Or the Great Crash of 2029 when Dogecoin craters in value and leaves hordes in destitution as the nearly decade-long frothy speculative investing gambling spree ends.

Decent agreement on some sunrise surprise tomorrow morning. MUCAPE of ~1000-1500 and plenty of shear for morning TS. The big question I have is the evolution of overnight convection further west. If that decays slowly, then we may be left with a bunch of convective debris in the warm sector, and it's going to be tough for severe further north.

12 hours ago, MillvilleWx said:

It's pretty remarkable when dust creates those conditions. I would think Iraq sees 20-30 days like that a year with plenty others that aren't AS bad

It would get pretty bad any time the wind got above 25 knots there. Had some real doozies in the winter. Big ones in '03 and '04. The worst one I saw personally was actually caused by a series of haboobs over multiple days due to a stalled front in early May (a phenomenon known as the "desert front" where high-based convection would congregate over the Arabian peninsula around old elevated frontal boundaries and slopes around 850-700mb). Over 3 successive nights there were clusters of these haboobs over the deserts, generating massive cold pools and driving huge amounts of dust high into the atmosphere. It was dark for about 3 solid days in Bahrain, with the sun, if visible at all, as a faint orange-red disk. Dust got in everything that week, even indoors. I'll never forget that. It felt like living on another planet.

'

It's curious that the WSJ article has NO figures, NO sources and none of the statements from ERCOT itself, which backed up the 26/34GW figure I provided. I want numbers, hard pass on the projection.

52 minutes ago, wxtrix said:

dark orange returns are sleet—bring on the heavy sleet!

eta:  nope, just big icy snowflakes against the windows.

Sometimes those big aggregates can get a thin layer of meltwater percolating on the outside, which makes them very reflective on radar. Wetbulbing on the outside of the aggregate can also cause them to survive longer, thus making it through a warm layer that would melt smaller aggregates or individual crystals (which end up a sleet or fzra on the ground).

Expansion of echoes over the last two hours was way more aggressive than I was expecting and I even brought precip in earlier than guidance on my forecast because WAA events usually do that. Looks like a combo of strong DPVA, WAA and jet forcing are doing some serious work this morning.

26GW of the 34GW shortfall was from natural gas. Even Governor Abbott mentioned this on all the local stations he was brought on to interview with. Despite the frozen turbines, the wind shortfall was much less, around 1-2GW.

1 hour ago, PrinceFrederickWx said:

Southern Calvert and St. Mary’s seemed to get a lot more ice than central Calvert. Driving down 2-4 to California early this morning looked like a forest of glass. Lots of downed tree branches- I can see why there were power outages.

Yeah, it was almost pure freezing rain down here and very dependent on wet-bulbing effects due to borderline temps. Tree tops and anything exposed is absolutely loaded with ice and anything close to the ground only has a glaze. Not uncommon to see near-surface objects have only a tenth of an inch but have half an inch of accretion several feet up. Shave off a degree on this storm and it would have been a disaster here.

That being said, it was a very pretty drive in today with the overnight hoarfrost that grew on the ice.

30 minutes ago, howrdcounty snow said:

very good read

 

Friday Funny: nature makes a mockery of month-ahead model forecasts.

 

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/02/19/friday-funny-nature-makes-a-mockery-of-month-ahead-model-forecasts/

Please do not post this without cross-checking its sources. While short-range climate forecasts possess lower (but positive!) skill, trying to equivocate these with GCMs is a faulty argument on several levels and requires a rebutting that would derail this thread.

39 minutes ago, PrinceFrederickWx said:

Power outages look bad in St. Mary's. It's flickered here a few times but I've never fully lost power.

11% in St. Mary's and 8% in Calvert so far. Starting to lose small limbs regularly. Have heard a few bigger ones in the woods.

Got above freezing for a few hours this afternoon, but now back below with a moderate freezing drizzle. Tonight and tomorrow might get nasty with wave 2 in SoMd.

3 minutes ago, pazzo83 said:

meanwhile DC struggles to get below 30F.

I've been happy to be getting scraps down here after 2 shut-out years. Last year I had to scrape frost off my car a grand total of twice.

8 minutes ago, pazzo83 said:

lmao south TX is going to get more snow than DC this year (and definitely going to record a colder temp).

+TSSN at 14F in south TX definitely takes the cake.

13 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

Snowing a little better than I thought it would be under these light radar returns.

Doesn't take much with a profile like that.

32 minutes ago, Stebo said:

Currents for southern Texas are just out of this world

That's some truly extreme stuff. Skew-Ts/forecast profiles are absolutely nutty looking.

Just now, Chicago Storm said:

18z GFS bumped NW, and para GFS tick NW.

Good convergence and all now well NW of last night's 00Z runs.

It makes sense from an operational standpoint to protect your low end at this point until more guidance picks up the trend towards a more negatively tilted mid/upper trough, especially since an error of even 0.1 to 0.2 of liquid with 20-30:1 SLRs can result in a pretty sizeable bust. But I will say that the NAM has been absolutely killing it on the east coast at these ranges, beating even the Euro/UK (with the typical caveat about using high-res CAMs cautiously for some winter events). The GFS (and the new version as well) has been trending that way the past few runs as well, so keep a sharp eye out. It wouldn't really surprise me to see some convergence on that solution in the next 12-18 hours.

1 minute ago, Thundersnow12 said:

Haven’t seen this guy in a hot minute 

Busy getting shut-out of winter storms in southern Maryland nowadays, or iced (like yesterday), but this one caught my eye. Arctic powder bombs are fun and challenging to forecast.

1 hour ago, Chicago Storm said:

low-ball still.

Not sure if it's being mentioned much, but that's a hell of a DGZ to work with. Ratios are going to be sky-high on a broad swath of N/NW flank of the storm. DGZs are between 200-400mb in depth and wind shear is low, which would cut down on shattering/breaking aggregates. Saturation isn't great, but it's not bad, either. Pretty telling when the pos-snow depth change products on the models are significantly higher than the classic 10:1 maps. You don't often see that kind of delta.

49 minutes ago, MN Transplant said:

Just took a walk with the dog.  Sidewalks greasy but not slippery, if that distinction makes sense.  There is a glaze on all elevated surfaces, but nothing significant.  Maybe 1/8”.  This would have been a big deal if it happened overnight.

29.2

This 100%. Snowcover helped, but transpose this forward 6-9 hours and throw in some slightly lower ground temps and it would be way worse. It's very close as it is, but accretion efficiency wasn't quite there for a big dog ice storm.

Yep, weak insolation keeping this from becoming an absolute disaster here. 30.5/27.5. Lower dews will be a big concern heading towards sundown considering the steady 10-13 knots of wind.

Tomorrow morning starting to look pretty nasty. Not liking the faster dewpoint drop this morning and the mid-levels get saturated again a lot faster on the latest NAM and HRRR tomorrow morning. May prove to be tough to get rid of that near-surface cold wedge. If tomorrow starts out as sleet or a sleet/fzra mix, that'll be a bad sign.

14 hours ago, kgottwald said:

Or a Yellowstone supervolcano eruption.

 

I wonder what the climate around here was like in 20,000 BC when the glaciers reached to Central PA.

About -20C avg temp in DC in Jan. 100-150mm of liquid equivalent on average. So 3-4". Big powder bombs are a weekly event with that kind of persistent tendency for jet split. Only issue? It never really gets that warm in the summer. Maybe 40s and 50s in July on average.

Solid moderate snow for a while. About 2.5" so far. Will probably end up somewhere between 3 and 4". Not too shabby.

About 2.5" so far, moderate accumulating snow currently. Decent rates.