CheeselandSkies

30 minutes ago, Snownado said:

With everyone on lockdown, where are these new cases coming from ? Maybe from people who were infected weeks ago before measures were put in place ?

That and, it's not feasible to enforce/follow a 100% lockdown in the U.S. Some people will continue to ignore it; but everyone still has to go out at least to get food/supplies/work if you still have it.

Cases in Dane County, WI (my friend among them) have been increasing at about 10-20 per day for the last few days. We were still just under 200 at last update. I don't know if that's because we just haven't hit the exponential growth yet, or if we've actually been relatively successful in keeping the spread in check (or if we haven't been testing enough). We did seem to get a bit of an earlier start on social-distancing measures than many other places in the state.

Just found out yesterday a friend of mine is hospitalized with COVID-19. He's 39. We hung out a lot from 2014-early 2017. We haven't seen as much of each other since then for reasons that in retrospect seem kind of petty, although I did still go to some of his gigs (he's a musician here in the Madison area).

I'm not really a praying man, but really hoping with every fiber of my being that he pulls through. He also has a wife and daughter.

In other news, there was just a huge ****storm on another weather forum regarding the ethics of storm chasing against state stay-at-home-unless-essential orders (at least WI and IL both have one in place, don't know about IA) and following (or not) social distancing guidelines and other precautions while chasing. It seemed to be a relatively reasonable discussion until I logged on this morning and .

I would like to once again thank the atmosphere for making Saturday an easy no-go for me the morning of, despite the proximity of a 15% hatch and the dearth of quality tornado setups in the region since 2/28/17, which I didn't chase because, well...it was February.

I wonder if this will turn out to be a tornado. Came in across the MS from IA.

As usual, the IL/WI stateline acts as a brick wall for tornadic storms. It happens in June, so a March setup with underperforming thermos didn't stand a chance.

A small glimpse of what might have happened in IL today. Evidently that Oregon-Davis Jct. storm found a brief window of the right balance of ingredients.

I would like to thank the atmosphere for making today an easy no-go for me even with a Day 2 moderate risk so close to home.

Wow, really did not expect anything this close to the state line with the way instability was held down all day. Storm is tracking just a little northwest of the path of the April 2015 EF4. Some good rumbles here a few minutes ago,  too.

One of the IA warnings goes right up to the MS River. Can't imagine it will stay surface-based into WI though, given Madison is 45/43. Wasn't expecting this, though:

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/md/md0257.html

Cell coming up toward Caraway, AR looks like the next one to watch, although the latest warning is on one due west of the original tornadic cell.

New warning is not a TORR, CC appears to show most detectable debris being "old" debris falling out of the FFD.

However, couplet did ramp back up there. Would have been a good time to use the "...THIS STORM HAS A HISTORY OF PRODUCING TORNADOES" wording in the new warning.

*EDIT: Quickly changed to TORR warning based on spotter report.

Looked uncannily liked TCL 4/27/11, also in the way it formed. They were looking at a big wall cloud, then it abruptly condensed and rapidly expanded. Shows the kind of conditions that could have been in place today in IL/IA.

Well that's the kind of tornado that verifies a PDS watch...only a few hundred miles to the south.

Broyles making everybody eat crow so far, this was in the original Day 3 risk was it not? Maybe him of all people going conservative should have been a red flag.

Might be biggest TDS I've ever seen.

Horizontal tubes and spewing out debris. I'm getting flashbacks of TCL 4/27/11.

Just dropped LIVE on KAIT. Power flashes and debris!

Couple of rumbles here. About the best I could hope for out of this with the WF stuck south (surprise).@madwx

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23 minutes ago, StormChaser4Life said:

3km nam at other end of spectrum of hrrr. Multiple rounds of convection lasting into the afternoon. Would definitely temper the threat and likely shift it west and south

Very odd, I remember the two models' solutions being the reverse of that on 4/9/15. Hi-res NAM was gangbusters while HRRR was more subdued with the UH (at least on the last run I looked at before leaving the house ). Of course the models were somewhat different then (3KM NAM was the 4KM NAM, for one).

Indeed, that is why some people are still questioning whether all this social upheaval is necessary/worth it. You have only to look at what has been happening in Italy/some other places in Europe and is starting to happen in New York to see why it's necessary.

...and if the US and the rest of the developed world was caught so much at the mercy of this virus, imagine a pandemic of a similarly communicable disease with a much higher case fatality rate (basically the plot of Contagion).

15Z RAP appears to show the warm front getting into central WI, with southeasterly surface winds across the state not turning easterly until about the latitude of Green Bay. I have to imagine that's overdone. Although, it only has the 60 degree dewpoints nosing just north of the IL/WI state line so this might be one of those cases where there are multiple "warm fronts."

I think the trick tomorrow might be finding the sweet spot where the winds are more backed in the 850-700mb layer. Seeing decent surface backing across the board, but they veer to SW pretty quick by 850mb in most soundings and pretty much stay in the same direction at least up to 700mb. At least they don't back again, then veer again (V-B-V).

24 minutes ago, nwohweather said:

One thing to consider is the almighty lakes. Typically it holds up advancing warm fronts, and I see no reason this is going to be different especially with precip and clouds ahead of the low

We had a relatively mild winter, so Lake Michigan temperatures are above normal. Still will undoubtedly have some influence but perhaps not as much as you'd normally expect in an early season setup.

The frigid February of 2015 was one of the things in the back of my mind that had me throw in the towel before T time on Rochelle day...

2 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

I don't remember ever seeing an afternoon update on a day 3 outlook. 

I think I've seen it once before; can't recall when though.

The Day 4-8 left something to be desired, as well RE: next Tuesday in Dixie; usually even with model disagreement the man is gung ho as can be if there's any potential at all.

Haven't seen a lot of hard data on how smoking affects COVID-19 prognosis. I saw one article that said one study showed it significantly increased the risk of complications and death, but two other studies showed no correlation. Simple logic would suggest that it increases risk since your lungs aren't as healthy as they otherwise would be when the infection starts doing its thing.

Still, even though data still suggests that given adequate medical care the confirmed-case fatality rate is around 2% (still several orders of magnitude higher than the flu) with the vast majority of those being over 50 and the majority of those being over 70; I'm still hearing enough stories of people in their early 40s or 30s getting fatal or near fatal cases to make me nervous despite my relatively low risk demographics (I'm 34, nonsmoker, 5'11"/188, haven't even had a cold or flu that I remember since November 2016). I'm also concerned for my fiancée (also 34, but has several health conditions) and my parents (my dad just turned 71, my mom will turn 69 next month; so any snark about 'all the olds dying' or COVID-19 being a 'boomer remover' doesn't sit well with me).

Also, I bolded "adequate" above because that's the scenario if the hospital isn't overwhelmed and you can get on a ventilator if you need to. AKA not what happened in Italy and, it's becoming apparent, New York.

So, all in all, I am social-distancing the **** out of this and encouraging everyone I can to do so as well. I should add that my fiancée and I are quite fortunate that we both work in fields that are considered "essential" to continue to operate during this quasi-lockdown, so our income has so far been unaffected; yet both our employers are taking major steps to reduce the risk to their employees (she has worked from home every day this week except today, my job description requires me to be physically present but we are practicing 6' social distancing and using an obscene amount of hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes/spray several times per shift, and those members of staff who CAN work from home are).

6 hours ago, cyclone77 said:

Think Broyles half-assed it per usual.

He sounds uncharacteristically bearish on the Day 3 outlook. Doesn't even use the "T" word.

55 minutes ago, RogueWaves said:

Can always play the "what if" game, but I'm choosing to remain optimistic. Just because a storm hits mby with intensity, doesn't mean it maintains that same intensity all the way to yby. Similarly, just because other places around the globe have been hit hard with this virus does not mean it automatically will here as well. And if it did, I'd hope the medical service outlets (hospitals, etc) would figure out a way to send supply reinforcements to the front lines where the battle rages the worst. Hospitals with few or no severe cases could lend their respirators and such to hospitals that find themselves with a shortage of such. Even if the govt had to mandate this, it seems like a reasonable option imho. Look at MI, 14 of 15 deaths in Metro Detroit. Quite a concentrated event so far and with this isolation effort I'll be surprised if that somehow reverses and takes off like a wildfire raging out of control across the countryside. 

Good reminder of that's what all the social distancing policies, closings, cancellations, stay home orders, etc are for.