CheeselandSkies

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

Yep. Glad I didn't get suckered again by Lie-owa today (although TBH, if the COVID outbreak weren't happening, there's a good chance I might have since I have tomorrow off).

Yep, been there, done that several times over the last several years. No thanks.

16Z HRRR is meh for anything east of I-35 in IA. That's at least a five hour drive for me after working 3AM-noon (actually 12:20, had to stay late today as with every day this week due to COVID social distancing and sanitizing precautions slowing down the workflow, among other things). The expansion of the northern 10% and 5% tornado areas eastward makes no sense to me. Trend of the strongest activity being further west (closer to the MO river than the MS, at least until well after dark) plus the societal lockdown/"avoid discretionary travel" guidelines will have me sitting this one out. I keep thinking one of these years we have to get a legit early season outbreak involving the upper Midwest again (3/13/90, 4/8/99, 3/12/06, etc) but it hasn't happened yet.

Yep, therein lies the rub with this kind of setup.

My interest in this setup has been piqued a tad over the last couple days, I might do some local spotting if something comes up toward WI. Was thinking about going into Iowa; but between the abrupt societal lockdown/economic disruption, disagreement among the CAMs on where the strongest storms will track, likelihood of having to contend with the MS River and the poor chasing terrain nearby, and Iowa's general track record with tornado threats (doesn't produce when you expect it do, does when you don't) I'm leaning against it at this point.

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.

What else is new? Except when Illinois gets early/late season snow while we're dry, lol.

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.

Just what we need with this COVID-19 misery going on.

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.

Because it's a severe event to weenie out over.

18Z HRRR sim ref/UH looks ugly for MO bootheel/southern IL/KY tomorrow, but we saw that have a tendency to overhype particularly with some of the OK setups last May. Of course, tomorrow will feature a rather different set of conditions than those did.

Ugly in the sense of favorable for svr wx?

Good insight, I need to get better about remembering this. Being based further north (like you) I've seen many an early season (even well into May for us) potential setup get quashed by insufficient instability, so I'm a CAPE guy. I get really geeked out to chase on those 86/77 days, then wonder why the updrafts weren't going up like atom bombs. This mindset cost me on 4/9/2015, when I was bumming around IN OGLE COUNTY, IL until about 4:30 PM, then threw in the towel and started for home. Got there just in time to pull up GR Level 3 and see the debris ball about 10 miles from where I'd just been 90 minutes before.

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.

When Madison was riding the southern cutoff but still got over 10." What could go wrong?

You have to adjust for the Chris Broyles hype factor in any convective outlook he does. He has a history of being enthusiastically over-bullish on severe/tornado potential (he tends to forecast for the worst-case scenario within the model spread, instead of a blend/the most probable).

After hemming and hawing for several days due to model variability...SPC went ahead and dropped a big old Day 4 30% for Dixie Alley...and it wasn't Broyles!

Already a notable shift south from the previous 0Z run which had a big dog for S. WI. I'm in the "I'll believe it when I see it" camp at this point.

Just in time to make it keep snowing through the end of April and virtually eliminate the storm chase season, just like 2018.