CheeselandSkies

That trough on the 126 hour GFS valid for Wednesday evening tho...would put tomorrow to shame if anything close to that verifies. Still a ways out, though.

Currently, the only T-warned cell looks like a QLCS mesovortex and is moving into a bad radar hole. It's one of the several situations around the country where they need to just draw a quadrilateral between KSHV, KPOE, KDGX, and KLZK and place another radar smack dab in the center (not going to happen under the current administration).

Ballsy call by the SPC to introduce a risk area for Day 6. I thought they were being overly bearish holding off on a Day 5 risk area last Thursday valid for today given what the Euro was advertising, but they ended up being spot-on.

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3 hours ago, rolltide_130 said:

I do feel like, in terms of overall chaser/severe nerd morale, 2018 is a make or break year. Another bad year might just be the straw that breaks the camel's back for a lot of us who are heavily interested and invested in this side of weather after the consistent record-low activity followed by an extremely disappointing and messy year this year despite the AA raw numbers. I will say I am hopeful that the fact that we're getting our current base NW flow state out of the way in December will open the doors to a much improved overall synoptic pattern once things start thawing in the Spring. Usually having a hyperactive J-F-Early March spells trouble for the peak season save for 2008. 

Amen to that. From '12 through '17, the rule was quality over quantity. Then '17 flipped that on its head. Still waiting for the next event that has a Pilger, Dodge City, Rozel, Bennington, Rochelle-Fairdale, Vilonia, and Elmer-Tipton all lined up from the triple point on down the dryline.

Of course, I'd be singing a different tune had I not been one mistake away from missing both Pilger and Rochelle.

Add to that, I could have chased February 28th of this year but committed to helping a buddy do clean-up/repair work at the condo he was moving out of because hey, it was FEBRUARY in Wisconsin/northern Illinois. What were the chances, really? Then the upper Midwest essentially shut down during peak season except for that one day in mid-May (the 17th?) which I chased. It featured some of the most insane speed shear seen in that time of year in a long time but something still seemed wonky and the storms had trouble really getting going...then there was June 28th which I also chased but was limited in how far I could go by work constraints and all the quality tornadoes occurred west of my range.

6 hours ago, bjc0303 said:

Let us all take a moment of silence for that one late April system that held so much promise - yeah, the one that had I-35 outbreak written all over it by not only the GFS but the Euro as well? - yeah that one. Days before, both models said "HAHA NOPE" and it became total garbage.

This, so much. Biggest model fail I've personally seen in regards to severe. I'm used to the GFS spitting out lol fantasy storms anytime beyond about 100 hours for severe, winter and tropical but when the Euro was on board I was hearing "Humans Being" in my head.

Totally killed my faith in the globals. Not sure it's even worth trying to use them to plan a chasecation this season.

On 11/25/2017 at 0:11 AM, NWLinnCountyIA said:

Coming to a May 2018 near you!

If this forum had that "exploding head" smiley I've seen on others, I'd use that.

11 hours ago, ncforecaster89 said:

...I would add that each hurricane is unique and there's not necessarily a one to one correlation between Recon estimated MSW at the surface and the actual winds that occur on land.

Slightly OT (mods, move to a new thread if you feel necessary but please don't delete) but is this how Andrew was so badly underestimated? This blog suggests that the extreme winds being mixed down over land in small pockets of Andrew's eyewall may have been caused by unusual (for TCs) convective processes within the hurricane.

Obviously it couldn't be in 1992, but is there any way this sort of thing could be predicted (other factors such as oceanic TCHP, shear, max potential intensity, etc in the path toward landfall being favorable to maintain a high-end hurricane) with enough lead time to add extra urgency to forecasts and thus evacuation orders?

I think it's a mistake to thing of an ERC as a "weakening" process, unless it's combined with unfavorable environmental factors like shear, dry air or cooler SSTs.

Yes the maximum sustained winds drop off (temporarily) because they were located in the inner eyewall which goes away.

BUT the IKE of the cyclone may stay consistent or even increase as the windfield expands. Add to that, the new/previously "outer" eywall was maturing and likely capable of mixing down everything it had.

(points already made by others as I was typing).

It's fascinating to loop the TJUA radar and watch the >40dbz returns in the eyewall orbit the eye.

I'd be nervous if I was on St. Croix in the USVI, too. They're dangerously close to the beeline from Dominica to PR. As far as I can tell last time they really got whacked was in Marilyn ('95).

5 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

So far, Hurricane Maria remains on course to reach Puerto Rico in about two days as a major hurricane (possibly a Category 4 storm). Two major hurricanes from the climatological data set for hurricanes within 100 nautical miles of Maria's 11 am position that made landfall on Puerto Rico were the 1928 Lake Okeechobee Hurricane (Hurricane #4) and Hurricane Hugo in 1989. After possible Puerto Rico landfall, Maria's longer-term fate remains unresolved.

On account of its trajectory, climatological odds of landfall on the U.S. Mainland have increased to nearly 50%. However, with extratropical cyclone Jose likely to make another anti-cyclonic loop that moves it closer to the U.S. coast, those odds likely overstate Maria's actual prospects of landfall at present. Instead, the gradually weakening Jose will likely possess a broad circulation that helps turn Maria more to the north and perhaps later northeast, which would result in lower prospects of landfall. Should Jose weaken more rapidly than anticipated, its ability to help steer Maria away from the U.S. East Coast would likely be reduced. Other synoptic features that are not currently modeled as major players could grow in importance, though.

The EPS and GEFS imply a much lower prospect of landfall. Only a handful of EPS members show landfall (one small cluster across Florida and another small cluster along North Carolina's Outer Banks). Many of the ensemble members already depict a northwest trajectory. With Maria still tracking west-northwestward and that motion likely to continue for the next 12-24 hours and perhaps a little longer, the ensembles likely understate the prospect of U.S. landfall. In fact, the NHC has adjusted its track to the left with the largest adjustments occurring over the next 48 hours. In short, all of this implies that Maria will likely make a wider turn than what most of the ensemble members are currently depicting.

Overall, my guess remains that Maria's U.S. landfall probability is about 40%. The southern-most EPS members may offer the most reasonable solution through the next 48-72 hours.

NHC really needs to create discussions like this and release them to the media, because U.S. landfall chances is the question on everyone's mind for each major tropical system, especially when it's beyond the reach of the cone.

*New member, longtime lurker and refugee from the veritable ghost towns of TalkWeather and Stormtrack here. I held off on joining because I despise the Eastern snow weenies and their subforums which fragment the discussion for severe threats, but it seems the knowledgeable severe people only post on this site*

2 hours ago, jojo762 said:

13 tornado reports during one of the most active periods of the year, typically. Only two of which were in the plains... eek.

Brutal. No way I thought this severe season could be delayed as bad as 2014, since that year featured the winter that wouldn't die. This year we had plenty of warm, pleasant (sometimes unseasonably so) weather here in the Midwest from February through April, but we rarely "paid" for it the way that I expected. The one day we did (February 28, significant tornadoes up to I-80 in IL), I had a prior commitment because it didn't even occur to me that chasing would be a possibility in this region in February.

Copied and pasted from what I just posted on Stormtrack:

Well, I went ahead and took Monday morning off to keep open the option of chasing in the northern or central Plains Sunday evening. Whether I actually go or not remains to be seen. It continues to look darn near gorgeous on the GFS if you just look at the CAPE and surface pattern, but at 500mb things get a lot more iffy. The trough hangs back well to the west and the 500mb southwesterlies are 25-35kt at best over the warm sector. The big question is, do the favorable factors (namely CAPE and low-level directional shear) compensate resulting in slow-moving, easily chaseable supercells, or do you have insufficient mid-level shear and thus disorganized, marginally severe multicells?

Capping also remains a concern although I think it should be breakable at least in some areas. I'd rather have that than too little cap and everything going up at once in a convective mess which we have seen all too often thus far this year. Low-level directional shear, SRH and hodograph critical angles look excellent along the warm front and near the triple point, which is another thing that has been lacking in many setups we've seen this year.

Anyone remember what the 500mb winds and capping looked like on Bowdle day? As I recall, that was a pretty low-key risk setup (slight/5%) that paid off big time. I don't recall 500 mb winds being that strong on Dodge City or Chapman day last year, either.

Monday is pretty much my only option since I'd be a huge jerk asking my coworkers to take extra days or work shorthanded again more than that so soon after what was supposed to be my chasecation, so any potentially better days later in the week are off the table for me until/unless something presents itself locally as the trough ejects toward the upper Midwest toward next Thursday/Friday/Saturday.