Kmlwx

@psuhoffman - There are young people in here! Good lord. That is a beautiful map.

This far out - thermals are the least concern. I think we should all be looking at the H5 pattern and how it matches or doesn't match with the surface result. Inside of 120 we can start sweating thermals. Not saying we won't have temp issues - but remember - the best storms usually do have their share of mixing and thermal problems. We'll see. Too early for now.

I know this is OT - but I'll quickly add that they have a mobile app that even has a "augmented reality" feature where you can point your phone camera around and it'll show you the flights on your screen that are visible in your line-of-sight. You won't see military flights on there for the most part, but commercial, Project Loon balloons, and recreational aircraft all show up. It's been helpful when I hear a helicopter fly low over and I'm trying to figure out who it is. If nothing else, goes to show you that even when air travel is "slow" there's still a crap ton of planes flying around up there.

@Ralph Wiggum - I think your comment also applies to the people who refer to 6z and 18z as "off runs" and then use that basis to throw them out if they don't show what the weenies like. Plenty of new data is assimilated into the models on off hours. Sure - not the 12z and 00z balloons....but it's not like it's "stale" data. But...weenies gonna weenie.

Plenty. https://www.flightradar24.com/42.95,-108.11/4 We are way up from the lows during the period earlier in 2020 when flights grinded to a halt. Even with less traveling, the airlines are required to maintain minimum levels of service in many cases. Sure, there's probably cancelations and such - but airplanes are still flying every day.

The improvement of satellite derived data has helped a lot. Of course, having a balloon or other sounding is the gold standard - but modern weather satellites can sample those "data sparse" regions pretty well at this point. I would agree that the days of using that as an explanation are mostly behind us. Add in aircraft data and you've got a nice data suite available for the models even without having balloon launches everywhere.

Yeah - we definitely don't need to freeze the Bay (although that looks cool!). Let's just hope we can get past the pac puke and get into this blocking regime and start seeing some response at the surface on the modeling. Snow in the Mid-Atlantic is always a pain to track down anyway.

Even for you guys - you don't need some 10 degree polar express airmass to get it done. And remember, areas east of the fall line tend to mix anyway in the biggies. I'm just saying we don't need it to be North Pole-esque to get snow - even for you guys.

We don't even need a "cold outbreak" to get snow during climo favored times. In fact, we've seen plenty of times when a massive cold outbreak suppresses stuff to the south and we get shafted in that manner. Give me "cold enough" to snow and I'll take it. We don't need some frigid Arctic outbreak to get snowfall here.

NAM nest has a nice line coming through tomorrow night. Looks good on sim reflectivity - long range HRRR runs even have some UH swaths showing up.

The orientation of the SPC outlook is similar to some of our high shear/low CAPE spinny days. Not saying they compare at all - but when you get s potent system like this - anything is possible. That outlook matches my thoughts mostly. I think everyone is at risk for gusty winds, but any tors should be limited to SE of us.

The 3km NAM drops me like 24 degrees in an hour tomorrow. Wow.

Best chances for the Wakefield WFO area. Maybe Southern Maryland and PG/AACo sneak in. Wonder if LWX will do the huge polygons

The 18z NAM at range (FWIW) has some crazy 925mb and 850mb winds depicted for the Christmas Eve system. Has 925mb winds over the Bay of like 75kts around 0z that night. Big swath of near 100kt winds at the 850mb level at 3z that night as well (over the Bay again). But the entire area at one point or another gets very strong winds not very far off the surface (few thousand feet). That same NAM run has a really well defined line with the front...would think that with the strong storm system, at least some of those winds could be brought down to the surface.

This was a good warmup for an upcoming (date TBD) 50" BECS.