OceanStWx

11 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

Just like any organization the reorganization hurts. Cutting fat off the bone is not easy 

Glad to know you feel that way. 

The probationary employees that were let go were not the fat in the organization. I know them, I had friends lose their jobs. I frankly find it offensive. That ho hum attitude about it all is definitely what is causing people to continue quitting government service in NOAA/NWS.

2 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Three was a lot of talking about the dismantling of NWS. So much disinformation 

NEW: The NWS receives permission to hire up to 450 meteorologists/hydrologists/radar technicians after DOGE-related cuts. Agency also given a public safety exemption from federal hiring freeze.

I mean what is getting rid of 566 out of ~4000 but dismantling? It's been a miserable stretch since February, and I haven't even had it as bad as some other offices.

Thankfully tremendous public support and pressure from Congress has granted us that public safety exemption and the ability to hire back 450 positions. However that is going to come with pretty radical changes to the structure of the NWS as well. What those will be is above my pay grade, but there is more coming (not all bad necessarily).

My general feel for this is that NWS knew budgets weren't ever going to get appreciably bigger. They created a plan to reorganize the operations model. The election happened and DOGE came in with a sledgehammer and forced the NWS to pause reorganization because they lacked the staff to do it the way they had planned. Now based on briefing the right people we have the okay to move forward with reorganization as long as we can get staffing back up. I don't have hard evidence of that, but I have enough pieces of information to put that together.

1 minute ago, dendrite said:

Thankfully we don’t get many in the summer anymore. 

I mean the winter Canadian air masses aren't even that great anymore.

4 minutes ago, BrianW said:

They have the best firefighting aircraft and pilots in the world. Why arent we seeing Canadair CL-415 Super Scoopers making runs?

Probably for the reason Brian mentioned. Let the natural forest burn now to make it more fire resilient in the future. 

2 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Yeah. They’re trying to fight them too. I say let them go and burn hot like they naturally would. Finish off all of that dry, dead wood and stop the smoldering. 

I think the count this morning was like 507 out of control fires and they are attacking (one way or another) 208 of them. The rest I'm not sure there is any way to reach them without a skimmer.

4 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Yeah I believe it. I haven’t looked into the origins of these. And I’m not insinuating arson…just the ol’ “oopsy I thought I had it out” deal. I won’t claim to be an expert on this. Maybe I’m totally full of shit.  

I do think part of the problem with this year is some of these fires never went out from last year. Like they smoldered in some peat bog overwinter and then erupted this spring again.
 

Also they recently traced a fire start back to an osprey that dropped a fish on a wire that sparked. So it's really easy to start a fire when it's dry. Hell I've even done some dumb shit trying to take care of brush in my fire pit.

4 minutes ago, dendrite said:

I think it’s more hyped. But I think there’s more fires being started by people too…not necessarily because of social media. Just more people and more people getting out into the outdoors and not listening to Smokey the Bear. 

I haven't seen any good study on it, but we were wondering if there has been upticks in lightning activity in the boreal zone of Canada. The clustering seems awfully close together to be firebugs intentionally starting them, but more akin to a bunch of lightning starts. Similar to what happened in Big Sur back a few years ago.

But we know there have been bad seasons up there in the past. There are reports of ash up to thy knickers. Or at least the sun blotted out by smoke in the old weather records.

2 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

Thanks. 

hmmm kind of weird products 

It was added in support of the ICECHIP field research project.

6 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

Is @OceanStWx around? what the heck is this stuff?

Hourly max hail swath at the surface, hourly max through the entire atmosphere, and hourly max at the 0.1 sigma level.

Marginal risk and we're taking bets on whether we'll see lightning in the CWA today (I'm still betting yes ).

EWR gusting to 55 kt

Nice downburst near Raynham.

4 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

I have to say...the little time I've started using the RRFS it doesn't seem any better. Not sure how accurate it is but it seems they struggle with convection in these very high PWAT/dewpoint airmasses. 

The FV3 core is poor with convection, so they are moving to the MPAS core, but that's going to take some time testing too. It's not strictly a convective model, it's supposed to be short term (60 hr) hi-res guidance to replace the NAM and HRRR at the same time. So it has to handle synoptics well too.

Just now, weatherwiz said:

The HRRR needs to be retired...yet another abysmal job. 

Well you're in luck. Of course the RRFS is worse with convection.

5 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

Gotta love dews spiking well into the 70's. 

Given how easy we seem to get dews like this now I wonder if we can ever time an EML/front with dews like this. I've always been skeptical of whether we would ever see a high risk within the Northeast again but that would probably do the trick. 

Oh I would be skeptical. I don't think SPC will ever do it now that we have the added enhanced risk level, they can always just throw a moderate up and that would be a big enough deal.

You know what, I'm glad this is not my problem today. This severe event looks like a nightmare. Every cell has a core above the freezing level. All capable of downbursts. 

4 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

Honestly am. Pruning shrubs and weed whacker. Not sure if I’ll get mow in looking at radar . Gotta take advantage of this weather man 

7 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

there's the warning...right on que 

That 1717z scan there's a big KDP core (liquid water) above the freezing level, but at the same time ZDR is pretty low, near zero. That tells me that you've got some water coated hailstones up there. So evaporational cooling and cooling from melting. I think that was the right call pulling the trigger early on that before reflectivity responded.

5 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

Thought we could see that potential today given forecast hodos yesterday. 

That Berks storm actually is throwing liquid water up to over 20,000 ft. Some good downburst potential there.

RIP

https://www.weather.gov/media/notification/pdf_2025/pns25-51_soliciting_comments_sref_termination.pdf

We'll always have the significant tornado ingredients and some zonked out snowfall amounts to Montreal. 

7 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

may already have a low topped supercell entering Berkshire County 

Looks like it even split.

3 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

cold front dropping southeast, looks like the pre-frontal trough is moving into western Mass now. Today will be a southcoast ordeal (CT/RI/MA)

Most of our sites are 270 or greater right now, so that trough is what is really wiping out any convergence along the front.

7 minutes ago, dryslot said:

81/74°F here under mostly cloudy skies, Not sure we will see much sun the rest of the day as its quite showery just to the north.

She gone. Unless you count sunset.

5 minutes ago, weatherwiz said:

That's probably the only hope. I guess the NAM is out to lunch with those dewpoints but if we can pool the dewpoints it may be a little more interesting. I still wouldn't be shocked if we were to see a line organize across southern CT into RI but yeah shear is weaker farther south...maybe just enough to help updrafts organize. Looks like convergence along the front is a big issue 

It seems like CAMs are leaning towards an RI to Cape cluster and that may be the only show.

5 minutes ago, Lava Rock said:

heading out on casco bay at noon for a few hrs. looks like we should ok on the wx side of things

I just don't see the surface convergence to pop storms off in a big way around these parts.