Meanwhile, here in reality, Chris's point is very good. Doesn't look like a widespread event but rather a real nasty cluster of storms near and along the warm front. Too far south is capped and too far north is wedged.
Yeah I think we're pretty in tune with what is going to turn into a CT power disaster and what won't.
This storm did present some challenges for me - especially because we had the tornado event on Sunday so I was pretty deep into that most of the day, With respect to Isaias though the forecast did get more severe as we got closer. On Sunday I was thinking gusts around 50 or so but it didn't look like a major wind producer to me (in fact the 11p advisory from NHC on Sunday cut the intensity down quite a bit here and dropped the odds of TS force winds substantially).
By Monday AM I knew were were in trouble with all the models converging on a solution with a tight/in tact core with a ripping LLJ and the models all showing an unusually large amount of mixing. I bumped up the wind forecast big time with 50-70 mph and went from "scattered tree/power issues" to "widespread". I do think that came a little later than I would have liked it to.
The underforecast resulted in probably 1-2 lost days of restoration.
The years of neglect to the grid is probably a bigger issue in the grand scheme of things.
When you look at pictures from 1938 and the storms in the 50s and Donna it's amazing how few trees there are compared to now. We've let trees grow unchecked through our electrical grid. There's a price for that.
The complete shut down in the tropics for us from 1991-2011 didn't help either as we grew accustomed to few wind storms.
Yeah they definitely underestimated the storm. I think part of that is the forecast changing - over the weekend it didn't look nearly as bad to me as it did by Monday AM. The other issue is preparing for a reasonable worst case scenario... they were very clear they do not do that because it costs money. So this is a result.
I also find it very hard to believe that this storm produced 1M peak outages while Hurricane Gloria produced 500k peak outages. Something is fundamentally broken with the power grid in that case.
It's pretty crazy. Maybe they were able to get things on faster this time with some of the smart grid tech they claim makes a difference? Still seemed like nothing changed with pre-staging, communicating with towns, poor tree maintenance, etc.
When we were under the tornado warning our peak gusts came from that convection. 50-55 knots easy here. Reminded me a lot of the epic southeaster a few years back just before Halloween.
What's sort of interesting about this storm in general is that decent mixing in the boundary layer is progged. Very rare to see on a southerly flow event.
Definitely could be an active day in SE NY and CT. Low level wind fields strengthen through the day and we're talking about 200-400 m2/s2 of 0-3km SRH. Plenty of CAPE behind the warm front as well. As long as convection can fire up (not a ton of a synoptic scale trigger) there is certainly a tornado threat.
This morning sort of reminds me of 7/1/2013.
It also has to strengthen some. A 1002 mb low over BDR isn't going to be very exciting.
If the UKMet is right with something in the mid 980s then we'll have more of an opportunity for fun.
lol no kidding. If this goes too far west I'd be worried about missing out on rain.
Do think there's a risk for some tornadoes east of the storm's path and at least some gusty wind particularly south coast. Not a huge storm but may be fun for some.