CheeselandSkies

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.

Got windy in Green County, WI but nothing like what was seen in Iowa/parts of N. IL. I rode out the storm west of Monticello (the first tornado warning was headed right for me when it went out, but rotation dissipated before it got to me). These are from near Monroe.

I don't know enough about Darrow/Squitieri to be familiar with their biases. Broyles would have nailed it, but he enhanced/moderates anything that any of the CAMs lights up.

Man, this is the kind of thing where I'm like "where the heck are these from May through July?" then here's one on what started out as a marginal risk day in August.

Don't believe I've been in a PDS SVR watch that mentioned the possibility of 100 MPH gusts before. Although, extrapolating radar the action will miss Madison to the south, unless the northern edge of the MCS expands significantly. Not sure what to make of the convective cells moving NW-SE over northeast Iowa, while an E-W oriented band appears to be filling in and moving NORTH around Waterloo. That's going to crash into the SE moving cluster south of Decorah at some point, not sure what the resulting evolution and motion will be.

Some areas of northern IL/far southern WI have jumped from a Marginal risk at 06Z to a Moderate risk at 1630Z.

Go tell that to the nurses at any of the swamped ICUs in NY, FL, TX or AZ.

Nice ominous shelfie yesterday although the storms were sub-severe, it was kinda gusty.

Really surprising how little discussion there is on a rare potential hurricane (as opposed to a shredded apart TS like Lane or Olivia) impact on Hawaii.

Walaka 2018 took a "right hook" track similar to Iniki, but was already too far west to hit the islands.

Getting a little tired of these heat "ripples" always coming on weekends. My fiancee and I were hoping to drive to Kenosha this weekend to do a socially distant/outdoors visit with her mother. Not thrilled with the idea of doing that in 90 degrees. Conditions like yesterday or today would have been perfect, but we all have to work.

Maybe it doesn't help that I only have my two all-black work-provided ones (and a limited supply of surgical masks at home). I've got my first custom one on order.

I don't know if I'd go that far. I'll stick with "Annoying, but necessary for the time being."

Interesting there are still those little patches of southwest-central Iowa and northeastern Minnesota in up to D2 (severe drought).

Bring it. If that timing is right, I'll be going to work in the trailing stratiform precip region, which if any luck will have some lightning I can catch on-air with our skycams.