MN Transplant

Looking at the GFS is bad for my mental health 

1 hour ago, WxUSAF said:

Not sure what “sunshine duration (1h)” precisely means, but I like that a LOT more than the cloud cover %. GFS shows 0 mins for TX, but euro is like 30-50 mins for eclipse time. 

The sunshine duration on the Euro seemed optimistic, but I'm good with that.

25 minutes ago, Interstate said:

Sorry I have to ask... What does it look like in Cleveland area?

https://weather.us/model-charts/euro

Choose "All" under Parameter Selection and go down to Clouds.

Select Ohio under Change Map Selection.

Ok, here's the 12z Euro for NY.  Yellow is good, dark is bad.

First up, no low clouds as we've been talking about.  Splotchy mid-level clouds, and then an exiting deck of high-level clouds.

3 minutes ago, Interstate said:

What about Litchfield Ohio.

41.1678N 82.0229W

Not bad, verbatim.  The algorithm says few clouds.  Also looks good on the NAM.  
 

Better GFS run for NY.  

14 hours ago, Scarlet Pimpernel said:

Finally!  I can't wait for a good eclipse NAMing!!!

15 hours ago, baltosquid said:

psst... get excited... 06z tomorrow, NAM range!

And we got one!  Here's the big difference between the NAM and GFS.  You can see the saturated layer from 250 to 350mb on the GFS sounding, which is our upper-level clouds.  On the NAM, not so much. 

(edit - for the Watertown/Syracuse area)

1 hour ago, nj2va said:

Things have gotten a bit better for western NY over the last day. We were up in the 60s for cloud cover on NBM and it’s back down into the upper 40s/low 50s as it oscillates back and forth. I’d gamble with that. 

The OP GFS was trending well until 12z

10 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

All I’d recommend is picking your spot, get there early, and leave well after totality. Most people will get back in the car right after totality ends. Stay put for another few hours and hopefully traffic calms down. 

Yeah, finding somewhere with bathroom access is key 

I’ve locked in NY, so now it is all about avoiding that leaf of citrus that will develop.  I’m sure the roads between Syracuse/Watertown/Rochester will be easy to navigate on Monday  

20 hours ago, MN Transplant said:

Wonder if we’ll get some little hailers tomorrow with the upper low passing over.  NAM has quite impressive mid-level lapse rates.

 

edit - I see High Risk already mentioned this over in the severe thread

I want severe graupel!


.NEAR TERM /THROUGH TONIGHT/...
Dry conditions have returned to the area early this morning, with
some patchy dense fog developing in a few river valleys. Cloud cover
increases this morning as a deep low pressure over the OH Valley
moves east and over the area today into tonight. This is going to
produce scattered to widespread showers, with isolated thunderstorms
this afternoon into early evening. Given cold temps aloft, strong
forcing for ascent, and steep mid-level lapse rates it is likely
that the stronger convection produces graupel. Most of it should
remain small, though it could accumulate in any heavy showers/storm.
While it is not likely, cannot rule out that graupel reaches the
size where a Severe Thunderstorm Warning could be needed. Highs
today reach the 50s, and the upper 30s to 40s in the mountains.

Wonder if we’ll get some little hailers tomorrow with the upper low passing over.  NAM has quite impressive mid-level lapse rates.

edit - I see High Risk already mentioned this over in the severe thread

About an inch over the three days.  Pretty boring.

8 minutes ago, baltosquid said:

ECMWF took a step in the wrong direction for the northeast.

Yeah, not great

2 hours ago, nj2va said:

Another step back on NBM for Western NY overnight. Cloud cover is now up into the 60% range. Workable and I’m not going to panic, but disappointing given it was in the 30% range a few days ago. 
 

Hopefully the High holds on long enough to keep the clouds from progressing east Monday afternoon. 

The OP GFS is the most aggressive in bringing the 500 low east, over Iowa on Monday.  The Euro is way west, on the ND/MT border.  The GEFS is over ND, with still some good spread in the ensemble members.  West doesn’t “save” NY since there still may be a cirrus deck, but it is a lot better than the low going east where it brings lower clouds into play with precip nearby.

http://arctic.som.ou.edu/tburg/products/realtime/eclipse/

Looking pretty good in NY.  The risk in the eastern US at this point is simply the location of the cirrus deck.  I'm wondering if the best chances for Texas might simply be some clearing mid-day to allow the storms to fire in the afternoon (after the eclipse).

58 minutes ago, baltosquid said:

I'm thinking as the solution is zeroed in on, we'll stop seeing the widespread precipitation as the multitude of solutions that are distributed across the members (slower, four corners? slightly faster, affecting Texas? much faster, ejected to the east?) settles into just one. I'm not really concerned with ops, or ensemble precip maps so much, since they show a lot of signatures of individual members... I think looking at the 500mb, you just have to take that big ridge in the east and feel reasonably good about the chances for anyone at or east of the great lakes portion of the track.

At this point the precipitation is just a proxy for cloud cover from the EPS.  I do worry about the eastern areas having a leaf of high-level cloudiness come over.  

I hedged my bets last April and booked hotel rooms in both Louisville (with a target of Bloomington, IN or southern IL) and Syracuse.  Worst case scenario for me is probably WxUSAF's best-case scenario, where the trough ends up clearing the Texas area, but is dousing the Ohio River Valley and cloudiness has spread over the rest of the northeastern US.

EPS from 00z and GEFS from 06z.  Nice job by Pivotal of putting the eclipse path on their maps.

The GEFS has a convoluted set of solutions that indicate that anything beyond the 4th should be viewed very skeptically.  There is a trough entering the lower 48 on the 4th.  A fair number of the solutions dig the trough over the intermountain west, and then a following trough interacts with it and ejects it.  Unfortunately, that is a pretty rotten result for much of the eclipse path.  Hopefully it speeds up or slows down.

Over 0.7” here.  Sky is brightening.

Pretty gross day.  I’d be fine if the slug of rain missed us east tomorrow.

50 minutes ago, bigtenfan said:

This!!

 

By the time that the enviornmentalist  and their lawyers are done with this  it will take 4 years to get permits!

I don’t think so.  This isn’t like building a new bridge between MD/VA north of 495 or even expanding lanes on the Beltway.  This is a replacement.  

Tomer set up an eclipse ensemble page:  http://arctic.som.ou.edu/tburg/products/realtime/eclipse/

9 minutes ago, EastCoast NPZ said:

Aurora visible to anyone?

https://twitter.com/forecaster25/status/1772066158725738506?s=20

Pretty good agreement now on the GEFS of a trough entering the west coast on March 31st and another following that on April 3rd/4th.  The prior trough takes about 3 days to traverse the country, so the one on the 3rd/4th would theoretically be through the eastern US prior to the eclipse.  That is absent any new blocking developing.  

However, the OP GFS is slower with the troughs and has the latter one entering the West Coast on the 4th and causing trouble for the Eastern US on Eclipse Day.