Powerball

We're at about 95% leaf out here in DFW at least. Some of the trees still have that early season yellow tint to them, and the pine trees (the ones that lose their leaves) still aren't in full bloom. Once you get up to Texoma (outside of the Urban Heat Island), I'd say it's more like 75-80% leaf out. I imagine the trees definitely have a mid-summer look down in Austin / San Antonio / Houston though.

It seems even Selfridge also picked up over 1.25" as of this morning. Pontiac also did respectably. Still got some more rain to go today to add to those totals.

FWIW, it seems DTW has already picked up 0.71" so far.

Not sure how it is up there, but the KFCs here are always ghost towns when I drive by (even during so-called busy times). I'm surprised they haven't started closing shop. If I had to choose chain fried chicken restaurants to eat at, Popeye's, Bojangles (the OG Bojangles in the SE states, not the diet abominations opening in Texas & Ohio), Krispy Krunchy, Lee's Famous Recipe and Jollibee are all superior.

It's similar to the hype behind In-N-Out and Chick-Fil-A The food itself is decent at best (especially the Cane's sauce & Texas Toast. The chicken is moist & big, but bland/unseasoned). However, the service is always top tier (including being extremely fast), the food is always hot/fresh and it's reasonably priced. Interestingly enough, we just got Saavy Sliders down here. They already opened 1 location each in Dallas & San Antonio with fairly big expansion plans in the work. They have good Cajun Fries, but otherwise, that's the place that I don't get the hype over. It's overpriced and the service is poor on top of having mediocre food.

We had one last vestige of low clouds move in (they have since mixed back out), but fortunately not before the start & finish of totality.

Crazy to think we could be dealing with low clouds and severe t'storms tomorrow given dewpoints today mostly in the 20s & 30s. But I guess that's the Plains for ya!

North Texas (including DFW) is looking a lot better on the lateat model runs skycover-wise. HRRR is even picking up on the temp drop during totality. Hopefully, this trends continues and holds.

If you had told me Maine would have Texas beat for sky cover with this Eclipse several months or even several weeks ago, I would have called you crazy. And yet, here we are...

Fortunately, as things stand now, the severe weather potential should hold off until the late afternoon / early evening hours (after the Eclipse time).

It's an election year. All other news goes on the back burner.

Seeing more (recent) reports of TSSN+ from Green Bay on Twitter. EDIT: As well as more lightning strikes on the tracker.

Lightning is being detected up near Green Bay.

3 hours later, since that sounding, the atmosphere in SW Ohio has seen significant recovery, primarily thanks to the 40-50kt LLJ. With the impressive shear & forcing in place, you don't need a ton of instability nor that much of a temperature spread for tornadic weather.

Radar trends are looking pretty ominous for the Cincinnati area.

Still a pretty brutal cap on the 20z FWD cap. We'll see if the storms can prevail through it post-peak heating

Much of Central OK and some of the Texas counties along the Red River have been upgraded to a Moderate Risk, again mainly for hail (45% hatched).

The latest SPC Day 1 Outlook has expanded the enhanced risk area to include all of North Texas (includiing DFW), mainly for hail.

The precise weather conditions at the exact time of the eclipse for any specific location remain unknown this far out, but we're now close enough to April 8th to discuss large scale pattern trends as well as ensemble data, which is what FWD has been doing for the past several AFDs.

Yup!

Indeed.

Doubtful...

I can confirm second hand. My mom said there was enough snow for her neighbor to pull out the snow blower. She was tiffed too because she was telling me Kim Adams swore much of the snow would fall north of the city the night before (and in all fairness, that's what the models indicated as well). She about blew a gasket when she looked out the window yesterday morning.

Per the storm reports it seems 4-5" is the rule from that mesoscale band that affected areas between I-94 and M-59 this morning across the Detroit area. Considering these areas were only expected to get 1-3" at most, that's a decent bust in a good way.