nrgjeff

Despite all the advances in numerical weather modeling, that hybrid in-situ (local surface ridge vs huge high) CAD with dry then saturate column keeps surprising. Congratulations to those who received snow today! And to the ski areas! The need it going into a weekend.

I agree with Carvers that we are hunting for a quick break within an awful pattern. The coveted 2-3 weeks of cold is almost off the table. The freak storm on a sharp baroclinic boundary? Heck, that can happen into March historically. Seriously, I think in the current regime we have February to get lucky. Normally sustained cold is hard to come by after February 15. However a one-off snow can happen almost as easily in late February as in early Feb. Even if the troughs do not reshuffle (see Carvers previous pages too) the other path is a stout system ginning up on that (forecast) tight temperature gradient early to mid-month. Upstairs the jet stream will probably be strong too. Miracles can and do happen on sharp baroclinic zones. Of course it could be heavy rain or severe too. Despite my rants, look for me in the severe thread, I still hope for something winter. Forget the charts for just a minute. January and February I consider the snow months. It's only half-time. November and December are dark cold months, less daylight than here at the end of January, but also less snow. While starting 3rd period (hockey) for cold temps / met winter, it is just half-time for snow. Of course it needs to be below freezing to stick daytime after 15 Feb. And we need some really big breaks!

Euro weeklies are a pile of rubbish. Yeah we got cold fronts in both the 6-10 day and 11-15 day, but the West trough just keeps reloading. IO and Indonesia convection just keeps blossoming (mild signal). Weeklies are less reliable 4-6 weeks; but, I'll sadly capitulate the next 3 weeks are trash. Then by late February it takes are more robust cold anomaly to deliver. Look for me in the severe weather thread. Might as well get started early and often!

Agree Doke Azubuike got away with more then 5 fouls Saturday. Doke is his nickname at KU. Tennessee played a solid game. I do expect the Vols to keep improving. Defense is good when someone like Doke is not catching lobs. Of course when they are not playing Kansas I cheer for Tennessee. Springfield MO does not like to hype blizzards. I remember out there they'd be WS warning while everyone else went blizzard warning or ice storm warning (if frozen). There is an augment for just one warning; but, specifics also help differentiate threats. Entire NWS is thinking about fewer warning categories with greater highlights of threats in text. I'm way behind in the new Feb/March thread. Is it pretty depressing? Honestly can't believe how we find new ways to flush winter. I guess read the Climate Change subforum.

KC Chiefs play our first Super Bowl in 50 years. I will be in the panic room on Sunday. I have a West Virginia ski trip planned in February. Every winter we manage to find worse weather patterns. I'm really not sure which makes me more neurotic, but the European weekly charts are trash!

Absolutely, for the whole subforum region. Preach it! North vort max first (for temps) works north of I-40 and at elevation but we know how it goes for Chattanooga. Post frontal choke job! Agree though I am happy for others who get snow, within our subforum or even another region (NC). Maybe Super Bowl weekend. OK 30 minutes 'till Rumble in Lawrence KS. I forgot to watch Game Day, but they probably just talked about 'the chair' and fight. Of course that won't happen today. Everyone enjoy the game!

Kansas version of the Panic Room is fighting including WWE style chair. Only a folding chair would have been a better match. But this is the Allen Field House analog, lol! Expect the Jayhawks to be low key Saturday. Self is extremely disappointed in them for fighting. They'll play their defense and quick game, but no drama. Azubuike will still be there blocking, and shooting from the field. His free throws are still a work in progress - kind of like winter!

Ferris Bueller at the Chicago Art Institute. At least that's what I see.

Wow @Holston_River_Rambler those are great satellite interpretations on page 4. I think in some cases winds converge lee side of a single mountain or narrow range. Bernoulli effect accelerates air moving around the mountain; then, it converges lee side. This does not explain the effect perpendicular to long ranges. Could be some kind of wave interaction. Finally Sunday night it seems some sort of low level wave was retrograding down the front from the northeast. Could have resulted from low level air sloshing around mountain ranges at FROPA. Also could have been some sort of gravity wave. Yeah it's billiard ball meteorology again, lol!

LOL @tnweathernut Panic and Banter are pretty similar during winter in the South. KCHA did have flurries this morning, I mean just a few spits of flakes barely even flurries. Looks like elsewhere had more fizzards and snow showers per surface charts and the Obs thread here.

Panic room is in effect. Cold pattern forecasts fell apart like the Houston (blue) lead over KC (red) last weekend. That Asheville flight would have come in handy for AMS, but I did not go. Instead I'm in the panic room. Oh well. Everyone have a good weekend!

I'm breaking up with Himawari. That fell apart horribly in just a few days. What did the models miss? I wonder if a Southern hemisphere tropical cyclone threw off things earlier. Massive flare up of convection in the Modoki zone (Mon/Tue) ended up drifting south of the Equator and a topical cyclone developed. Early week models assumed sustained that convection, with or without a TC. The TC takes most of the energy south with it. North of the equator convection has calmed down. Indonesia and Malaysia have some new thunderstorms, though mostly diurnal. Anyway it is not a favorable area for SE cold. Models want to flare up the Indian ocean soon, with a ridge over South China in several days, which is not helpful for us either. Massive cold fail is a disappointment. However the US southern stream remains active. Next week is cold/dry. Models still show a cuter Jan 24-25. After that Ensembles are all over the place with storm tracks. Even the warm EPS has a few lows south, but yeah cutters too. One just hopes for south with cold air in place (from somewhere, lol).

An even bigger version around the Smokies. If south or southeast low level winds accelerate around mountains it would enhance low level inflow. Then farther off the ground south to southwest winds could be guided to turn with height due to the direction of the Valley. I'm just speculating on a hypothesis. Similar debate is ongoing for central Oklahoma (Moore/Norman) and the southeast facing Canadian River Valley. That's low levels only of course. The Plains can take care of its own mid-levels. In both cases it is hard to prove causation, but correlation is notable. They have tried to model the OK case.

Just in European weeklies might. And the 12Z EPS is Frozen. Sadly I don't remember anything in 2017 though. Must have been the one that broke the snow drought for Mid Tenn. Southeast Tennessee was missed. Our last gems were 2015 and 2014. That does not count travelling to Calhoun, GA I think December 2017. At any rate it's time for some action forum wide! Keep our fingers crossed. ECMWF weekly charts are lit for 3 straight weeks starting next week. Big AK ridge AND above normal heights Western Canada. It's +PNA though not textbook Bering Sea / Aleutians. Important thing is cold dumps east of the Rockies. None of that West tough BS. It's full tilt trough Greenland to SE USA. Please be right.

Porch chase Saturday, January 11, 2020: East Brainerd, Chattanooga, Tenn. Friday evening I noticed actual and forecast soundings still lacked low-level CAPE. The skinny mid-level CAPE would have been plenty with more low level push. Frontal lift is just forced, and gives that squall line. More low-level CAPE would have given convective push for a broken line. Then I saw videos from Texas of the lowest contrast Dixie slop one can imagine. Decided not to chase Saturday. Saturday morning I awoke to a chase partner discussing an outing to North Alabama. I encouraged him like I believe is the right thing to do, but reiterated my plan to stay home and watch sports on TV all day. He had one other; so, I felt OK encouraging him not solo. He started to reel in his target to Lookout Mtn. I reminded him if he's going out, he might as well go all the way to Sand Mountain. The latter is flatter, bigger, and has lots of agriculture - which means fewer trees up top. Indeed tornado warnings were issued from Cullman Co. northeast. Meanwhile back in Chattanooga Kansas hoops was laying an egg at home so I switched to Weather Nation via Roku TV. Sling has zero weather. Then when it got real locally over-the-air TV for coverage was appropriate. Goodness I felt like I'm back in Wichita waiting to get slammed! I was tempted to drive 10-15 minutes to either US Express or Costco because either place has excellent visibility. Tornado warning went up for Soddy Daisy; so, maybe I could see that at at distance from US Express. Another area of weak rotation was approaching Ringgold; and, one can see a little bit at one of the I-75 exits. Costco was removed from the list, sitting between areas of interest. NFL Playoff started so I stayed home. Usually indecision is not rewarded well. In this case, the porch chase was a gem! High winds to 60 mph buffet the house. A few minutes prior I am pleasantly surprised at how much one can see through trees in the winter. I know that from watching sunsets, but had to remember for severe. No real shelfie, so I was glad I did not go to another spot for nothing. However the clouds are ominous and exciting. It gets dark and one can see the flat rain look behind the leading edge of angry rolling clouds. Occasional CG flashes bright with booming thunder. As low clouds race from south to north the wind picks up markedly. Sheets of rain about two blocks away rush from my left to right, looking west. Lightning thunder flash boom! The curtain of wind blown rain approaches quickly, but I can discern it enveloping each house and group of trees. Some sheets of rain are separated while the wall rapidly advances at me. Rain is horizontal as it sweeps over my home and locations. It slams against south-facing windows. I get to a north-facing window. Yeah center of the house is what we preach. Wind whips between the houses like TWC hurricane videos. Probably 60 mph this case but only for a couple minutes. A couple more CG strokes are vivid with sharp cracks of loud thunder. Trees sway but not like they would with leaves. Torrential rain continues along with 40-50 mph winds another 5 minutes. Wind dies down but occasional CG and thunder continue. About 2 hours later moderate rain ends with an orange sunset and rainbow. That my friends, is so Great Plains!

Oh my that's even in a minor key. So depressing, lol! I really think it'll turn around though. If not, I'll look forward to Plains chase season.

So up there you get snow and tornadoes! Jealous, haha I wonder if low level winds whip around the ridge southeast of town. Accelerate a bit per Bernoulli effect? And a little farther off the ground I wonder if ridges nudge winds a little veered relative to below. On the other hand it could be random luck.

I'm several pages behind on this thread, so I'll keep it brief. 1. I want to make love to the Himawari satellite, literally the robot up in space. All kinds of convection in the Modoki El Nino zone. Just beautiful if you want some winter down here. 2. MJO index is also going into cold phases. Nice when it lines up with satellite photos. 3. SSTs have assumed the proper look for cold phases. Hopefully the atmosphere will settle there too. 4. Models remain consistent. Ensemble clusters are remarkably correlated. No guarantee correlation = correctness, but plenty of Pacific backing here. 5. Hesitate to post, but yeah the CFS (weekly crap shoot) lays down a defined swath of snow in the Valley about week 3. I don't see anything in the 6-8 day window for lower elevations. Days 9-10 could always surprise, just because it's the mid-range. As usual it'll take 2-3 cold fronts for the cold air to settle in. 11-20 day is where I hope for some action.

I expect supercells in Texas Friday evening. If things go early enough, maybe late afternoon. Trying to find positives for storm chasers that way, haha. LLJ indeed will increase with time, and do so quickly and substantially. SPC rightly talks about the line possibly breaking up into supercells. We normally discuss the more common opposite, sups congeal to line. However with a rapidly strengthening and backing LLJ lines can and do occasionally break up into supercells. It's most common right after the line develops (as opposed to sup line sup). In this case a line may develop; then within 1-2 hours, actually break up into supercells for a couple hours. In all cases sups eventually go linear (or go back to linear) this weather pattern. You won't see me travelling to chase this. However I know people closer who are watching it.

Questions remain in Alabama due to morning rain on Saturday. Euro has consistently hammered Mississippi and the GFS has now slowed down to do the same. NAM going nearly unidirectional upstairs is a real party pooper for fans of intense severe weather though. Saturday is still the back half of the NAM (as of Thursday writing) where NAM accuracy falls off. However the accuracy issue is usually on mesoscale details. Upper wind fields is a larger scale issue. I'm afraid the GFS/Euro will trend toward the semi-unidirectional NAM. Sure it has helicity off the charts, but that is mostly speed shear. Turning is meh on the NAM. It would be a strong but sloppy line. Now the GFS and Euro (globals) both still have a classic winter Dixie outbreak. Globals start turning 700 mb wind, with 500 mb southwest or better. NAM has 700 mb barely west of south and 500 mb still SSW. They all have a mess at 200 mb, but the globals have enough turning up to 500 mb for a lot of severe wx and some tornadoes. Plus they all have robust LLJs. Instability is marginal, but that is normal in winter severe weather. Tonight or Friday morning, one could check fcst soundings for where that instability lies Saturday; low level or mid-level. If low level (just a few thousand ft AGL) it only takes a few hundred CAPE for severe. If mid-level only it's tough to light the candle. Such mesoscale detail isn't clear until about a day to 36 hours ahead. If everything comes together, one would expect that secondary warm front, originating from the Gulf Coast front, to lift north of I-20 or even US-82. Worst action would be from there south. Otherwise it's a sloppy rain-out except down on the Gulf Coast. Most of this was copied from my Tennessee Valley post. However it looks like the worst of it will be this Southeast Region, because of central/southern Mississippi and Alabama. Even there it could underachieve if the NAM is right.

Yes at one point Alabama looked capped on the Euro following stabilizing Friday night rain. Euro has consistently hammered Mississippi Saturday. I'm less concerned about caps now. NAM going nearly unidirectional upstairs is a real party pooper for fans of intense severe weather though. Saturday is still the back half of the NAM (as of Thursday writing) where NAM accuracy falls off. However the accuracy issue is usually on mesoscale details. Upper wind fields is a larger scale issue. I'm afraid the GFS/Euro will trend toward the semi-unidirectional NAM. Sure it has helicity off the charts, but that is mostly speed shear. Turning is meh on the NAM. It would be a strong but sloppy line. Now the GFS and Euro both still have a classic winter Dixie outbreak. Still sloppy, but it's relative down here. GFS/Euro start turning 700 mb wind, with 500 mb southwest or better. NAM has 700 mb barely west of south and 500 mb still SSW. They all have a mess at 200 mb, but the GFS/Euro have enough turning up to 500 mb for a lot of severe wx and some tornadoes. Plus they all have robust LLJs. Instability is marginal, but that is normal in winter severe weather. Tonight or Friday morning, one could check fcst soundings for where that instability lies Saturday; low level or mid-level. If low level (just a few thousand ft AGL) it only takes a few hundred CAPE for severe. If mid-level only it's tough to light the candle. Such mesoscale detail isn't clear until about a day to 36 hours ahead. If everything comes together, one would expect that secondary warm front originating from the Gulf Coast front. Worst action would be from there south. Otherwise it's a sloppy rain-out and I'm watching college basketball all day Saturday.

ECMWF Op is slower than the GFS on the cold next week. However the EPS is colder than the GEFS in the 11-15 day range. Hopefully my Panic Room I post ages well. Darth Vader: I find your lack of faith disturbing. Thursday GFS runs have been cold in the extended, some stormy. Now those 11-15 day systems could go anywhere from Ohio to Florida; but, no worries if an 11-15 day storm cuts or is too buried. Main thing is the GFS has a cold 500 mb pattern. Is it just the dumb operational? GEFS isn't running as cold. Well, the EPS is running that cold. Perhaps the colder 500 mb weather pattern should be favored. EPS has also destroyed the GEFS recently; so, I kind of like a cold EPS. Also some evidence the EPS is handling the MJO and other tropical signals better. I'm not sure about the SPV jostling, but Holston I love those 3D graphics either way. Finally the CFS is frozen so maybe the GEFS will go that way. See what the ECMWF weeklies have tonight. They are based on the 00Z (previous am) EPS so probably cold. Closing with some non-model data. Jax has good posts in our ENSO thread. With the IOD relaxing but El Nino trying harder, perhaps the MJO will spend more time in true Pacific cold phases, vs just a secondary echo off the IOD. Still got convection in warmer phases, but there's plenty building in the colder phases too.

And 30% is posted for our parts of our Forum Region! Where's the siren emoji? My thoughts are similar to those from Monday. GFS is a bit fast, ECMWF is slower, truth may be in between. Regardless the 12Z Euro is total eye candy. Still early for soundings*; but, the constant level plots are lit. So is the surface. * Friend reminded me it's also too early for meso-scale forecasts (outflow, cap, etc) and that's right. However it is my decision point, more than a forecast. Mesoscale will determine my chase status. If not, plenty of college basketball on Saturday. KU hoops is on on CBS! As for my snow post from Monday, I'm sorry if I raised false hope north of I-40. What a disaster! Guess I was jacked up on severe wx thoughts.

The 12Z ECMWF is pretty lit (verbatim) Saturday. Oh I'm glad I saved the best for last. Winter is choking, so I'm ready to talk severe! Most notably, the Euro has a southern stream system to spark convection in the Deep South. Surface low going into the Midwest may have unidirectional winds aloft. The South, on the other hand, should have veering with height. Next feature is a long-shot in January, but the Euro shows a secondary boundary in North Mississippi to North Alabama, south of the synoptic WF. Should the coastal warm front merge with this boundary, it'll be more believable. At any rate Friday night rain sets up the possible outflow boundary OFB I'm talking about. Winter set-up means an even higher than usual possibility of a morning rain induced stable bust Tenn Valley. I'd need the coastal front to merge with the OFB to give it more spark. Now Alabama may be capped. This whole OFB and moderate cap would be wonderful in the Plains in May. Dixie in January? It could work, but I'm not holding my breath. Few more days to watch this. Mississippi looks less capped as the southern short-wave induces cooling aloft. Still great wind profiles ahead of the trough. Mississippi is also favored in winter climo. Alabama is more February and later. We'll see though. 30% generates a lot of social media hype, but this is typical Dixie in winter - very conditional. Wind fields are there but instability is always TBD. While I'm eagerly watching (though not holding my breath) chances are I end up watching college basketball most of Saturday in my nice dry living room.

Weeklies try to bleed cold south week 3-4 but dang it's ugly. BN heights over the Great Lakes attempt to drive it. However the PNA looks neutral at best; never really goes negative. Some AK and Western Canada AN heights but US West heights are dreadfully BN. Could spit out energy I guess; but, also WAA ahead of each wave. Figure the SER torch fest will tone down, but not going full tilt cold though. On the optimistic look, it only takes one system to phase right in that choppy pattern noted above.