CheeselandSkies

Wisconsin's % positive rate has been holding between 2-4% for some time now. I don't know how we've gotten lucky so far, what with the April primary fiasco and then the doors being thrown open by the Supreme Court in mid-May. Our mask-wearing compliance seems to be no better or worse (in other words, not great) than other parts of the region. Thankfully my workplace has now mandated masks, although not everyone fully complies at all times (I see some people where theirs spends half the day down around their chin) at least they are when we have to be in close proximity for extended periods of time.

Man, I thought no May could be duller than 2018 in the Midwest/Plains. At least that had Tescott for those who were able to get out for it. 2006 and 2009 were pretty bad but they seemed like anomalies in that decade.

Yet this virus has shown it's capable of killing seemingly healthy, younger people (including children). Yes the percentages are low, but still far higher than for the flu and is that really a roulette game you wanna play?

Our illustrious legislature and a complicit court have successfully undermined our governor's efforts to keep us safe. After doing relatively well at keeping case counts from exploding the last six weeks, Wisconsin is now the only state with NO official state-level restrictions or guidelines in effect. And I've been going to work all this time, in a workplace where several people have to touch a lot of the same devices. I've been trying to encourage my coworkers to wear masks, but so far only a few have signed on.

There are just too many stories of people under 40 getting severely ill/dying from this. Some with no identifiable preexisting conditions.

So sorry for your loss, @Jackstraw. Those stories are heartbreaking and terrifying.

Yes. The pandemic has significantly tempered my enthusiasm for violent weather for the time being.

U.S. Supreme Court also overturned the extension to return WI absentee ballots to April 13th. Now they still have to be postmarked by tomorrow. Those who still haven't received theirs due to the massive backlog are SOL and have to vote in person if they want to vote. I see some people (not necessarily on this thread, although I have seen it once or twice) still like to throw around "socialism" and "communism" as scarewords. So, picture Chernobyl. Dr. Fauci is Valery Legasov and Boris Scherbina rolled into one. The rest of the Trump administration and the courts are Zharkov, Bryukhanov and Fomin.

It's unconscionable.

It's impacting the weather too (or at least our ability to predict it). Read several articles that reduced aircraft observations may negatively impact model performance.

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.

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).

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).

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

To put that in weather-speak, that's more than died in the April 27, 2011 tornado outbreak; or in any Atlantic hurricane since at least 1950 except for Katrina, Maria and (possibly) Dorian.

Finally got an official statement/policy from my apartment building's management on this (what they are doing as far as cleaning common areas, etc). I'm intrigued (and concerned) that despite the mass flight cancellations/airport chaos; I haven't heard of any action (increased cleaning, spacing out of passengers in cars, service cutbacks/total shutdowns, etc) from the passenger rail systems. Amtrak, Metra, CTA El...maybe I just missed it but I'm in the TV news business so I don't think so, unless something happened after I left work today. Has New York shut down their subway system? Lots of commuter rail systems in the Northeast, too. Jails and prisons are another thing that popped into my head. Dane County sheriff's department announced restrictions on visitors to the county jails; but what about state and federal prisons? Lots of people crowded close together; access is restricted but if the virus gets in it will wreak havoc.

Does it grind anyone else's gears that the thread for this subject in Off Topic is still titled "Wuhan Coronavirus"? I mean, the whole point of the rather utilitarian official name for the disease was to avoid stigmatizing a particular place and/or people.

I'm sure smoking doesn't help the prognosis, but let's not use being a nonsmoker as an excuse not to take other precautions.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but MJO into the IO is favorable for severe weather in the CONUS, is it not?

CPC has had this in their hazards outlook for a few days now. SPC Day 4-8 hints at it in their wording but they're still reluctant to commit to delineating a risk area.

Quite likely the most reasonable post I've seen on this subject on any of the weather forums I'm on. Thank you.

Ugly in the sense of favorable for svr wx?

Good to hear this. Any YouTube uploads of this "pregame" coverage? It seems to me far too often most local TV mets (**coughcough the ones in my local market**) just parrot what the models are spitting out/what the NWS says, are reluctant to do their own mesoscale forecasting; go out on a limb and either downplay an event that everybody else is hyping (would have served them well in most of the snow events this past winter) or sound the alarm about what had seemed like a low-key situation (like overnight Monday-Tuesday). It's high reward, get it right and you look like a genius and earn major credibility for your station over the competition, but also high risk if you get it wrong.