vortex95

Wxwiz should make a New England version! https://atlas.niu.edu/alerts/

I will say this event was rather impressive given the slightly anticyclonic flow aloft. Usually w/ such hot temps and that kind of flow aloft, it remains capped. One thing though the cell coverage did to rage into a SQLN at first. Cells were small clusters but intense.

I may have mentioned this before, but there is something physical about the NH seacoast that make tstms better or intensify here. Today was no exception, and two waves back-to-back! Isles of Shoals gusted to 63 mph. I realized this anecdotally as a kid being at Hampton Beach on vacation each summer, but that can have bias b/c everything is larger than life when you are kid, and any beach view is going to look more impressive overall for storms. Once the SPC hourly mesoanalysis product came out, I started to watch closely. What seems to be a factor is that there is at times locally higher 0-1 or 3 km shear/helicity on or just off the NH coast. Despite the cool ocean temps, a sea breeze here appears to result in intensification of storms in the area. Not necessarily svr, but a line of showers suddenly becomes active w/ CGs and weak mesos form, as one example. I've seen too many times for it to be just coincidence. What may be happening is this - first, once you get to the MA/NH border, any marine stabilization from S of SW winds coming S of LI basically becomes a non-factor. Second, and most importantly, the low-level winds over Cape Ann are briefly lessened, then pick up again once over the ocean, only to slow again once reaching the ME coast. So this sets up locally better low-level shear/helicity profile for cells to feed off of. For years, I have informally called it "The Hampton Effect." One of most outstanding example was on May 21, 2006. A nasty bowing squall line was ripping across central/southern New England. Once the northern part of the line got E of ASH, it gusted out enough that the leading edge cells weakened considerably, so there was nothing but RW-/RW and a bit of thunder. Once that outflow got to I-95, an isolated supercell developed very quickly and produced tornado at Hampton Falls. Lasted only about 30 sec, but it was clearly visible as a stout narrow column. See story here: https://www.timesargus.com/news/weather-service-confirms-tornado-hit-coastal-n-h/article_ed848d36-9e43-5117-aae8-97098039f6ab.html A waterspout also occurred not far offshore from Rye Beach. When I saw this and the radar loop, I said, "you've GOT to be kidding me, since when in New England does a tornadic supercell form on a edge of a gust from from a decaying squall line?!" And SSTs on the NH coast are still pretty cold in mid-May, yet that did not impede things at all. I think the only other time I was flabbergasted like this was the two mini-supercell tornadoes occurred in the Brunswick ME area on Thanksgiving in 2005. This was after a couple of inches of snow has just fallen here in the previous several hours!

Latest NAM/GFS MOS shows 87-88. So where do you think the NBM is getting 95 from? 2m temps? But I checked the HRRR/NAM/GFS/ECMWF, those do not show any higher than 89-90.

Noted GFSX MOS did not have BOS any higher than 66 Thu-Mon. Scott looking forward to SCT FROST in SNE Fri AM?

PT time in central NE on Sunday. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1B8qsia4xS/ https://x.com/wxsarahk/status/2056137683366265143

We are so into the svr wx/warm season, it is easy to overlook winter-type events this time of year! Anyone happen to look at what will happen in the Central Rockies in the next 2 days? Going by the HRRR Kuchera it shows up to 51" in the Wind River Range in WY, 35" in the mountains NW of DEN, and 37" in the Uinta Mountains in UT. The RRFS shows similar totals. Looking at temps fcst for elevations 10,000 ft and above and 700 temps (10s and 20s F) and total QPF, these amounts do not seem unreasonable. Even Denver proper may get 1". Road trip for Scott? LOL! This is the second significant snowstorm this month for the Central Rockies, and while not a drought buster, it certainly will help. And this shows that you can't write off a winter as to snow records in this area until May is done. This is in spite of the record hot wx in March, which I think MSM just thought "that's it for snow - it can't possibly happen any more this season b/c of that record hot wx!" This goes back to what the MSM as to what they consider the snow season w/ an obvious bias to what happens on the East Coast. And in a larger climatic sense, what matters in the end is what happens for the entire season, year, or decades for rain/snow, not short period individual events within these. I realize that the Rockies snowpack this past winter remains record low stats, but for total snowfall and precip, it is, or will be, no longer in record low territory for many locations. This will be ignored by the mainstream. They only care about what happens in the here and now, taking a snapshot of record low snow earlier in Feb, and running w/ that, providing no context, perspective, or follow-up.

On the topic of the NAM going away and all the "consternation," remember what it can do w/ TCs. Look at this from Barry in 2019 (attached). 866 mb? Yeah, right. And you'd get hype-masters out there posting such as if it could happen! Barry ended up a min hurricane, but even that was really pushing it! Saw this... NAM 3km no longer turns off latent heat fluxes when RH approaches 100% at the lowest model level (as of 2017?). Despite the decrease in thermodynamic disequilibrium that happens in near-sfc air mass approaching saturation, hurricane-like conditions coupled with the model sfc parametrizations still force an unrealistic amount of evaporation into the boundary layer (you can guess what that does for TCs in the model . . .) . Capping those fluxes would be an artificial way to stymie extreme TC intensification rates, but it'd keep the model closer to reality. I believe they removed the global capping to improve forecasts of west coast marine fog, they weren't concerned with TC forecasts. So you can't have it all ways when it comes to mesoscale models/CAMs. There are aspects of the RRFS that performs better than previous models, and some that do not. Par for the course these days b/c it is not a linear challenge (more exponential) as you get more resolute and directly simulate atmospheric processes instead emulation/parameterization. And for the two big snowstorms this past winter, RRFS was not out to lunch. It did well and shows some mesoscale features in one of the storms that verified that no other model had. Shouldn't that be enough for ACATT?

Thanks for quantifying it w/ hard stats. I had never looked them up. So clearly the driest period in the last 60 years in the NEUS?

Yes, the last real multi-year drought in New England was in the 1960s, and yet the media has turned the word "drought" into a fear-mongering term, acting like its very existence is somehow atypical. Every time we get into a extended period (up to 6 months) dry here, it always seems to correct itself after this time. But that's not good for the fear-mongers, they just invented "weather whiplash" to still be negative/gloom and doom. What, do they expect gentle April showers all the time and no drought conditions ever?

How about "hot?" Somehow temps in the low 80s now have become "hot" on local TV forecasts. It all falls in pushing the "hot" narrative overall. 85-90 or upper 80s historically has been hot for New England in forecasts.

Given the sfc low tracked/developed right over SNE, are you surprised? Scott needs to look up his 700 low track rule for dry slots!

So WSR-88Ds can now go as low as 0.3 deg for BREF1?

One other thing, and this is biggie. The NAM has always been useless when it comes to TCs. It sucks w/ track and intensity, doing all sorts of odd things. It never was designed to handle TCs. The HRRR seems to handle TCs well, and no reason to think the RRFS will not be the same. I'll check further on this. Everyone seems focus on the negative for the "new stuff," but leaves out the shortcomings of the present, like the NAM guidance, that has sig drawbacks. One thing I will miss, the NAM MOS handles low-level cold air much better than the GFS MOS. Which brings me to another point, is there MOS-type output for other models, CAM and global? If so, what is a good site to view it? W/ NAM MOS going away, more and more will likely just look at 2 m temps (some do already), and run w/ them -- not good in the longer ranges!