CT Rain

Second tornado touchdown in Mansfield, CT? Looks like Kevin just missed a tree topper. 

3 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

And SBCAPE MUCAPE were more or less the same, and yesterday shear was about 100 m2/s2 and 20 knots weaker.

These high shear cases, you really need to balance that with enough instability for a robust updraft. Otherwise, it's shredded.

It's finding that balance that is so often the challenge. Days that look good just can't seem to strike it. 

1 minute ago, OceanStWx said:

I've been at this a long time now, and I still find myself fascinated by little things like what a razor's edge difference last night was compared to last Friday. 

We're talking maybe 50 J/kg difference in the low levels. That was all we needed to stretch the low level shear.

I mean literally everything on radar was spinning. 

34 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

@CT Rain and I were chucking  at each other via text message, does that count?

Almost landed on the anniversary of Windsor Locks too. 

 

Between text messages, twitter, and nws chat there were a lot of  chucked. What a day. 

Keep an eye out on tomorrow's severe threat. Quite a bit of low level shear and it appears that the warm front will surge north tomorrow PM. 

4 minutes ago, ineedsnow said:

58/58 here dews coming up

Dews surging at the south coast. 

27 minutes ago, snowman21 said:

Ryan's 10 day didn't look so cool to me, at least not for late September. The coolest day was the 68/51 for Sunday which is maybe a couple of degrees below normal. The rest of the forecast looked like generally low 70s by day, 55-60 by night. Normals next week are MU60s/M40s NW hills, 70/48 inland, and L70s/L50s coast.

Looks like we could get fairly muggy next week once that high slides offshore too. 

21 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

Seems that some areas of ILM got hit a lot worse than others, as is usually the case

 

https://twitter.com/tbrite89/status/1040990013117394944

 

Oh yeah there were tons of trees down and trees shredded. I was just comparing the number down there compared to what would happen here with 24 hours of TS winds and a peak 90 knot gust.

Just now, OceanStWx said:

It is definitely an outdated scale. Nearly 4 in 5 people are dying from water related threats, and we more or less ignore that in Saffir-Simpson. IKE could at least capture surge as a proxy of wind radii, but still isn't explicit about it. 

Sandy is a perfect example: meh-ed by the masses, but extremely destructive due to its size. 

It's so hard to communicate threats too. How do you tell someone to expect flooding when they've never had water on their street? How do you tell someone to expect surge when they've never flooded (look at New Bern which was a worst case scenario fetch/wind direction). 

Also, what about the people who thought this was going to be a 4 and came in as a 1. Do they leave next time? Probably not. 

We evacuate for surge but not really for inland flooding or wind. 

Just so many challenging things to figure out and communicate. 

1 hour ago, OceanStWx said:

In general we suck at intensity, models included. The two major global models have serious biases (Euro good pressure/poor wind speeds, GFS terrible pressure/good wind speeds). 

As for the shear, it's possible. But there are a whole host of reason that nearing land is bad for strengthening. You start entraining dry air off the land, you add friction and slow winds speeds which reduces convergence, etc.

We also suck so bad at communication. The Saffir-Simpson scale isn't great at all for communicating risk.

People are so confused by all the threats and what to expect. 

58 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

X was saying that the power poles were all toppled, but the trees actually stood up quite well.

Yeah I noticed that as well. Trees were OK but gas station canopies and power poles were all over the place.

The number of transformers we saw blow was pretty wild. 

11 hours ago, OceanStWx said:

2nd highest in their history. Ryan and Ekster nude on the beach right now.

Pretty much. That eyewall was incredible. We never actually got into the eye... I think I missed it by a mile. We went from western eyewall to northern eyewall.

Damage reminded me of Bob kind of stuff. The trees in ILM (just like the Cape) can take a beating. We actullu didn’t lose power until we were gusting around 80! 

46 minutes ago, NECT said:

Where will you be? Most of OBX is sea level. A moderate storm surge means, I think, that you better be in a safe place because there's nowhere to go. Yikes.Good luck and be safe.

Not sure yet but probably somewhere inland a bit. No desire to get stuck or to drown. 

I'll be down there for it. Wish me luck. 

6 hours ago, Hoth said:

Is there a reason this thread is pinned? Feels kinda like one of those winter threads where we put up 50 pages of analysis for a storm that whiffs everyone but James. 

I can unpin it if people would like

33 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Epic water disaster in the making if models are correct,  add in upslope something Harvey didn't have 

Yeah - was thinking that too. Hopefully it stalls prior to the mountains? 

Just now, CoastalWx said:

However, ridging all summer has been highly anomalous and I think should be considered. Given that, a TC in that locale has not made landfall in the US. 

Yup. I think the most likely setup is some kind of close shave/graze and then OTS. Or... we jam it west into the Carolinas with a ridge flex.

Never say never though. Near record ridging/blocking downstream can do some funky sh*t.

Not much CIN out there now that we're like 90/75 lol

Some storms - and maybe an isolated wet microburst given about 1200 j/kg of DCAPE. 

27 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

Shear FTL down south. 

It's even pretty meh up here (effective shear around 25-30 kts). But I'm betting we end up closer to 35 and get some organization up here.

The 12km NAM has somewhat better low level shear which was interesting but it seems like it's on its own with a funky looking 850hpa jet. 

I'm pretty meh for tomorrow around here. Looks pretty blah with very weak wind fields. Looks a lot better for Ekster and Legro. 

3 hours ago, HoarfrostHubb said:

The Webster tornado is being classified as a high end EF-1. The pics I saw made me think EF1 or EF2.    Was there ever any debris ball signature?

Interesting that that small area has had three in a short period of time.

There was no TDS with this one. My guess is that the circulation was very shallow (maybe only 1 or 2,000 feet) so any lofted debris was under the radar beam.

I thought it could be low end EF-2 based on some of the damage pics and the similarities to Revere. But I know Glenn and Kevin did the survey and they're great so I take their word for it. Those roofs may not have been the most well built and there wasn't a whole lot of other structural damage besides siding and shingles blown off. The tree damage didn't look as severe as the May 15 stuff in CT either. 

3 hours ago, Modfan said:

Does anyone have radar scans from the tornado yesterday?

11 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

Lol. This was one of the better setups for these as some others haven’t worked out. It looked good on guidance though for a couple of days, but models were not in agreement for location...just overall setup potential. 

Yeah the models actually were in worse agreement with this one than the overnight ORH county tornado a week ago. This mesolow was definitely weaker but got the job done. Of interest to me was the SPC mesoanalysis was undergoing the SRH significantly. The objective analysis had <100 at OKX at 12z but the morning balloon launch had nearly 200. That really jumped out at me. All morning we saw a bunch of small mesos and one finally went to town.

14 hours ago, CT Rain said:

Watch the mesolow/warm front tomorrow....

Bump 

Watch the mesolow/warm front tomorrow....