CheeselandSkies

Go figure, the best chase season (and potentially, with it the most dangerous tornado season) in quite a few years would occur in the midst of this pandemic and all the logistical, legal and moral complications it has placed around interstate travel.

It's impacting the weather too (or at least our ability to predict it). Read several articles that reduced aircraft observations may negatively impact model performance.

That and, it's not feasible to enforce/follow a 100% lockdown in the U.S. Some people will continue to ignore it; but everyone still has to go out at least to get food/supplies/work if you still have it. Cases in Dane County, WI (my friend among them) have been increasing at about 10-20 per day for the last few days. We were still just under 200 at last update. I don't know if that's because we just haven't hit the exponential growth yet, or if we've actually been relatively successful in keeping the spread in check (or if we haven't been testing enough). We did seem to get a bit of an earlier start on social-distancing measures than many other places in the state.

Just found out yesterday a friend of mine is hospitalized with COVID-19. He's 39. We hung out a lot from 2014-early 2017. We haven't seen as much of each other since then for reasons that in retrospect seem kind of petty, although I did still go to some of his gigs (he's a musician here in the Madison area). I'm not really a praying man, but really hoping with every fiber of my being that he pulls through. He also has a wife and daughter.

In other news, there was just a huge ****storm on another weather forum regarding the ethics of storm chasing against state stay-at-home-unless-essential orders (at least WI and IL both have one in place, don't know about IA) and following (or not) social distancing guidelines and other precautions while chasing. It seemed to be a relatively reasonable discussion until I logged on this morning and . I would like to once again thank the atmosphere for making Saturday an easy no-go for me the morning of, despite the proximity of a 15% hatch and the dearth of quality tornado setups in the region since 2/28/17, which I didn't chase because, well...it was February.

I wonder if this will turn out to be a tornado. Came in across the MS from IA. 0139 UNK 4 S LANCASTER GRANT WI 4279 9070 SEVERAL BARNS DESTROYED BETWEEN POTOSI AND LANCASTER. (ARX)

As usual, the IL/WI stateline acts as a brick wall for tornadic storms. It happens in June, so a March setup with underperforming thermos didn't stand a chance.

A small glimpse of what might have happened in IL today. Evidently that Oregon-Davis Jct. storm found a brief window of the right balance of ingredients. I would like to thank the atmosphere for making today an easy no-go for me even with a Day 2 moderate risk so close to home.

Wow, really did not expect anything this close to the state line with the way instability was held down all day. Storm is tracking just a little northwest of the path of the April 2015 EF4. Some good rumbles here a few minutes ago, too.

One of the IA warnings goes right up to the MS River. Can't imagine it will stay surface-based into WI though, given Madison is 45/43. Wasn't expecting this, though: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/md/md0257.html

Cell coming up toward Caraway, AR looks like the next one to watch, although the latest warning is on one due west of the original tornadic cell.

New warning is not a TORR, CC appears to show most detectable debris being "old" debris falling out of the FFD. However, couplet did ramp back up there. Would have been a good time to use the "...THIS STORM HAS A HISTORY OF PRODUCING TORNADOES" wording in the new warning. *EDIT: Quickly changed to TORR warning based on spotter report.

Looked uncannily liked TCL 4/27/11, also in the way it formed. They were looking at a big wall cloud, then it abruptly condensed and rapidly expanded. Shows the kind of conditions that could have been in place today in IL/IA.

Well that's the kind of tornado that verifies a PDS watch...only a few hundred miles to the south. Broyles making everybody eat crow so far, this was in the original Day 3 risk was it not? Maybe him of all people going conservative should have been a red flag.

Might be biggest TDS I've ever seen.