CheeselandSkies

It really seems like a mixed bag with ENSO. Feels like in my adult life we've had wet Ninos, dry Ninos, wet Ninas, dry Ninas, warm Ninos, cold Ninos, warm Ninas (most dramatically 2012), and cold Ninas. The strength and timing/speed of transition (TNI) makes the biggest difference.

Reupping this thread as several months later I found a frame in my GoPro footage that shows the left edge of the Cullison-Iuka tornado. This is looking north from NW 10th Street northeast of Cullison. It literally was just this one frame, though. Too bad there wasn't more lightning back-lighting under the base. Nearly all of it was at anvil level.

Chased this day and intercepted the supercell south of Kalona. Clipped the RFD core heading north and then east to keep up with it, getting numerous subtle but noticeable hail pockmarks on the driver's side and hood of my vehicle. The Riverside tornado was occurring off to our south at about this time, I told my chase partner to keep an eye to his right based on the radar presentation but we couldn't see anything through the rain. Ended up with a distant glimpse of a rope funnel as we approached West Liberty from the south. Chasers who were closer confirmed a ground circulation with this, although the NWS's survey has the only other tornado occurring a few minutes earlier and seemingly a bit further west, southwest of Downey.

Southward-moving central WI storms were severe warned into far northwest Dane County, but sputtered into Madison on fumes and have now ceased to exist.

God, I hope not. I barely knew what an air quality advisory was until that year. Then we had them in effect for something like 3 weeks straight.

Gambled on an early to mid-April tour and we lucked out with a couple of decent storms on relatively low-key/conditional days. It was guided by Trey Greenwood and Ethan Moriarty (YouTubers Convective Chronicles and June First, respectively), so it was a lot of fun getting to hang out and talk storms with those guys. However ironically the best was on my way home (I had actually cancelled my flight plans and shortened my time on the tour to drive out to OKC instead, which was the reason I was in my vehicle and able to chase this day, also ironic for someone from Wisconsin I had started the day in Wichita and marathonned 9 hours to see a tornado in Minnesota):

Ya. AI ≠ "good."

Does the clearing now pushing from the eastern half of IA/NE MO into NW IL/SW WI mean anything or is it too little, too late? SPC pretty thoroughly chopped away our severe probabilities on the northern end with the 1630 update.

00Z HRRR: We're so back?

I would agree with you if there was less of a signal for extensive morning convection on the CAMs, however... it's an interesting disagreement between the mesoscale models (NAM, RAP) and the CAMs (3K NAM, HRRR). The former two build a very potent environment into east IA/N IL/even S WI late Monday afternoon/evening, which the latter two fail to do because of the impacts of the aforementioned incessant convection.

Seems like all the CAMs to come into range thus far (including 00Z HRRR) obliterate the warm sector north of about I-70 with incessant convection through midday. A couple days ago there was talk of an abnormally far east EML advection preventing this, what changed?

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).

Got this guy on Monday. Was on a tornado-warned nasty green HP near Dodgeville/Barneveld/Mt. Horeb, WI Tuesday evening. Other photos from recent chases in my storm chasing Flickr album: https://flickr.com/photos/andywskies/albums/72157655308092622/

CAMS (apart from the ever-aggressive RRFS-A) have generally kept southern Wisconsin dry overnight, and the 00Z HRRR continues that trend. Not sure why were still in SPC's slight risk.

Yeah. I have to resist the temptation to chase based solely on that and the HRRR UH swaths, which are portrayed 50-100 miles north of any surface-based instability except maybe from north-central Indiana eastward.

So pumped I get to chase with him starting in a little over a week.

Honestly couldn't ask for a better look across all guidance for the start of my chase tour. Now I just have to hope the airports are still semi-functional by the 2nd. Heck, with that look on the models I'll hitchhike to OKC if need be.

Great shot showing the dramatic carved-out updraft structure. Possibly would have gotten this one except my chase partner couldn't leave work in Madison until 4. We got a brief look at the Trivoli tornado from the west edge of Hanna City, which I believe was produced from the same storm or one that evolved out of it after a merger. We were not really expecting a tornado by that point in the chase as it had gotten dark and the storm had looked like junk on radar just minutes before, so we were rather spooked by the rapid turnaround and hightailed it out of there before we could get a better shot.

Chase tour runs April 3-12!

That's where you tell them "So if you're 'pros,' who's paying you so I can sue them into oblivion for hiring your dumb a**?" Fortunately, while I've seen a few "questionable" driving decisions, nothing egregious like that around storms...so far. Actually had a chase partner for the first time in a while on Tuesday. It was pretty low-key around the Galesburg/Kewanee/Princeton cell, probably because most people were either on the Kankakee storm or frantically trying to get back to it (which no doubt resulted in more bad driving). That sounded like a highly stressful intercept for just about everyone involved, and it seems it was only photogenic for a short time before rain wrapping and/or darkness set in, so I'm not too broken up about missing that.

Maybe not. The state girls' basketball tournament is happening at the Resch Center today through Saturday.

Absolutely textbook "horseshoe" base and monster RFD cut in that first image. I didn't give the potential for recovery enough credit, I assumed once the lake breeze boundary pushed through that would be sayonara for any supercell in the vicinity. Got on a cell just as it fired north of Galesburg and it looked briefly promising and went tornado-warned for a little while, but a whole bunch of updrafts went up all around and it quickly turned into a mess (potential for that was always there given the boundary-parallel flow, but I had hoped the capping would keep it in check).

I think I'm going for an initial target of Galesburg, IL. Multiple models seem to be maximizing the parameters there near 0Z Wednesday, and some initiate discrete convection. In addition, just anecdotally there seems to be something about the west side of the Illinois River valley from Beardstown on up to Peoria; multiple notable tornado events have occurred there in recent years.

Three Rivers and Union City, MI would like a word about that. Tuesday looks legit, decent agreement among CAMS on discrete convection initiating within a favorable to highly favorable parameter space. The exception being the NAM 3KM which as has been noted, is likely due to its cool PBL bias. It is a bit of an odd pattern for the location and time of year, bearing more of the hallmarks of a late spring to summer setup for the region (like June 22nd, 2015 and '16) than an early-mid March one (3/12/06 or 3/15/16). However the same was true for last Friday.

NAM and experimental CAMS have been quite consistent on a high-end parameter space developing over northern Illinois Tuesday afternoon/evening, with a signal for discrete convection able to take advantage of it. At this time I'm planning for it to be my first chase of the year.