CheeselandSkies

20 years ago OTD. Copy/pasted from my YouTube description: On August 18th, 2005, Wisconsin experienced what still stands as its record single-day tornado outbreak, with 27 occurring in the state. The most significant of these was a high-end F3 which tracked for 20 miles through residential subdivisions on the northern edge of the city of Stoughton, in southeastern Dane County. The house where my parents and I lived at the time (and they still do) is in one of these subdivisions. The tornado missed us by less than 1/4 of a mile, and the one man who died in it (I believe still the last tornado-related fatality in southern Wisconsin to date) lived on the opposite end of the same subdivision. I was 19 at the time and about to start my sophomore year in college. I had long had a fascination with severe weather and tornadoes from childhood and intended to take up storm chasing at some point. For a long time I was angry at myself for not being more prepared on this day and ready to get better footage (a quick YouTube search will unveil the many incredible videos which exist of this tornado, captured by several people who lived not far away). I felt like the atmosphere had tried to hand me the ultimate "backyard chase" and I botched it. You never actually see the tornado itself, just debris falling out of the sky beneath violently churning clouds over our house before I ran for cover (portions of the audio muted because I was shouting like an idiot), and then the structure on the back edge of the supercell thunderstorm after it had moved off and was producing a series of weaker tornadoes north of Lake Koshkonong/west of Fort Atkinson. Most of this footage has never been shared before on YouTube. I had the damage tour section on my old channel, uploaded about a year and a half after the fact in YT's old, lousy 240p resolution, but that was about it. Attachment space limits are too tight here, but damage photos are on TW for anyone else who's a member of both: https://talkweather.com/threads/tornado-anniversaries.2250/page-11

SPC already trimmed the slight out of southwestern WI behind the ongoing band, so looks like they expect primary severe threat to be with that and not any redevelopment later this afternoon.

13Z slight risk upgrade with the addition of a 2% tornado contour is giving me deja vu on this 20th anniversary. Overcast here in Madison, and the additional rain pushing in from Iowa doesn't lend confidence in clearing anytime soon, but satellite does show clearing in northern IL and nosing into far southern WI. That line in Iowa looks to be flying though so we may yet clear out around midday. Will have to see where the outflow and differential heating boundaries end up.

Those CAMs are insistent on killing off the would-be Round 1 for us, the cluster currently pushing east through northeastern Iowa, as it crosses the MS later this afternoon/early evening, but it seems to have already persisted longer than those depictions.

12Z HRRR and 3K NAM could hardly be more different with the timing and placement of convection over WI over the next 48 hours.

Looks like we might be in for another round of hydrologic issues at some point this coming weekend. 0Z 3K NAM is suggesting Saturday night for the most widespread/long duration convection but that is still pretty far out in its range. @madwx

5 years ago OTD. Looked a lot like being in a car wash. @hawkeye_wx Probably still a notable lack of trees, right?

CAMs (18Z 3K NAM/0Z HRRR) aren't too enthused about much more than garden variety tomorrow. EHI is pretty low. SPC may have been over-optimistic expanding the slight risk into all of S. WI and adding a 2% tornado contour. Edit: 0Z 3K NAM is quite a bit more aggressive than the previous couple of runs. Hard to pin anything down with such lack of agreement/consistency.

The jet energy has been there, but it always stays hung up in the Dakotas/MN and never moves east.

...annnnnnd it's gone (today's marginal at least, they probably took it away because the HRRR support went away).

As hoped, the atmosphere took my post as a challenge. Marginal risk today, slight just northwest of me Saturday. Not looking like anything huge, but better than it was looking just 24 hours ago.

What a week ago on the GFS looked like it might finally be a sustained, active severe weather pattern for us this coming weekend into early next week now looks to once again focus well west of the Mississippi River and stay there until it fizzles out.

Did we not have an extended period of +PDO in the early-mid 2010s? I recall the slower tornado seasons of those years (mainly 2012-2015, notwithstanding events like Rozel, Moore, Pilger, Rochelle) being attributed to that.

Not this many days with widespread surface air quality impacts. Nothing else comes close to 2023 and 2025 in my memory.

The 18th will be 20 years since Wisconsin's state-record tornado outbreak occurred on a day when the 1630 UTC tornado outlook looked like this: The most notable was the Stoughton F3, to my knowledge still the most recent killer tornado in the MKX CWA and the Madison media market. It missed the house where I was living with my parents at the time by about 1/3 mile to the north (the fatality occurred on the north end of our subdivision). Also still the most recent truly long-track, photogenic, Plains-tier high end tornado in southern Wisconsin.

Kind of surprised at the 1630Z expansion of the moderate. Recent HRRR runs have trended toward less organized clusters as opposed to the high-end derecho on last night's 0Z.

Models not real keen on the good MCS action from tonight and again tomorrow night making it much east of the Mississippi. Story of the year it seems.

GFS pretty insistent on patches of 80s dews late this coming weekend/early next week.

0Z Wednesday (7 PM CDT Tuesday) 3KM NAM valid for 22Z Wednesday (5 PM CDT). Placement of tornadic cells was almost spot-on, but the timing was about 4 hours slower than reality (and much closer to the time of day I would expect tornadic storms).

Timelapse from our former chief engineer's webcam. At 1:31 the inflow band moves overhead and I think a second or two later the tornado spins up toward the right of the frame, he says it didn't form until just out of frame but I think it's just tough to see due to lack of contrast against the rain core from this angle. Then a dramatic RFD clear slot follows as the supercell pushes off to the northeast.

My brief look at the remnants of the previously tornado-warned updraft base near Lake Mills.

All the good stuff happened while I was stuck at work. If this event had waited until around 21Z (like CAMS were suggesting) I would have been right on it. By the time I got off at 18Z, ran home and grabbed my cameras everything was either crapping out or out of reach. Went for the one that had had a nice hook in Green County, it looked like trash when I finally got to it but stuck with it and it eventually went tornado-warned again near Cambridge. Got a brief view of an updraft base with a clear slot near Lake Mills, but that was about it. Tired of always missing everything in my backyard. It's always either too early in the day (you'd think getting off at 1PM you'd have plenty of time to catch a tornado 40 minutes from home), or happens way out of season/doesn't look good enough to go out (2/8/24).

Assuming that complex currently in southeastern South Dakota is the source for our MCV? Looks maybe a tad further north than anticipated based on the placement of today's Enhanced risk.

A miss north for you is a hit for me.

Slight risk out. A state line MCV setup with legs this time?