weatherwiz

57K without power in CT. Me FTL

There is a huge discriminator between events which produce and events which don't and it puzzles me how every time we go into these highly dynamic events whistles and alarms go off for wind, only for these to be retracted a bit. Unless there is a strong signal that low-level lapse rates are going to be steep or you're not going to get the high end potential. Of course higher elevations and coastal plain are different where you have a better chance too. A 50-60 mph wind gusts event in the winter is not uncommon. Will there be power outages, yes. Will there be widespread power outages, no.

Unless you plan on traveling via snowmobile, I doubt it.

Ever since Lamont nailed them with fines, anytime there is a sniff of higher wind gusts, Eversource is now going to ask for crews all over. They're petrified to screw up again. Plus they want to do a massive rate hike on customers so they want to "look good" to get that approved. The state is not going to see over 100,000 without power unless we get a low topped derecho to blow through

NBM has some 50+ knot gusts at PWM early AM...not bad

the focus on the top was the winds...potentially sustained 30-40 mph there with gusts upwards of 70 mph. The bottom is showing substantial upward vertical motion in the DGZ which is essentially several feet above the ground. That's advertising 2-3'' per hour rates for a prolonged period.

This 12z NAM bufkit for BUF is ridiculous The momentum transfer is toggled to 10 so that could be overstating the winds THIS IS THE BEST PART THOUGH...HOLY SMOKES

Not really...it's happened each of the past few winters. The big difference is this one is occurring during one of, if not, the busiest travel week, shipping week, etc. of the year.

This just makes me want to jump into a giant pit of lava

Hi-res showing a decent amount of 3km CAPE traversing CT, RI, and SE MA just ahead of that low topped line early afternoon...right along the leading edge of the Arctic air. Lightning products even suggesting lighting. Wouldn't e surprised to see several SVR's tomorrow.

Could be quite the ice storm for Portland/Seattle. Everyone gets all the winter fun but us...fook

I think there was also one in the 1950's or maybe 1960's (maybe not Christmas Day) but late in December. Think it might have been an F1 or F2 too.

I'll be dropping TOR's under people's trees

I would seriously watch Friday morning for severe potential though. NAM has some decent instability traversing with steep lapse rates. Could see a damaging convective line wind event and there is even potential for a tornado.

agreed

I haven't looked in phenomenal detail but quickly looking at soundings across the region it's tough to see much support for a wind event which is typically higher than what we usually see with these set ups. 40-55 mph per gusts are still pretty decent and will lead to power outages but it won't be anything abnormal. The llvl jet is certainly going to be screaming but how much of that are we going to tap into without the aid of convection or convective elements? Typically in these setups that do produce we end up with some pretty steep lapse rates in the low-levels to aid mixing and more times then not the strongest winds come when there is no precipitation falling as the column then become saturated and profile is conditionally stable. Just looking at soundings across the region there seems to be some big mixing questions and of course the inversion that always happens and sometimes is even underdone. I do think, however, we will see winds on the CAA be quite strong and that's where we could see 60-70 mph gusts across a large area.

I am not totally sold on a higher-end wind event region-wide within the warm sector of this. I think we'll see some gusts in the 40-50 mph range and of course higher within the typically favored higher elevation areas but there is a decent inversion on soundings and low-level lapse rates aren't the greatest. All in all this will be a typical cool season dynamic wind event...nothing over the top impressive. But there could be a low topped line that organizes and could enhance wind potential locally. Winds will probably be more impressive with the CAA.

Yeah that's a great point.

I feel bad for those waiting last second to ship out their holiday gifts Express later this week.

This is some nuts cold out there. Memphis goes from like 50 mid Thursday afternoon to the single digits during the evening. That's pretty ridiculous. Even some of the previous Arctic blasts for them the last few years didn't see a drop as drastic as that. Wind chills there are going to be horrific.

Even if we flip to a weak EL Nino next fall, due to the ocean-atmosphere lag it's still probably going to take quite a while for the atmosphere to respond accordingly. So the oceanic state could reflect that of a [weak] Nino, however, the atmosphere could still be more Nina-like. Now that doesn't mean anything bad, it's just for awareness purposes. The atmosphere doesn't respond to oceanic changes right away.

Yeah there are certainly some lose definitions of what is meant by produce. Like even though we're getting screwed beyond belief here, the pattern still technically (is) going to produce a significant and high-impact storm (its just in the form of rain, flash flooding, high wind, and coastal flooding) as opposed to getting buried in snow tickling blizzard criteria.

As a huge fan of research and interest in long-range forecasting, there needs to be more studying and analyzing patterns as a whole. When it comes to research, whether it be with severe weather or winter storms, etc. there is a focus to just look at the events which produced. Not to say this is a bad thing. It's what needs to be done to understand these systems and help with forecast awareness, but when you're ONLY looking at what produced in the outcome you're missing a whole lot else. How many times do these "good patterns" really produce? Is it 70% of the time? 50% of the time? 5% of the time? I mean in reality, if the percent probability is very low, can it really be characterized as "good"? But this is also why a pattern only means so much, at the end of the day it's how the pieces are moving, evolve, and interact within the pattern that are going to determine the outcome. And you can have the same pattern 50 times, how these move, evolve, and interact, are going to happen 50 different way.

I think we had some discussions about this too in the ENSO thread (or one of these threads). Even though some other atmospheric teleconnections and structures are different, the roots are still there. We just can't shake the theme of trough axis in the southern Plains region. what I want to do when I have some more time is use the daily composite plots and create gifs of 30-45 day periods centered around these Arctic intrusion periods each of the past 3 years and try to identify the leading cause. My guess is probably riding in the Atlantic...when we get the deep troughs digging in the ridge in the Atlantic just builds north and the pattern just buckles and we get porked like a pig on the roaster.

My fear is the atmosphere has been in a predominately La Nina state for so long that it probably will take like a year-plus to get rid of it's effect