CheeselandSkies

Probably a little of both. The comparisons to 1974 and other ultra high-end outbreaks were ridiculous. This had nothing in common with those other than the general area at risk. Vastly different mid-upper level setup than that which has historically produced the top-tier outbreaks.

Yeah, even on another weather forum I suggested that some people throttle back the hype train a couple days ago, mainly due to the consistently progged steep positive tilt of the main trough and had them jump down my throat because "p0siTivELy tilteD TROughS can STIlL pr0duCe MajoR TOrNaDO events." Well, yeah...BUT it is a lot less likely than with neutral to negatively tilted troughs. I can't confidently say that the mitigating factors we saw with today (and yesterday's) events were direct results of the positively tilted trough, but some (such as boundary-parallel flow promoting junk convection, and the best forcing and cold air aloft lagging behind the warm sector), seem to be common to them.

At least there should be an explosion of green when the weekend/early next week warmup finally hits.

Broyles on today's 4-8: SO WHY DID YOU INTRODUCE AN AREA????!

Well that was a change-up.

I'm just gonna enjoy the nice rain we're having right now.

Video is now live:

Here's hoping Monday is as much of a washout for IA/NW IL as it looks to be on the GFS.

Fair enough.

I have a premiere set up for my 1-year anniversary re-edit/upload of my Keota chase video. Sunday 3/31 at 8:30 AM CDT.

The probabilities on the Day 4 and beyond outlooks don't have a direct correlation to the Day 3 and closer. The 30% zone is for all hazards. For an Enhanced risk, the wind OR hail probability has to be 30% OR the tornado probability of 10%. So it all depends on how things trend and how confident they are. They treat the longer range outlooks a little differently than they used to. Nowadays, they'll introduce a 15% at Day 6 if they're reasonably confident in an at least 15% probability of wind or hail (slight risk) maintaining itself by Day 1. Twenty years ago, if you saw a 25% (then used for a "high-end" slight risk, what would be an Enhanced risk today, the minimum threshold for a slight risk was 15% just like now) contour on the Day 3 outlook, it implied above-average confidence in a widespread/high-ceiling threat and a good chance of a high risk popping up at some point on Day 1.

Ahead of the 1-year anniversary of the 3/31/23 outbreak, NWS Quad Cities has put out a video breaking down the setup for the outbreak in their CWA, including the Keota etc tornado family. One of the frame grabs I sent them is in the graphic at 4 minutes (and on the thumbnail). I was diving a little bit into the archived SPC data earlier this week, and DVN's summary here jives with my impression that this event was surprisingly thermodynamically driven for an early-season Midwest setup. While certainly more than adequate for significant tornadoes given the other conditions in place, the low-level shear (at least in terms of raw SRH values) in this area wasn't jaw-dropping by high-risk, violent tornado outbreak standards. What really put this over the top IMO was the 3CAPE and lapse rates, as well as nearly optimal streamwise vorticity ingestion per the hodograph allowed for maximal use of what spin there was in the atmosphere.

The equinox was only a week ago, lol.

Primary severe threat with early next week system looks to remain southwest of the sub on Monday, with steep positive tilt mitigating things going into Tuesday, but it should bring a considerable amount of rain to a large area.

Oof.

Well, I am a chaser and I do love severe weather, but I advocate for restraint on social media hype unless/until there is actually good model agreement/consistency for a high-ceiling threat.

Every time Weed sees a trough on the models, he drives the social media hype train out of the station at full throttle, derails, crashes, and burns. I remain skeptical of this timeframe due to inconsistency between models/runs. Could it turn into something big? Sure, but IMO it's just as likely at this point to be a relatively modest event with a lot of rain/general thunderstorms and some isolated severe weather.

So when I got to work this morning the thermometer in my car said 27 degrees, and we had a stiff west-northwesterly breeze. 7-day forecasts from my employer and the NWS are rather depressing, with nothing outside of 40s and 50s. When's the flip back to much AA?

DMX with a great AFD write-up on all the potential impacts of the Sunday-Monday system including severe and synoptic winds. DVN/ARX seem purely concerned with snow despite the potential for the narrow instability sweet spot to set up at least partially in one of their CWAs.

SPC's highlight is much further south, but the 12Z NAM (and most antecedent GFS runs up to this point) would certainly support a severe/ threat in a narrow arc across eastern Iowa Monday afternoon. Those hodographs and 3CAPE are something else, if not for the antecedent Gulf drying, I really think we'd be staring down the barrel of another significant late March outbreak. The one thing I will say is that the surface low appears to be weakening with time on Monday; whereas last year March 31 it was deepening or at least holding steady. That might have mitigated the overall threat some in any case, but even so that's a pretty impressive profile despite the paltry on their face T/Td values. You only have to go back one more year (and in the very same state no less) to see what can happen when a setup like that overperforms.

Same.

We don't need no stinking METARs!

Based on what guidance, out of curiosity?

Some moisture issues to sort out, but quite a bit of potential there *if* things trend favorably.