weatherwiz

Holy ****

I saw one of the two individuals who were swept away by the flood waters in Oxford was found dead I can't even imagine being caught in a situation where that occurs. The panic that must set in, I mean WTF do you do?

Yeah it very well may be just bad luck overall but its still pretty interesting. Reminds me a bit of the western New York ordeal where you have several tornado tracks which are eerie similar...some where the start/end points are nearly identical. But what you're saying about the warm season low tracks makes a ton of sense. Historically, we've seen plenty of these setups where due to the low track, we don't really drive the warm front northwards through New England, it tends to get hung up around the coast...so add the extra fuel to interact with that boundary and, viola.

ahhh right, I was thinking about checking that. Would be much easier to do that actually. But also to your earlier post which a few other have chimed in on, the number of heavy rain/flooding events across that corridor the last like 8 years has been insane. There has to be something happening on a mesoscale or microscale level. Could there maybe be some sort of coastal (or I guess Sound) enhancement going on as a result of the warmer waters over the Sound these last several years?

I wonder if there are any charts on the Iowa State site for this but I'd be curious to see occurrence of PWAT thresholds per year. I would have to think this past decade we've been running quite high in the occurrence of PWAT events up around 2''. It seems like every rain event we get now PWATS are surging to around 2''.

Mesoanalysis data is kind of scary. Looks like PWATS are on the rise across southwest CT with llvl moisture surging northwards (lower 70’s building in) with a bit of an increase in the llvl jet. It’s quite unstable too

Yeah that is not good looking. Hopefully it falls apart but what an uneasy feeling

Holy shit. I was just there for a wedding a few months ago.

Damn...I haven't been to Kettletown in years (used to hike there with my ex) but its a nice little spot. Hope everyone is alright, that is not an area you would want to be caught in flooding.

Is it possible that the processes behind these type of events are just so small-scale that modeling is unable to resolve them (even the highest resolution grids)? Today was largely a product of back-building and the process behind back-building are such small scale I don't think our technology is that advanced yet to model this process. I guess maybe one positive about the increasing frequencies of such events is that with enough studies maybe something can be developed in the near-future as we continue to better understand them.

I get what you're saying. I wasn't coming across saying the signal was there Friday for rainfall totals like this or anything close to this. The only thing I was saying was it shouldn't have been a surprise there would be heavy rain today...that's all. Flooding events are extremely unique. One aspect of forecasting that is a big struggle is the forecasting of rainfall totals, especially in setups which involve stationary/occluded boundaries and when there is training involved. And this isn't a fault of anyone, it just goes to show challenging these situations are and this gets into your last sentence there. What also is intriguing about this is, how many times have we seen forecast models overstate rainfall totals during certain setups, but then in setups like these they just completely bomb? Clearly, we need to better understand the physics and processes behind this. There will certainly be some re-analysis done on this event when everything is looked it, it will be obvious how we got to this. I think Sey-Mour Snow already showed some of this. What we need to figure out is how do we take the after analysis to make the forecasting/awareness better? We always seem to understand how things happened after the fact, but we struggle with the before.

Just imagine getting a tropical system which produces these totals on a more widespread level. You would hope forward speed would be enough to negate that but its pretty scary when you think about that potential.

These kind of setups require in-depth and analysis, not just rip and reading QPF.

I didn't meh it...all I said was there was a signal for heavy rain two days ago. But I agree with your last sentence.

well I mean if anyone thought or was forecasting a dry forecast in CT not sure what they were looking at.

Yes, I know which is why I also said something like this is done via nowcasting as its impossible to know how the mesoscale aspects will evolve until its actually ongoing.

I didn't say a signal for 14" of rain. I said there was a signal for "a lot of rain".

Brother in New Britain said lightning hit something close by. Looks like it was between 0.3 and 0.5 miles away per Radarscope.

I think there have been some discussions in the past on here about flood watches and communication on potential for flooding. I totally get what you're saying. We often see flood watches and here about potential for flooding but 99.999% of the time its really just some poor drainage flooding or a handful of roads with ponding. I think how flooding potential is communicated (prior and during) needs to be heavily revisited. Flood watches/flash flood watches get tossed around way too much and there really is no discriminator between something that may be extremely localized to something which may be more widespread. Even for convective you have PDS wording to discriminate between higher end potential.

I didn't read any discussions or forecasts for today/tomorrow so not sure what the communication on it was. Granted I didn't look heavily myself but on Friday I thought the signals were there for "alot of rain". But these events are extremely challenging to forecast. I am not sure if you can even really forecast something like (especially to pin-point locally) this well in-advance just because of the mesoscale factors that tend to be in play. I mean how can you really pin-point exactly where training will occur, what rates will be, and the duration of those rates? Similar with winter storms...can be impossible to figure out exactly where that narrow band of intense snow/totals will occur until you see the pieces lining up.

Ehhh the signals were there for a lot of rain. Mentioned that Friday but everyone was too busy worried about a fake tropical threat and the colors of 8-14D WPC maps

I disagree with this to an extent. A huge part of meteorology and forecasting is having a tremendous understanding of climatology, patterns, and how pattern evolutions can influence short-term sensible weather. The best forecasters out there can typically have a solid understanding on how storm potential may evolve several days out or at least some expectation and these forecasters, if working within the private sector, can make some damn good money with this skill. There are people who dedicate their life and career to this sort of thing. The best forecasters can also assess forecast model data and each model and develop a sound idea of which forecast model is probably going to be the best at handling the situation. While not directly used in the field unless you're into heavy research or modeling, even having an understanding of mathematics (physics/calculus) and the governing equations can provide you clues and guidance in this regard. There are jobs within the private sector which almost require providing some "guarantee" or "most likely" scenario for such storms even as far as 5-6-7 days out. Many companies are understanding the need of weather and how it impacts their business and with this the private sector is growing substantially. Many places are realizing how planning around/ahead weather can save them enormous amounts of money. So let's say in the case of Ernesto, and you're either in the Northeast or someone who does business within the Northeast, and you hear of a possible hit 5-6-7 days out...you're doing to want/have to start planning on that potential this far out and you are going to want to know what this probability is so you can make your preparations. When it comes to tropical weather and hurricanes, we can easily know the likelihood of a potential system hitting our region as far as 7-10 days out. There is a very specific upper-level pattern that is needed to happen, this is why it is very difficult to get landfalling canes here.

Why can't I ever see anything like that???? Freaking ridiculous. I take a couple weeks during the summer and go around for storms and see shit but people get videos and pictures of funnel clouds, wall clouds, tornadoes, FROM PARKING LOTS OF STORES, FARMS, THEIR HOUSES, SIDE OF HIGHWAYS. Its b**********

I'm so pissed. Initial cells around here developed virtually overhead and strengthened as it tracked south (at least I had good thunder). The second round missed me by like 5 miles to the west as the storms dropped south and ended up producing all that hail in Enfield.

Could be some good rainfall totals in spots between Sunday and Monday.