cyclone77

Don't have much time to type much, but just took a quick look at the 06z NAM, and it looks pretty nasty for parts of southern and southeast Iowa, and down into northern MO for Thu.  Backed surface flow, plenty of juice, and nice jet support.  Forecast soundings look pretty nice.  Conditional setup of course.  If we can keep surface flow backed like in subsequent runs this could get interesting.

Kind of hard to grade this winter.  The first half was pretty bad, but the Feb train of snows and the late March snowstorm that deposited close to a foot of wet cement made up for it.  Then add in the measurable snows that lasted deep into April.  We finished above average as well.  Guess Ill give it a B+.  Even though we had some very interesting and unusual events late in the season, and finished above average I can't give it anything above that with such a poor stretch during the prime portion of the winter.  Late-season stat padding events are fun, but cannot entirely replace the mid-season events that would have more staying power.

Looks like things could get somewhat interesting for parts of the sub next week.  Euro brings in some deep moisture by mid-week.  Depending on how things time out, and evolve somewhere in the Wed-Thu time frame may be something to watch.  Wednesday is looking pretty interesting out in the central/southern Plains.  

32 minutes ago, IWXwx said:

LOL at this MI TV weather guy getting upset with his cohosts over the Year Without A Spring.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/videos/trending-now-videowall/michigan-weatherman-freaks-out-on-complaining-co-hosts/g1dgsxzje6gw3q_rayjiyzlwib_ynmxv

Kind of feels like they wanted to make a vid that would go "viral".

Nice to see deep moisture shouldn't be a worry.  Just need the timing of the waves to play ball.  Encouraging to see the Euro continue to beat the drum.

Op Euro dished out another powerhouse system for the 13th today.  Deepened the surface low down to at least 970mb.  

As I looked out the window tonight and watched the snowflakes blow around in the street lights I realized that the first autumn snowflakes of '18-'19 could be less than 6 months away.  

Well one positive thought about this never-ending winter of 2018, looks like we'll be hacking off about a month of the mowing season.  Maybe we'll get lucky and also skip over the ghastly dandelion season as well.  

1 hour ago, Hoosier said:

Chicago Storm gets an orange tag... on April Fools day.  Hmmm

Just kidding.  Congrats man.  

Congrats!

I just realized that last year on this date we hit 79 degrees, and MLI hit 81.  What a difference a year can make lol.

Posted this in the lakes sub, but guess I'll post it here as well.  My time lapse from near Nelson MO, or about 30 miles west of Columbia MO.

16 hours ago, ice1972 said:

Time lapse......

 

Interesting to see your perspective.  I saw those same cu bubbling up, but they were southeast of where I was.  

For two runs in a row now the EC has a relatively decent setup over the eastern Dakotas/western MN for Friday.  Hopefully it's on to something as the GFS is quite different.  Decent mid-level flow arrives atop a plume of deep moisture/instability.  Wind profiles look pretty respectable.  Something to watch anyway.

Pretty amazing radar loop from this thing.  

http://weather.cod.edu/satrad/nexrad/index.php?type=AMA-N0Q-1-96

Thing I remember most about this day was the video from some dude's backyard.  Tornado narrowly missed his neighborhood and one of the neighbor's tree blew over.

I was 15, and about to start high school sophomore year that fall.

Don't remember much about that summer but do remember the way TWC used to be in those videos.  Forgot about the blinking radar where the heavier radar returns were.  Classic stuff right there.

Don't know if this was ever posted here, but this is pretty damn sad. Her brother died after graduating from high school just before the tornado hit.

Something interesting I just noticed for the first time. Looking at the 2234z scan you can already see the rapid intensification of the meso just off the surface. The 1.5° tilt shows over 170kt g2g, compared to a broad 100kt g2g at the lowest tilt (0.5°). The next scan at 0.5° at 2239 jumped up to about 180kt g2g.

Definitely a good example of why it's important to keep an eye on the various tilts.

0.5°

1.5°

Don't know if this one was posted yet. Sort of an interesting perspective here shot at the University of Alabama. The video starts about 15min before the tornado moves past when it was still raining. It's interesting watching the updraft base/wall cloud/tornado appear out of the rain of the FFD.

That damage was 1 block west and 1 block north of the vid basically. I've always thought the center was probably a bit farther north when compared to the survey or the tornado had a much stronger northern side when compared to the south side, if that makes sense.

The tornado was taking a bit of a north jog at this time so the people in that house were extremely lucky.

Wow, that's real close.

Just by looking at GE the damage just northwest of that location looks very bad.

The location of this video (Over by JHS has been posted)

It was taken at 24th and Minnesota, it's on the same street as the Home Security video posted above but 3 blocks farther north. The NWS survey has the center crossing very close to this house.

Lot of cussing:

Wonder how close this was to the EF-5 damage that occurred near the high school.

Did he say manhole covers? I wonder if he was talking about the street ones or the water ones as well? The street ones are huge and heavy and in the road. The water ones are lighter and are just 'lids' that sit on top of the grass on the openings for the water shut-off valve in front of residences.

The water company had to go up and down every street in the area looking for missing covers that either disappeared or were destroyed by heavy equipment running over them, they did this before winter set in so the shut-off valves wouldn't freeze.

I remember looking through Tim Marshall's pics on FB awhile back from Joplin. There was a picture of a missing man hole cover in the street. I thought that was amazing in itself, but if there were 30 more instances like that, that's really amazing.

Had the opportunity to sit in on a presentation tonight by the EM director from Joplin. Some notes from his speech.

7,500 residential homes damaged or destroyed

9,200 residents displaced

530 businesses destroyed

30 businesses will not be returning

4,500 employees affected

17,000 tetanus shots given out

The hospital saw an increase of 100 patients every 15 minutes yet the hospital (St Johns) evacuated totally in 90 minutes.

The hospital moved into a basketball arena and they were doing surgery within an hour of opening.

At one point, ambulances waiting to transport were 4 wide and 20 deep.

Freeman Hospital had 10 deep waiting for each of 4 operating rooms.

100% of primary streets were cleared 36hrs after the storm.

5000 emergency services personnel from 435 different agencies responded.

6 total passes were made looking for survivors.

Last alive was rescued on Tuesday.

The tornado removed 31 man hole covers which have never been found.

Three fire trucks destroyed.

Two fire stations destroyed.

3 million cubic yards of debris removed.

90-10 split of reimbursement.

Most sheltered at any point 650

2977 mobile housing units ordered.

569 families needed temp housing.

Currently 453 remain in temp housing.

118,197 volunteers registered for duty

720,834 hours of volunteer service logged.

54 percent of the city has been rebuilt or is being rebuilt at 9 months.

St Johns did NOT shift off its foundation. The upper three floors tilted 3".

Amazing stats. It's great that the person that was rescued on Tuesday was in fact rescued, but man that had to be hell up until the rescuing. The missing man hole covers is interesting as well.

...Overall, Tim Marshalls was the most interesting presentation, the others were kind of a let down since there were people filling in for others.

Yeah his presentation was very interesting. His perspective/evaluation of the structural failures from an engineering standpoint was quite eye opening. A lot of structures failed under relatively low wind loads. The Franklin Tech building especially. I remember seeing some before photos of that building, and it appeared to be a very strong, well built building. Tim's survey revealed some interesting/startling weaknesses in the structure of that facility.

After Tim's presentation he answered a few questions from the audience. One question brought up the impact on how much debris loading had on structural integrity. Also, the extreme amount of debris swirling in the large tornado no doubt contributed to the accelerated failure of structures that may not have failed, or failed as quickly without the aid of added wind-blown debris. Such a large tornado moving over a densely populated location will no doubt lead to greater damage than would normally be expected relative to wind velocity, as the added debris will surely aid in damage/wind load on structures within the circulation. All of that could conceivably open a big can of worms on how much debris loading in an urban environment can impact EF-scale values in a positive direction, but in the end all that really matters to most is the damage the tornado does (EF scale damage).

New video uploaded Feb 15th. This is over by the high school.This is similar to the gas station video. It does appear a gust front hits the area first before the tornado arrives and there is such a long duration of destruction.

THERE IS A LOT OF CUSSING ON HERE.... but.... wow.

Scary vid to be sure.

What I don't get though is the same person in the above vid also posted this one..