vortex95
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Four Letter Airport Code For Weather Obs (Such as KDCA)
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Yes, good point referencing history. Something that gets ignored all too often these days b/c if interferes w/ hype or a narrative. Large wildfires in Canada have a cycle of 50-80 years. The dark days here in the 18th century have been traced to large wildfires in Ontario from paleoclimatology IIRC. This is the problem w/ these days, the media and politicians prey on recency bias and short memories and act like what is happening now is unprecedented or not supposed to happen. We are wired to think in human lifetime frames of reference, but that is nothing compared to climate and geological frames. Wildfires are so endemic, some species of plants have evolved to only to germinate w/ fire present The seeds of many plants in fire-prone environments need fire, directly or indirectly, to germinate. These plants produce seeds w/ a tough coating that can lay dormant, awaiting a fire, for several years. So summarily demonizing wildfires is misguided and narrow-minded. Yes, their impacts can be devastating, but that is no different that say hurricanes and tornadoes as to the natural order of things. Fire has a natural role in the environment/ecosystem and it was established long before humans existed.
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Yes, so I do not want to hear this is a complete bust! The daylight hours were and the smoke is the likely cause of the bust here, but again, there is far too much focus on what did *not* go right rather than what did! I can count on one hand how many times in the last 30 years that anywhere in New England has had golf ball sized hail between midnight and noon. Bona fide supercells between midnight-noon in New England are rare. And even thought the models overdid the overnight convection, it all quickly dissipated once near the MA border by 10z, which is exactly what the HRRR showed Tue eve. So is the above just to be discounted? Sometimes events do not work out at fcst, and I can't tell you how many times in the Midwest/Plains/Southeast on paper everything looks awesome for svr wx parameters and a HIGH risk is issued, and under-performs. Things do not change meteorologically just b/c this is the NEUS. Sure, volatile atmospheres like this are uncommon here, esp. a strong EML, but that is irrelevant as to if it works out all as fcst or not. This is an excellent opportunity to learn from our mistakes, model shortcomings, and conditional factors that can crop up at the last minute (e.g. thick smoke). I for one will be investigating/researching the role of wildfire smoke on convection now. It was already mentioned earlier about how it impacts +CG frequency. And just b/c the smoke was a determinant to convection this time, does not necessarily mean it always is. You need to ask, does it matter if it is thin or thick smoke? Does the height and vertical depth of the smoke layer matter? Not all smoke particulates are the same, so that does matter as to things like CCN (CoastalWx should appreciate this b/c he is big on sea salt CCN for OES! ). Turn an experience that was not good or did not work out into something positive. Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want/expect, and thus you are that much better off going forward!
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Yes. The thing is its not like there have been no storms at all in srn Quebec and NNE so far, so the convective temps has been reached. And those storms that did develop laid down boundaries to provide focus for other storms. I am just surprised the storms that developed have not been supercells b/c the enviroment is primed. Any updraft should rotate quickly, and then mesocyclone feedback makes the updraft stronger, and you get a solid supercell. Look at the SCP and SIGTOR values currently! And the K-index. There is a focused band of 850/700 moisture and obvious boundary near the border. Maybe nocturnal effects such as the strengthening LLJ and BL decoupling need to come into play here. The models clearly showing the 925 and 850 winds ramping up this evening. This happens a lot in the Plains/Midwest and you still get nasty tstms. Tor potential is typically limited though as MCS clusters/lines are more common.
