weatherwiz

oof that is a pretty wild thermodynamic environment across northern Illinois and Indiana. Couple this with the increasing shear. They better hope they don't get any discrete cells.

3km NAM has a LES streamer all the way through Connecticut Thursday

HRRR shows this well

have some HWW from Berkshire/Hamden/Hampshire/Franklin

This is!

A true cold front, that's what we have moving across the country as the calendar soon says goodbye to February and hello to March. This February happens to be a leap year and this week we giant a giant leap into spring. Ahead of an approaching strong Arctic cold front an unseasonably mild airmass will be in place. Wednesday could even feature a few daily record high temperatures within the region. With a vigorous trough moving into the Northeast Wednesday strong dynamics will overspread the region with a stout southerly jet advecting in an unseasonably rich theta-e in the lower-levels of the atmosphere. Scattered-to-numerous showers are likely Wednesday with gusty winds, likely in the 25-40 mph range. The bigger story, however, will be during the evening as a line of rain and embedded thunderstorms out ahead of the front move across the region. Combination of weak instability, strong jet dynamics, and intense forcing will likely promote the potential for brief, but damaging wind gusts ALONG THE LEADING EDGE of the precipitation. Wind gusts of 50-65 mph will be possible along this line. Right after the leading edge, heavy rain continues, however, winds subside rapidly and may almost be calm for a bit before gusting in the 20-30 mph range. The next set of fun occurs as the strong Arctic cold front moves through with temperatures crashing instantly. In fact, there is a decent probability for rain to either end as snow or for an elongated line of snow to develop along or just behind the front. This could cause some issues with the potential for flash freezing...and true flash freezing (which is usually overplayed in these parts). We then enter the CAA winds, where widespread and prolonged wind gusts of 40-60 mph are likely. Scattered-to-numerous power outages are becoming increasingly likely with the greatest occurrence of outages associated with the CAA winds. It is also possible we see an introduction of a MARGINAL risk by the SPC for the potential of damaging wind gusts along the leading edge of the rain/thunderstorms ahead of the strong cold front. The big bad Wolf is going to be huffing, puffing, and blowing down our forests.

Definitely, this is one where everyone is going to feel the chill, even inside their house. Nobody's heat will be kicking on during the day Wednesday and all of a sudden temps are going to crash and you'll feel the air seeping inside then everyone's heat kicks off at once.

yeah I'm a bit confused by that post. I mean the cold certainly isn't prolonged but this is a true front. Some of the temp drops in the central US are going to be wild. Some areas go from 70's and 80's down to the teens, 20's, and 30's. This also isn't an ordeal where we see delta T's kind of weaken as the front progresses, they remain pretty intense to the coast.

I've never seen this before. This is hilarious

This is one of the more intense fronts we've seen in a while with a nice surge of higher theta-e air ahead of the front. We'll see big winds along the leading edge of the heavier rain (upwards of 55-65 mph possible) but this will be very brief. Once the leading edge of the rain moves through the winds probably become nearly calm before gusting back up (just not as intense). The CAA winds overnight will be quite strong too, and more prolonged. Going to see some power issues for sure.

Unless someone else does it, I'm going to make a thread at some point later today. Too honor Miley Cyrus we'll name it, "Howdown Blowdown" as many trees will likely get toppled over.

Now this is a cold front. Still wouldn't be surprised to see at least NY/PA and maybe western Mass and NW CT get into a marginal risk.

I am mentally done with winter. We still have a bit to go before we get into consistent warmth but it felt like this winter went by fast. Not complaining about that. I hate winter more each year and it's even worse given the recent snow drought. Higher terrain and northern New England certainly are going to have some snow threats well into April, no matter how many nice days/periods we get between now and then but for everyone else, it will take a hell of a miracle to get anything significant. Can't wait for our first few 70+ days.

Forget March coming in like a lion, it's coming in like the big, bad, Wolf and we're all cooped up in Little Red Ridding Hood's grandmothers house and the house is about to get blown away.

It certainly could be quite windy, even outside of convection.

Could have potential for a line of thunderstorms to move through next Thursday. Instability won't be anything noteworthy but that's some intense dynamics with a large warm sector characterized by dewpoints >50 with steep lapse rates. I am sniffing some strong convection potential.

Doing my annual two weeks for storm chasing June 1 - June 15. Hopefully we can get some high risks into the Northeast during that period...or at least into IL/IN/OH. Farthest west my friend and I have ever gone is like central PA. Been willing to go farther these last 3-4 years but there's been NOTHING. I've always wanted to do the Plains but I am not as enthused about that anymore. Not with all these lunatics' who think that just because they're storm chasing means the rules of the road don't apply to them. then having to deal with chaser convergence. Also, the thought of spending a day or two of driving...gross. I do enough driving as it is and with my back, being in a car longer than a few hours makes bad things happen.

It probably will materialize...the 3rd and 4th week of March and we get to bash our heads in with 35F rainstorms, clouds, and stiff NE winds

My girlfriend has a treadmill in the basement too which I want to start using. Just need motivation. I am curious to see if running on the treadmill will count towards steps in Pokemon Go. If so, that will be my motivation and I can hatch eggs like a chicken.

my only cardio is running from my car to the package store when its cold out.

I could never understand how people do this. I kind of wish I could. Several years ago I used to work 6-3 and would wake up 4:15 AM. While part of me loved it, it was killing me. I would have zero energy after and want to do nothing. I was with my ex and I felt terrible b/c I would be with her on weekends and Friday night I would be so dead and ready for bed by 7-8. Even now a few days of the week I am up at 5:15 and I'm drained by the afternoon. Even if I go to bed at a decent time...I wake up the next morning more tired than I went to bed. Wish there was a fix for that.

I almost think its kind of pointless to make such specific calls regarding temperatures with long-range forecasts (for example, saying something like +1 to +3 or -2 to -3) just because of how crazy the anomalous warmth has been overall. We've seen some months over the past few decades of anomalies +5...+6...and even higher. There is absolutely zero way anyone could ever forecast something that anomalous in advance. Let's say someone went with a +2 to +4 for a month, but it turned out to be +6 or +7...from the number alone that forecast doesn't look "great" but how the heck would anyone go something as extreme as +6 or +7? Now just saying "above-average" like I did in my outlook isn't great either...that's kind of a "cheap way" out but getting specific with numbers and ranges for something like seasonal can be very hairy.

Yup, maddening how we couldn't get a GoA low established. Looking at the January/February pattern, you can kind of visualize how different things would have looked had there been a GoA low. Heights across the west would have probably been more neutral and that ridging in Canada may have been pushed back a bit with those below-average heights out in the Atlantic a bit closer. This alone would have had an impact on the storm track. Of course, there is much more it to this. If there was a GoA vortex then it would have been a question of size, strength, structure, placement, etc.

Yup, well said. The next level of defense would probably be mentioning super-strong events but even that doesn't hold significant merit. If forecasting seasonal snowfall was as easy as "this winter will suck b/c of strong EL Nino" or "this winter will rock b/c of weak La Nina"...well everyone would do snowfall forecasts and everyone would be right

That would be my guess as well, similar to the weak La Nina example I posted yesterday regarding 1995-1996.