Kmlwx

Enhanced wow. 10% D2 tornado with a DC area jackpot and 30% wind. That's impressive for this part of the country.

It's always nice when you pop back in here. Miss the 2008/2012 type days. Fall can be really boring other than awesome weather around these parts - be nice if we could get some excitement.

Sure sounds like Ian is onboard to me. The new D2 should be an interesting read...assuming they don't do one of those things where they just rephrase the old discussion and make no changes to the maps.

Interesting the SPC discussions have been more often than not referencing "CAT 2/SLGT" type language recently. Wonder if a relabeling is coming in the next few years.

Yep - looks like slight for TOR and Wind.

15z HRRR has backed down a bit. Shows one big cell in the Baltimore metro area this evening but nothing for everyone else.

And of course - knowing our area we will find a way to blank on both today AND tomorrow. Latest HRRR still looks good for storms this PM but with pretty garden variety intensity.

To be honest - the parameters (and I know these don't necessarily guarantee anything) for today and tomorrow look about as good as any event we've seen this year so far. If we can get decently unstable tomorrow I could see it being a 10% tor day - especially given that text from SPC in the day 2. Very doubtful they'd introduce that until D1 though. I think a lot of areas will see storms this PM - the question is how severe they will be.

There are some PDS TOR soundings showing up on the NAM nest for both today and tomorrow The NAM nest reflectivity looks great for DC tomorrow - less so for @mappy. Taking the NAM nest at face value would put the bigger emphasis on tomorrow.

How about the 2007 Sleetfest. That one was amazing.

Noteworthy parts of SPC Areas of precip and cloud cover will render a rather patchy or streaky planar buoyancy field today. Still, with rich moisture over most of the warm sector, areas of sustained diurnal heating should offset modest mid/upper lapse rates enough for areas of 500-1500 J/kg peak MLCAPE over higher terrain, and 2000-3000 J/kg over parts of the Mid-South and east of the Blue Ridge in VA. Low-level and deep-layer shear generally should increase northward into areas of weaker overall instability, but may favor supercell potential as far south as central/southern VA. Effective SRH of 150-300 J/kg may develop intermittently from there through northern NY, especially near and east of the prefrontal trough where surface flow is most backed. Some part of that corridor may require an upgrade to unconditional probabilities once mesoscale placement, coverage, and timing/forcing uncertainties are better resolved

12z HRRR argues for a period of sunshine around DC for a little while at least.

And going back to the discussion we've all been having the last few days - a slight is so common around here there's little bust potential. Still pretty dreary here...so maybe that plays a role.

Let's go for the biblical ice storm or the mass solar storm that sends us back to the 1800s.

I dunno - I know it had that rep before. This season it's been pretty gun shy on predicting big storms for us. ARW is actually less enthused than the ARW2. HRRR looks passable for this afternoon even. A tiny UH track over MoCo too It's REALLY dreary out right now, though. So we could fail on the instability side of things today. Pretty unusual for same areas to get it two times in two days. So I'm going to assume we either fail today or tomorrow. Tempted to put all my eggs in the tomorrow basket after reading the SPC disco and looking at the guidance. Even the GFS paints a decent amount of parameter space over the DC area tomorrow PM.

The ARW2 near the end of its run is VERY nice for the region.

I know it's not a great product to use - but UH tracks for both today and tomorrow are very respectable for this area... That's some nice language from SPC regarding tomorrow's outlook...especially because the TOR risk is already at 5%. September can be a good tor month around here...

I sort of alluded to that earlier. I feel like that would have been a no brainer high risk day if it had not been a tropical system. I don't think they go above slight if it is related to tropical or tropical remnants. That's definitely something that maybe should be discussed. I get that the scale is supposed to denote the severity level - but the nature of categorical probs also is that COVERAGE and number of occurrences (regardless of intensity/magnitude) also go into the scale. 40 tornadoes should be a high even if they are all EF-0s... We could get into the whole terminology debate too. I like that local mets have switched to saying "it's a 1 out of 5" on the scale for today. Rather than using the terms like "slight" - I've always been of the opinion that slight/mod/high is the wrong term set for the general public.

My mom just told me the other day that my 2nd cousins that I remember giving piggy back rides to are well into high school. Crazy.

The other thing you have to remember - even with high confidence...the higher the outlook the higher the "egg on face" potential for SPC. There's already the old saying that meteorologists are always wrong...very few SPC forecasters would have the stomach to call a high risk for the nation's capital unless it was absolutely necessary. It's one thing to call a high where the local population understands what the risk categories mean and are familiar with severe weather. DC tends to have a "panic mode" inherently built into the population (just look at 495 with a half inch of snow). Can you imagine what a high risk would do to lay people around here?

It's truly hard to believe that 2012 was already almost a decade ago. I agree - I think that had we had a good handle that the complex would maintain intensity as it approached, we could have qualified for a high. The sheer number of reports backs that up. If there was the equivalent of "post season analysis" like they do for hurricanes, that could have been a high risk day IMO. I doubt we ever see a TOR based high risk in this area. Although...isn't it more about the number of reports than the intensity of individual events? Say we had a vigorous system (perhaps tropical in nature or hybrid) and it was clear that while there wouldn't be EF-5 stuff...we'd get a large amount of EF-0 to EF-2 and it was high confidence - would that be enough to trigger a high hypothetically? I doubt SPC would ever do that for a tropical system, though.

I think the Northeast as a whole has seen one total high risk in history. I think it would be more likely for us to see a PDS Severe Thunderstorm Watch than a high risk. But - @high risk has a point. A lot of the outlook is based on predictability. If we have a CLEAR and OBVIOUS case of a massive severe outbreak days out ahead and it holds as we close, there could be a high risk at some point. And who knows what the future of the local climate will hold...

Talk about a "cute lil slight" for Thursday.

Outflow also coming south from the MoCo/HoCo line now. May be some new development where the boundary coming SE from Frederick meets up.

Development occurring in a more favorable position for closer to DC (warning on the cell near Bath now).