CheeselandSkies

I can't tell who's just straight up trolling and who is a wx weenie who's genuinely salty that, endless parade of named storm formations and land impacts notwithstanding; the cards were supposedly stacked in favor of this being the Atlantic's year to take both Pacific basins to the woodshed in terms of ACE and satellite porn and it just hasn't played out that way.

1 hour ago, mattb65 said:

This is from a colleague who is an Army ICU doctor who has been deployed to a hard hit region of Texas. Pretty powerful perspective on why it's important for everyone to keep doing their part. It feels like we are near the finish line hopefully.

Everything below are my colleagues words:

I was lucky enough to spend the last seven weeks augmenting a civilian hospital in South Texas that was overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases. I traveled and practiced with an outstanding team of Army physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, medics, and other medical staff. Here are a few things I learned that I believe are worth sharing:

 

1. COVID-19 makes people sicker, in more bizarre ways, for longer, and is more challenging to treat, than any other medical condition I have encountered in a decade of critical care. Our most effective therapies have a moderate effect in some patients but no effect at all in others. The best supportive care we can offer is extraordinarily labor-intensive. 

 

2. It doesn’t matter how statistically unlikely a bad outcome is for a person in your demographic; if you happen to be the 1 in 1000, you wind up just as dead. Cavalier dismissal of the problem makes my blood boil even more than it did before. 

 

3. The human cost of this crisis is far worse than the statistics, which are bad enough themselves. Every death has a ripple effect in a close knit community. Every success story of a patient surviving to hospital discharge comes with a caveat: they still have a long road to return to normal, if they are fortunate enough to ever get there.

 

4. Our fractured healthcare system is failing whole communities. From employer “sponsored” for-profit health insurance that disappears with an economic downturn; to the systematic neglect of primary and preventive care that yields an obese and unhealthy population at great risk for severe disease; to rapacious for-profit hospital systems that somehow beat EPS estimates last fiscal quarter; to bloated administrative staffs who continue to push unsafe staffing ratios even with an incredibly complex disease — COVID-19 is exposing the fundamental truth of American healthcare: that even with the best minds, best hands, and best tools, a system primarily designed to generate profit is profoundly unfit to provide healthcare.

 

5. The only thing holding the system together and offering any hope of good outcomes to hospitalized patients is the heroic work and sacrifice of a legion of healthcare workers. I saw people from every medical profession working longer hours, for more consecutive days, than should ever be considered safe; and though most carried the burden of this difficult work with grace, all will feel the emotional aftershocks for months or years to come. 

 

6. Simple preventive public health measures like wearing a mask and limiting gatherings make a much bigger difference than the elaborate and expensive things I can do in an ICU. The exponential growth of cases in this community did not stop when we added more ICU beds; it stopped when the local population started wearing masks and reduced the size and frequency of gatherings.

 

7. “Getting to herd immunity” is a ridiculous and frankly criminal policy proposal. This community was so devastated, and the local healthcare system so overwhelmed, that they needed extensive federal support for two months to get back on track; even after 30,000 cases and 1,400 deaths, they are far below the threshold for achieving meaningful herd immunity.

 

None of this is breaking news. You have heard it all before. But clearly, for reasons beyond my comprehension, many people still do not seem to get it. We need to come together as a community at every level - from neighborhood to nation - and do the uncomfortable, unpopular, but undeniably necessary things to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. We can start by wearing masks, and once the short term problem is under control we can work on fixing our fundamentally flawed institutions. 

 

This is not someone else’s problem. It is my problem, and your problem. 

 

It’s time to stop pointing fingers and waiting around for a magical solution. It’s time to link arms (but not literally) and be the solution.

Early January '08 torch actually brought tornadoes to northern IL and far southern WI. There's a well known video from on board a Union Pacific freight train as it gets de-railed by an EF3 at Lawrence (near Harvard), IL.

https://www.weather.gov/lot/07Jan2008_tornado

Could do without the floods of '08 though, especially since we essentially already saw them repeated in late summer 2018 except without the spinning things.

2 hours ago, madwx said:

2007-08 looks like a good analog.  Especially if La Nina gets a little stronger than progged.  Would take that winter and following severe weather season

100%.

4 hours ago, Geoboy645 said:

You underestimate the power of January in Wisconsin.

You're in De Pere now? No more Columbus?

Can it not be the same temperature on September 10th, Christmas Day, and May 10th, 2021 plz? K thx.

Man whatever happened to La Nina? I thought it was supposed to bring us the best winters.

*Coughcough 2011-12 cough*

I'll just show myself out...

@andyhb, do you believe early spring 2021 will be similar to or perhaps even more violent than early spring 2020 (the Easter outbreak and I believe another one close to that timeframe)?

Will that translate into a similarly lackluster chase season for the Plains/Midwest, or is it impossible to make that connection at this point?

There's one year in my childhood that sticks out to me as being similar to this one in having an abrupt flip to an extended period of chilly, drizzly, dreary weather in early September. It would have to have been sometime in the 1990s, I distinctly remember having just started school one year and waiting for the bus shivering in a hoodie for several days. Can anyone think what year that could have been?

Just thought I'd chime in with an update on my fiancee and I. We are both pretty well recovered. I had an occasional dry cough and near-total loss of taste and smell that persisted for about two weeks, but otherwise felt mostly fine except for one day where I felt not even really sick, just kind of "bleh." If I had somehow not been aware of the pandemic, I would have thought nothing about continuing to go to work.

My fiancee's case was certainly much worse than mine but far from among the worst.  She had a few days where she barely had the energy to move, eat or drink. She actually had become severely dehydrated by the time I took her to the hospital because as she said, "it hurt to drink water." A chest X-ray found she did have pneumonia in both lungs, but she never had severe respiratory distress (thankfully). She also reported some GI issues.

Her cough was more intense than mine, but really only showed up when she laid down (and made it impossible for both of us to sleep). In our experience and in descriptions from others I've read, the COVID cough has a distinctive "barking" quality to it as you reflexively try to suck air in after each one. People who are having severe cases/going into respiratory distress reportedly can barely get a sentence out between fits.

It took her about a week after coming home from the hospital before she got her appetite back, and she still gets winded more easily than before when we go for walks.

17 minutes ago, Fred Gossage said:

The big red flag to me is that the majority of the models end the La Nina (whatever intensity it is) as central to west-based as we head through late winter and toward spring.  That sets up a significantly positive TNI pattern.  You know all about what that means, in conjunction with the La Nina itself and a -PDO that is already -1.25 as of August (it peaked at -1.75 last winter and didn't get to -1.25 until after Christmas)...

Yet Plains chasers aren't optimistic, as the general consensus seems to be that La Nina leads to drought and excessive capping for their region.

It seems to be a mixed bag for here in the upper Midwest. We can get very active years like 2008 where there was pretty much sustained severe weather and tornado activity from the 4th week of May through the first two weeks of June. However every year after 2015 has pretty much been a total dud in this region, apart from sneaky overachieving events on low-key risk days at random times of the year (the latest being the 8/10 derecho).

51 minutes ago, ldub23 said:

Euro and GFS this afternoon both coming  back to the reality  of  2020. Alot  of  weak sauce with conditions rather  hostile. Might  not  get  my major well east  of  bermuda if there  is another  one. Now they both give  poor  paulette a  miserable sheared dry  death and  conditions look horrid west  of  50 and rather marginal east  of  50. West  of  50 thats a  picture you expect to see  in the  1982 or  83 or 94 or  87, or  72 season. Classic el nino look. Poor  Paulette  is  about to get the dry air/shear  combo. It already  has the dry  prunish look. And  given the  predictions  of  Hyper-diaper Super-Duper conditions this season this  isnt the  picture  i would expect to see  on sept 08.

If it were El Nino the Pac would be going crazy...I've been counseling patience the last few weeks but even I have to start wondering now...where are the stadiums (apart from Laura's last few hours)?

1 hour ago, hlcater said:

Imagine wasting hodographs like these because 700mb temps are 2 degrees too warm.

Plains chasers are used to it, as I said earlier it's usually the opposite problem in this neck of the woods because of our distance from the EML source region. Maddening, especially this year.

Clouds have come back in force this afternoon.

26 minutes ago, kevlon62 said:

Got it. Thanks for breaking that down.

Trying not to be facetious but feels like aside from their wording on today being conditional, SPC has been a bit bullish on the D1 outlook. Given the progged cap - are we talking holiday weekend b-team at the desk or we still got a legit Slight Risk/5% Tor evening in play?

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 

Hard to say. On a synoptic level, this is a pretty decent setup at least for southern WI. The big question mark though is whether that cap can be broken, especially before dark. Almost has the feel of many a springtime Plains setup in that regard. The annoying thing is, in most springtime setups in this area the problem is not enough cap to prevent early/messy initiation.

Edit: 16Z HRRR says no joy except some mess across western lower Michigan. Local soundings are solidly capped.

4 minutes ago, kevlon62 said:

What are the 700mb temps/where are they forecast to be/where do we need them?

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 

15.4 degrees C at Omaha according to SPC and that will be advecting into the risk area on southwesterly winds at that layer. It represents a quite strong cap which is why @hlcater is not enthusiastic about this setup.

Not super pumped with those 700mb temps but definitely worth keeping an eye on things locally this afternoon/evening.

Yep, some nice boomers this morning. Probably the best all warm season, just in time for it to end.

Vis sat shows much of IA and SW WI clearing nicely. Clearing line should be passing us here shortly.

33 minutes ago, hlcater said:

The T/Td intersection below the EML is cloud cover, and one of the reasons why I’m not at all confident in initiation. That and the stout EML above it are extremely problematic. Regarding the hodograph, veered flow probably isn’t an issue here as the flow aloft is NWly and the resulting hodograph is quite tasty imo. I don’t have many concerns about the parameter space not being able to support a severe/tornado threat. For me, it’s more of what is the chance we get a robust updraft?

Well, you were the guy who scored Kalona (ONLY storm that day that sustained long enough to do that) and Iowa is notorious for stupid things like that. Probably not worth the drive for me from Madison, though with work at 3AM Monday.

Lacking the visible inversion there and 0 on the SBCINH. SRH and lapse rates look good, perhaps the best I've seen in this region this whole lousy year. Low level winds look weak and veered, but the winds veer further and increase nicely in the 850-700mb layer.

What is the significance of the temperature and dewpoint coming together (100% RH) just below 850mb?

g0oOFus is proving worthless for predicting Atlantic tropical cyclogenesis >48 hours out this year. Euro hasn't been much better but at least it's trying.

Also, GFS actually does show systems. I refer you to: http://www.storm2k.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=2849976#p2849976

How does the one in the Gulf not landfall??

@hlcater, where and when are those forecast soundings valid for? Off what model?