CheeselandSkies

Big 5% tor over central IL now on 1730Z...written by Goss although first SWODY2 was Broyles. 12Z HRRR and 3KM NAM are worlds apart on timing and location of CI tomorrow afternoon/evening, so no help there as usual. That HRRR run also has southeastward-moving discrete supercells in west-central IL late into the night Sunday-Monday.

Only thing it's horrendous for is chasing.

Said Brent Musburger to Dan Fouts in The Waterboy: "We know, we know." (Can't find a YouTube clip of it that's not cut off and/or somebody shooting their TV screen with their phone)

The first part of my post was tongue-in-cheek directed at this sort of reply, which I knew was coming... I'm an unapologetic "big weather" weenie and I'm on these forums to see Mother Nature put on a show. No one of us has any control over whether storms happen or don't happen or where they go. The best anyone threatened by any hazardous weather (winter, tropical or land-based severe local) can do is prepare ahead of time (hurricane kit, tornado plan, etc), stay weather aware and have multiple ways to receive warnings, and take cover/evacuate as necessitated should one be issued for their area.

Meh. The usual disclaimer about never wishing death and destruction on people, yadda yadda... However, I'd be lying if I didn't say that guaranteed fish lose of some of their interest for me, even satellite-photogenic high-ACE ones like Sam from last year. It's the days of nail-biting as the models windshield-wiper from New York to Corpus Christi and back, the hype on the Weather Channel, Morgerman nerding out on social media and agonizing about where he's gonna go, etc.

Pattern of beautiful weekdays and rainy or at least overcast weekends continued over the holiday, and is forecast to continue this coming weekend. One of my main hobbies involves outdoor photography, and I like the sun to light up my subjects.

Peak season isn't one day. That's like picking one day in May statistically as the "peak" of tornado season, but in any given year the biggest outbreak is just as likely to happen a few days, or 2-3 weeks before or after (or in mid-December, lol). IMO peak hurricane season is August 20th through the end of September, with a watchful eye remaining on the Caribbean/Gulf through the end of October (Opal, Mitch, Wilma, Sandy, Michael). Back-to-back years the most significant storms, Joaquin and Matthew formed on 9/28. Maria hit PR on 9/20. I wasn't tracking the season closely in 2013 because I had a lot of stuff going on in A/S/O that year (move and new job) so it was more like at some point I went "Huh, haven't heard of any significant hurricanes going on in the Atlantic; I thought they predicted a busy season, guess they were wrong," but after this year I'm throwing in the towel on the utility of pre-season indicators/activity forecasts. Entertainment value only. Not that there couldn't still be a major hurricane or two, perhaps a significant, destructive one, in later September or October (just like some of those I mentioned above), but those expert forecasts explicitly called for an active August and/or a dangerous setup for long-tracking MDR cyclones (the creme de la creme, the Ivans, Irmas, etc).

RE: My post from 8/10, McCroskey is still huffing the glue with no sign of slowing down. 100% thought we'd have been/be tracking multiple MH or least strong, consistent, multi-model consensus signals of such by now when I made that.

Annoyingly, around here all the nicest days have come midweek (like today) with all the rain events on the weekends for most of August.

TD Five was declared at 0500 AST, so it really was a photo finish for August futility at least in terms of absolute TCG, although not named storms.

Of those, 1988 had Gilbert, 2001 Michelle, and 2002 Isidore. Can't think of any others off the top of my head. So I guess those are effectively "one storm seasons" if you're looking at only high-impact majors. 2001 though did end up with nine hurricanes including four majors, so there's definitely still life left in the season. Although, if you're looking for a definitive "switch flip" within the next week or so, you'd like to see a more consistent signal from the models. Already appears as though they oversold 91L's potential early on, who's to say the next "modelcane" or two, or three that pop up won't go the same way?

I jumped on board the futility train when 91L's prospects to become even a CONUS MH landfall tease, let alone bona fide threat, took a nosedive. At this point it's like that 1/2" duster that spoils a would-be record measurable snowfall drought in a weak winter season (with extra salt in the wound because all the indicators were for an epically snowy one). Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

I think it just has to do with where the strongest storms in this setup initiated/tracked.

Out-of-nowhere Enhanced RIsk for northern Illinois. Day 3 outlook issued on Saturday had the area in a 5% (Marginal Risk).

Still, nice overachiever for a marginal (5% wind) day, which I wasn't even in yet currently am under a severe thunderstorm warning.

lol

Two Cat. 4+ CONUS landfalls within three years (Hugo, Andrew) in a -AMO period (plus Iniki's precision strike on Hawaii) made it seem like such events were much more common than they really are, and made a lot of people really nervous for the coming +AMO period. 2004-05 went insane, then we went 12 years without a landfall at MH intensity.

If they have it up there, strongly recommend New Glarus Moon Man (I prefer it over their more widely distributed, well-known Spotted Cow).

This almost looks tornado-warning worthy, despite extremely marginal setup. Apparently there was a report of a funnel cloud with possible brief touchdown earlier in southeast MN.

Andrew really was unusual in many respects. Because it was the most recent major hurricane landfall (to a lesser extent accompanied by Hugo) when I was a young budding weather geek in the early-mid '90s with all the Weather Channel specials, books and magazine articles focusing on it, I grew up thinking of it as the quintessential hurricane and that all major hurricanes were like a couple hour long tornado; of course I now know that's not the case.

Really interesting to see the model track output from 0Z 8/22/92; and that the majority of guidance did take the storm west toward Florida (although too far north, GFDL was the most accurate on direction for that run but much too slow) but there was a cluster of three models with an almost immediate sharp recurve OTS. AVN was closest on timing but much too far north, showing landfall near Port St. Lucie.

The real headscratcher now is that this year isn't really behaving like any of the previous third-year Nina analogs, either. July through first 10 days of August, I'll give you, but all of them had substantially more activity by this point in time.

Irma was on the verge of being that one long-tracker that makes it to a CONUS landfall as a 130kt+ beast...then the ridge verified stronger than expected and pushed it into Cuba. Hugo was pretty close, although IIRC it was about 115-120kt at SC landfall (sources seem to differ). Some of the advisory forecast points for Florence IIRC put it inland with at least 120kt winds, but then it stalled out approaching the coast.

The yellow shaded zone indicating potential "low-probability" (30% or less) areas for tropical cyclogenesis on NHC's 5-day Graphical Tropical Weather Outlook. Medium-probability (40%-60%) is shaded orange ("orange" or "mandarin") and high-probability (70% or more) is red ("cherry") as alluded to by @AnthonyEC above.

Weenie run for the ages right there. Been a while since one of those.