CheeselandSkies

NAM was a bit of a downer for IA chase prospects on Wednesday. Much less EHI than the GFS and doesn't develop the surface low up there nearly as much. However it's still early.

1 minute ago, 1900hurricane said:

The cell near the KGRK radar site looks like it's getting together. That one looks right on the warm front.

Already took Wednesday off to facilitate chase possibilities that afternoon due to potential being shown into parts of the upper Midwest (unfortunately my range will still be limited since I couldn't also get Thursday off and work starts at 3AM). Still, if the setup tanks you can blame me.

Holy smokes at the 12Z HRRR for the ARKLATEX Saturday afternoon/evening. Granted it is the far end of the range but even half that would be bad.

5 hours ago, jrips27 said:

Will be in Milwaukee Saturday-Tuesday for some family stuff. As someone from down south who doesn’t see much snow I’ll be keeping a close eye on this. Would love to see a couple of inches.

Trade ya for some of Dixie Alley's severe.

Let's all just take a moment of silence for the beauty of today's trough on the 500mb charts and what it could have done with a properly moistened warm sector. I'm thinking 54 years ago today redux wouldn't have been out of the realm of possibility (Although IIRC that one was even stronger, the max I can find today is 110kt while Palm Sunday '65 had >140kt if I'm not mistaken?).

Leaning against chasing northern IL on Thursday at this point. I would if the somewhat marginal moisture were the only issue, but despite the deep low and a >110kt jet at 500mb, it looks like all the shear will be speed shear so we'll end up with racing bands of storms. Even right ahead of the triple point, hodos on NAM forecast soundings are nearly straight-line. I'm also not seeing the steep lapse rates needed to overcome the sub-optimal moisture for a nice low-topped outbreak like early December, April 2004, etc. Better conditions at this time look to be further east along the warm front over IN/possibly SW MI.

Still, it's a northern Illinois warm frontal setup so will continue to monitor, like the ones I mentioned those often don't look that great until the day of.

So far NAM and GFS are pretty insistent on southern WI getting into the warm sector with this...a far cry from the 30s with snow that was forecast for us as of a few days ago. Still they do seem to have a tendency to underestimate the Lake Michigan warm front blocker.

Absolute winner of a day today. Wednesday's chill and snow is going to suck, but it'll be more bearable since the snow and cold won't have been unrelenting well into the back half of April like last year. In 2018 I don't think we even had a decent stretch of 50+ degree days until the last 10 days of April, and then we pretty much flipped right to summer.

It just about did in the form of 4/27/11. See my earlier post for my thoughts as to why it was not unquestionably worse than '74.

12Z GFS now forecasts another Plains mega-bomb with 975mb over western NE by 00z Thursday, however winds are still northwesterly over all but the far western Gulf.

Plenty of moisture however for epic snows on the north side wherever it's cold enough, if those totals are anywhere close to accurate the ongoing flooding problems aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

By 00Z Friday things are looking rather interesting over northern IL. Rochelle redemption for me? Too soon to tell. That is if I can even dig my car out of the snow in time to go chase.

I weep for the potential of the system depicted on the 06Z GFS if not for the pesky lead system that keeps winds northerly over the western Gulf through 12Z Wednesday.

Still worth watching how things evolve. I've made the mistake of writing off early season systems too quickly due to marginal/JIT moisture return and been burned (barely glimpsing an after dark tornado on March 15, 2016 after turning my back on the storm, sitting out February 28, 2017, also didn't take April 9, 2015 as seriously as I might have if it were in late April or May even though I don't recall moisture being a concern that day).

Yikes, totals anywhere close to that are really going to exacerbate the upper MS flooding issues.

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Not a breath about this from my local mets so far. They're focused on the 60s forecast for Saturday through Monday.

5 hours ago, andyhb said:

Also I get the feeling several of those F4+ tornadoes might be downgraded on the current EF-scale, although Fujita and co. surveyed this thing themselves.

While certainly featuring an inordinate number of very intense tornadoes, I agree the '74 outbreak was probably not as far ahead of its 2011 cousin in terms of tornado intensity as the official (E)F3-5 counts would indicate. Many of the violent tornadoes in the 2011 event, including several EF4s, did notably more intense damage across a greater portion of their path lengths than all but a few of the official F5s (particularly Brandenburg and Guin) in 1974.

The only thing that in my mind keeps the 2011 event from being unquestionably worse than 1974 is the lack of coverage of violent tornadoes further north into KY/IN/OH. It was much worse for Alabama, however with the morning QLCS spawning a large outbreak in and of itself.

To me, the ultimate outbreak would combine the coverage of the 1974 Super Outbreak (Dixie Alley through OH Valley into southern Lakes) with the concentrated tornadic violence that was visited on the 1st and 3rd of those regions in 2011 and on Palm Sunday 1965, respectively.

Say, -EPO, where abouts are you (general area is fine if you don't want to say exactly). You've mentioned in several posts your disdain for a northeast wind, so I'm guessing on one of the Lakes?

1 hour ago, andyhb said:

We turn the calendar to April and a massive -NAO shows up. Oy f***ing vey.

I hear ya, but still plenty nice out here and will be through the next week. Just a little quieter than I like to see in spring. At least it's not snowing!

Hey, at least you can chase some high-based, pretty hailers this evening. If I was local I'd be all over that setup, but I'm not driving from WI to western OK for it even if I were on vacation!

Apparently, roughly where Toledo is?

Just now, NegativeEPO said:

I'm guessing you meant +PNA.

a +PNA wouldn't be the worst to be honest. Sure, it would suck for severe weather, but you can still get some pretty warm temps east at times even with a +PNA. It's a -NAO that scares me much more. If a -NAO locks in, we're ****ed.

Nope.

Post #266. "...PNA appears to be going back negative..."

https://talkweather.com/index.php?threads/severe-weather-2019.1149/page-14

Certainly interesting seeing the vastly conflicting opinions in here...

* Someone on another forum even says it looks like we are going into a -PNA. 

Now we need to see some more storms, not a dry torch like 2012 (although that one began before the end of March).

7 hours ago, madwx said:

Yeah, there were a couple of very vivid lightning strikes that hit the radio towers on the SW side of town.  Probably tops most of the lightning I saw last year

Dang, if I had been at my place I would have been a lot closer to those.

Can't remember the last time I saw a thunderstorm. Probably was sometime in October 2018. Missed out on any thundersnow over the winter.

some thunderstorms inbound to S Wisconsin and Illinois,  will be nice to hear a couple rumbles
 

6 hours ago, andyhb said:

Well that 12z Euro run was a disaster to say the least.

How so? Looks like it ends (at least on Pivotal at 240H) with a trough west/ridge east.

Reminds me a bit of the late March 2015 setup that produced the EF2 in Moore, when conditions were expected to be generally unfavorable for tornado formation (just a blue box in effect).