CheeselandSkies

Yep, looks like 2020 will join 2018 as a one-and-done chase year for me (August 10th was the only time I got out, to get in the northern fringes of the derecho). In 2018 I didn't get out till a day in October, when a bunch of tornado-warned minisupercells randomly blew up (none actually produced in WI).

I think we are hosed for later today, the way this line is moving in southern MN with some training/back-building in far northern IA it's not going to clear up here by noon unless it breaks up and dissipates. *Ironically there are actually some breaks in the clouds now (which I wasn't expecting, as I was expecting the overnight line to be here right now or within the next hour) so maybe it can intensify some and be the main show. Still probably nothing worth chasing.

Of course ARX radar is down as I want to see what this line coming in is doing. Apparently it was a planned outage of which today is the last day, so naturally there would be severe weather in the area. https://www.weather.gov/arx/SLEP_pedestal

Warnings going out locally this afternoon. Wasn't really expecting the action until overnight and tomorrow.

Perhaps someone more thoroughly versed in atmospheric physics can chime in: Why is Laura not getting yanked up by/merging with the midlatitude s/w trough that presumably is responsible for today and tomorrow's severe threat, the way Cristobal was in June?

Just came on to say that SPC upped us to 5%. Worth noting we just passed the 15th anniversary of 8/18/05, which was a fairly subtle warm front setup. Will see if the hurricane remnants to the south throw a wrench in things (big Gulf Coast hurricane was about 10 days away in 2005), but the juice should already be in place up here. Will definitely be keeping a close eye on things tomorrow afternoon. 12Z 3K NAM has a bow echo about to hit us at 00Z Saturday, HRRR has nothing. Gotta love the long-range CAMs.

Harvey, Michael, Hanna and now Laura. Bombing on approach to the Gulf Coast is the new weakening.

Laura is beginning to star in some next-level satellite porn. I wonder if @ldub23 is getting his fix or if it only counts if it gets named east of 40W?

Irma was the only ATL one I remember that bombed out twice...or was about to before plowing into Cuba.

That's the new "Double Trouble" since Marco went AWOL.

Not with the ridging that's being modeled.

Moar Gulf TC remnants please.

Yeah, we barely got anything last night (nada on the west side) and most of the derecho missed us to the south, too. Next chance is late this week, with higher severe probs than last night/this morning (when several warnings went out, and some hail was observed).

Pop-up tornado warning heading toward @Geoboy645's neck of the woods. Rotation looked briefly impressive for 1-2 scans but likely transient. https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/md/md1564.html

Buzzsaw. Mecha-Katrina.

Is it a case of too much of a good thing for these storms? All this talk about how the MJO phase would bring vertical motion favorable for convection to the Atlantic; is too much convection going up and preventing them from consolidating around one center for long? A bit like when too many storms go up and prevent each other from becoming long-track, cyclic tornadic supercells?

Yeah, unless one of those fantastical hurricane model solutions come to fruition, chances are neither of these storms are as damaging as the Iowa Derecho.

I should add that "precaution" was made possible because we both have health insurance and the hospitals in this area are not flooded with critical COVID patients...there are some but they had plenty of room for her. When my friend Dan got it back in March they wanted to send him home right away even though he was burning up and couldn't keep anything down. Ended up spending 10 days on a ventilator. Much is still unknown about the virus and the disease, but much has been learned since then.

Thanks. My biggest fear was always that it would hit her pretty hard since she has diabetes and is immunocompromised. Thankfully (so far) she has not had any respiratory distress and her oxygen levels are near normal despite the pneumonia, so the hospitalization was more of a precaution than a necessity.

Well, despite our best efforts (wearing masks, avoiding eat-in restaurants/bars - in fact pretty much not going anywhere except work, washing and sanitizing hands, cleaning surfaces, doing pretty much all shopping via delivery or curbside pick-up), my fiancée and I have tested positive (we are both 34, BTW). I had one day the week before last where I felt kind of "bleh" and developed a nagging cough, then lost my sense of taste and smell. She went to the doctor for an unrelated reason a week ago today, and they found her blood pressure was very high so they sent her to the ER. They wanted to admit her and administered a COVID-19 test as a pre-admission precaution. She tested positive and was admitted to a room in the COVID unit (no visitors, full PPE for providers, etc). Her blood pressure came down and they sent her home on Saturday, but it was only after that that she really developed recognizable COVID-19 symptoms including a persistent headache (at times really bad, according to her) and a hacking cough that appeared whenever she tried to lie down, but mostly went away when she sat up. Meanwhile, I got tested last week Friday and got a call on Sunday that I had tested positive. Then yesterday I took her to urgent care because her headaches were continuing and she felt extremely lethargic (could barely muster the energy to dress after taking a shower, and could barely talk). They did a chest X-ray and found she does have pneumonia in both lungs, although she has not had the shortness of breath/chest tightness reported in many cases. I took her back to the ER and she was admitted to the hospital once again. Thankfully she reports feeling better today and if that holds they should send her home tomorrow. I feel pretty much fine now and my taste and smell have started to come back, more noticeably today than before. I still have an occasional fit of coughing, but nothing that couldn't easily be mistaken for an ordinary cold or allergies. FWIW neither of us have ever had a fever, so temperature screenings are pretty much useless...

Remarkable how such a violent and historic storm could happen with pretty much no medium or even short-range lead time. Initial Day 1 outlook (as we know) had a marginal risk for the affected area. This after the last two Plains high risks with apocalyptic outlook wording for days fell far short of their ceiling. I know severe local storms are heavily influenced by subtle/mesoscale factors but jeez... * We also just passed the 15th anniversary of the August 18, 2005 Wisconsin tornado outbreak. A state record-setting 27 tornadoes including a long-track F3 that just missed my house occurred on a slight risk day when most of the state was in a "less than 2%" tornado risk as of the 1630Z outlook (most of the outbreak area was upgraded to 5% at 20Z, still not exactly anticipating a regionally historic event).

...and that's on top of an actual tropical cyclone (Cristobal) getting into the upper Midwest, although it produced decidedly unmemorable weather IMBY.

Some of those pictures posted by @hlcater resemble major hurricane damage (such as Panama City after Michael).

Might I remind everyone that @ldub23 gave us possibly the worst-aging post in the history of weather forums on August 19, 2017:

It seems these high-end derechos are quite difficult to forecast ahead of time. The truly remarkable ones like this often come out of nowhere. Yet when it seems conditions will be very supportive of one, with several days of high outlook probabilities and apocalyptic wording (sometimes culminating in a 60% hatched high risk for wind), the resulting event seldom if ever seems to live up to the potential.