weatherwiz

Maybe we can muster up some snow squalls Friday and some scattered snow showers Saturday

we got the May 1 thread © cranking

My interpretation could be totally wrong but I thought the tones were similar, just worded differently.

I didn't take them as opposite statements. Kevin said you can't use them to make or base forecasts...I'm assuming what he meant was you just can't look at an one aspect of the EPS (say 500 pattern) and just make a forecast. Ray added on more to the statement indicating they should be used as tools which kinda goes into what Kevin was getting at (at least I thought so).

He doesn't have hair so he wouldn't know

Precisely. The social media weenies take those things as gospel and assume whatever they're throwing out in the 7-10+ day timeframe is precisely going to happen. Anyways, it will be fun watching the Pacific the next several days because if we can extend ridging into the Gulf of Alaska and sort of cement that there for a bit...the tune of winter could change (even if briefly).

I strongly agree with this.

There could be thundersnow in TX tomorrow

It wasn't that storm??? Holy crap...then I wonder what storm it was. OMG...I've gone all these years thinking it was from that storm. Crap now I'll probably never know

I remember getting thundersnow during that. Was playing outside in the snow with lightning. I think I was outside for like 3-4 hours. I made the mistake of taking a hot bath right when going inside. Ouch

I need to buy that book and the KU books...I'm actually going to do that tonight...at least the KU books. The significant Tornadoes book I think is hard to find and quite expensive...at least when I checked several years ago. Thanks!

I found this book at Walgreens on New Year's Eve about Connecticut Tornadoes. I haven't had the chance to read it yet, but I did read the first 5 pages and it was talking about a major tornado that went through Wethersfield or New Britain I think in the late 1700's.

the weather has just become boring. We can't buy snow events, the Great Plains can't buy severe wx (KS only had 17 tornadoes in 2020...17). I mean I guess when we do get interesting weather we sure get slammed. This just brings a great debate...is it better to get a dozen small events or 1 or 2 big events? (like a winter where you get 1 20'+ event or 13 3-6'' events or a summer with one massive severe weather outbreak or a dozen events with just typical 50-60 mph winds and pea hail). ahhhhhh...this question causes me to lose sleep sometimes

I concur. This actually wants me to really start studying more that whole region of the globe...how evolutions of patterns over the Asia/Russia through the fall correlate to the GOA region moving into winter. There are some teleconnection patterns...I think the PT, WPO, and there is one more which I remember having read have a strong correlation to the pattern evolution within this region but you actually don't see those mentioned very often. Yeah they'll continue getting smoked. From wildfires this summer/fall to avalanches and mudslides now. Fun place

Agreed...I thought so too we might get better help from the EPO but that has really killed us. If the EPO was even slightly more favorable...I think we would be signing a different tune right now. Moving forward the ULJ looks to remain a bit stronger than average and I'm afraid we will get stuck in a progressive type pattern through the next month with very brief deviations...maybe we can sneak something in during these windows but I hate relying on that.

We are also a month or so away from what has started to become an annual February severe wx event

I just hope things sort of change and there is better storm potential. Just looking at the country over the next few weeks...for what's going into the "heart" of winter it's pretty meh.

Well folks, believe it or not, severe weather season is QUICKLY approaching. Yes we are moving into the dead of winter, however, once we reach the top, it's a rapid downhill tumble towards the month of May. Last season we had a few solid events, including the significant outbreak in CT. While we did have a few solid events, the overall convective season (in terms of events SUCKED). I was so pissed off. With COVID, I worked strictly from home from mid-March through I think it was late June or early July...and I live 2 MINUTES from BDL...I was so pumped thinking I would have so many opportunities to watch storms come in at BDL....I ONLY GOT TO GO 2 OR 3 TIMES AND IT WAS LATE SUMMER....UNACCEPTABLE. Let's hope this season fares better. With that said...let's get the countdown rolling with only 113 days to go!!!!!

It really just comes down to how the cards fall. Feb 2018...man everything fell in place nearly perfectly. Regardless of a SSW or not, there are some positives moving into the second half of the month...but I freaking hate saying this I feel like that phrase is worn out lol. But...continued signs for above-average heights into Greenland/Arctic region with a +PNA...SSW or not, those two things are good to see. Now if we can dump some cold into Canada (which also looks to happen)...well we got the pieces just gotta work with em.

Hopefully we can continue to keep punching above-average height anomalies into Greenland and into the Arctic region. The big key regarding the SSW too is the structure of the pattern in the upper troposphere and what's already in place. Maybe the SSW would be responsible, or a driver, into plunging colder air back into Canada and perhaps eventually our way, but if the North American pattern is kinda garbage preceding the SSW...it may not be much help for us. What I really like is the signal for a major ridge to become established across the eastern Pacific...very similar to what we actually saw much of the summer and fall. There also continue to be signals for higher pressure around Greenland and if that can remain the case and be strong the PV should get attacked and weakened. Question: Looking at 18z GFS ~200hr...is that classified as a wave-2 or wave-3 pattern?

meh only on the grassy surfaces

Do you know what county was hit hardest? From the times I looked it actually looked like Litchfield County had the most outages

Around 36K for peak in CT

But there is also a difference and this is something that also needs to be communicated better within these type of events. How common were these gusts? Common as in; 1) Were they more on a widespread scale or more localized? 2) Were these gusts common in the sense as they occurred frequently or was it something that happened to occur once at a specific location? This is another differentiator between the bigger events and the more mundane events. When we see the events produce we are seeing constant 60+ mph over the course of several hours...not just one gust tied into a convective band moving through.

It was a very tough forecast for sure. If I was coming off angry about the higher wind forecasts I apologize as that was not my intention at all. This really just goes to show how important communication is and how important it is to clearly communicate. But I never try to come across that way and I love hearing input from everyone and discussing the science behind everything. For this event, I didn't think we would see widespread significant wind gusts (60-70), but there were certainly a few more than I thought as well. This was also tied into that fine line of convection which really helped with these higher end wind gusts. I also agree, these torched low-levels and higher sfc dews would be a pretty strong indicator for higher-end wind gusts but the lapse rates were just horrific and I recall this being a huge differentiator between widespread higher-end wind potential and more localized higher-end gusts. Even going through so many bufkit profiles and playing around with the mixing layer depth...it was real tough to find consistent mixing drawing down super strong winds and I thought that was a big flag.