot of significant precip in the 7-day. Had thought as of a week or two ago, there was a more active look for March? At the rate this melt is going, we are going to need to start seeing some rain or we will be looking at the risk of drought, as opposed to the spring flooding potential we were concerned about awhile ago. I swear last year it took until well into May to so much as hear a rumble of thunder around here, which made the early, agonizing weeks of the pandemic/lockdown all the more frustrating.

Oh, I'm more than happy to give it a chance, but the last few years have significantly tempered my optimism/expectations going into spring.

Had hoped the La Nina and -PDO would take care of that this year.

I used to discount early season setups at this latitude out of hand (given that we can have low-level instability issues into late May), but events like 4/9/15, 3/15/16 and 2/28/17 have given me a new respect for them. Heck, we've done better in oddball "off-season" months (even including 12/1/18) in recent years than we have in May and June. Last year also had that late March potential big day that largely busted, but still produced a few tornadoes.

The good news is we are going into spring with a healthy (in fact for some, record) snowpack in place, as opposed to 2011-12 when the entire central CONUS dried to a crisp and started to bake in March and never stopped until almost fall. I have to think that the recent winter storms in the southern Plains will help as well, since it's unusual for them to be going into spring with any snowpack at all in place, isn't it?

The blustery winds today even prior to precip onset made it feel less mild than I was expecting/hoping for.

Don't. Even.

Thought we were supposed to be on the upswing by now.