CheeselandSkies

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.

That can't be right. There were at least that many F4+ in the state on April 16, 1998 alone, plus several E/F3+ on days like Veteran's Day 2002, May 4, 2003, Super Tuesday 2008, and April 27, 2011.

1,090 and no high risk. I'm not really seeing anything to flip us back to more sustained high-end tornado activity like was seen in some years such as 2003, '04, '08 and '11 (although, a neutral PDO and no big honking NE Pacific ridge forcing eastern troughing and keeping the central CONUS cold through April and into May after a mild DJF to piss off the snow lovers would help). Also guessing SPC will be somewhat gun-shy after the seeming slam-dunk of last May 20.

Which it did...and largely busted as we know. Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

If Monday holds serve from the 00Z suite, I suspect it will break the streak.

Can you give a little bit of background for what it means for CONUS severe weather which phase the MJO is in? Which phases are favorable and which are not?

Yeah, around 10 days ago I thought the pattern was gonna become more conducive quicker, but I have to remind myself there's still 9 days of March, and our morning temperature in the upper 30s today is actually slightly above normal.

Evidently SPC was throwing out the GFS when they put "potential too low" for next Thursday. It has been steady with a decent severe setup somewhere in the Plains in that timeframe for several runs now. That should at least warrant a "predictability too low" even if they aren't confident enough in magnitude/placement to delineate a 15% risk area.

GFS and Euro OP don't look too encouraging if you want warmth and storms in the Midwest. Shows a return to western ridging with the lowest 500mb heights across the eastern Lakes.

Tomorrow isn't as clear-cut as it once looked, but if the midweek system has instability problems (which 12Z GFS suggests it will) it won't be for lack of moisture....

On 12Z NAM, hodos are looking very impressive over the AL/MS border region (moreso than further west where instability is greater). Could be another scenario to watch out for prefrontal initiation in that area (as with last Sunday) if it can destabilize. Sounding attached is from a small pocket of higher CAPE depicted near and south of Columbus (ruh roh), MS. I see some slight backing on the wind barbs between 700 and 500 mb, but that doesn't look like game-breaker levels of VBV.

Since no one else has yet, I'll point out that there's a Day 4 risk area out for much of the TN Valley/Dixie Alley region. As usual still a lot of pieces to come together as to exactly how this will play out. Could be about as significant as last Saturday, or more, or less. Worth noting though since model trends have been upward for the possibility of severe weather in the area on Sunday.

After another round of duds in the coming week (per SPC Day 4-8), recent GFS runs have been somewhat consistent in bringing greater CAPE values into the mid-South/TN Valley beneath strong 500mb southwesterly flow around the end of the month. Of course that is still in fantasyland so we shall see. *LOL, totally different look for that timeframe on the 6Z run.

12Z GFS wants to keep western troughing in place pretty much throughout the period, but without ever developing much appreciable instability inland. I know it has a penchant for lowballing CAPE, especially at longer ranges, but so far it has been generally right about the last few systems (including those coming this week) being low-end to non-events while "King" Euro at times had a more ominous look.

I'd be down for that. I keep thinking the Plains are overdue for another truly active chase season, with a 10-14 day locked in pattern producing multiple days with multiple cells the caliber of Rozel, DDC/Chapman, Pilger, etc in May, which maybe quiets down for a bit then reloads in June, rather like 2004 and 2008 did in the last decade. Then every spring the atmosphere says "Nope!"