luckyweather

NWS 7 day doesn’t have a high above 79 here west of Chicago taking us into 8/21. It’s not extreme in one direction or another, but I cannot recall a stretch this long in recent Augusts so mild. A torch in the vicinity of Labor Day seems like a seasonal tradition, I’d be shocked if we didn’t have one, that said GEFS shows mild / below average heights through the end of August into met fall with the positive anomalies locked up northwest and northeast. We may have lucked out on the ridiculous heat much of the N. Hemisphere saw this summer, but I don’t want to gloat too much, I fear our ticket will get punched soon enough.

An active December will be a welcome change of pace as opposed to the past several years. (Save for tornado outbreaks in Kentucky.)

Michsnowfreak takes over DTX and I’m working on LOT, we’ll collectively drive the board insane. Headed up to trek the mt baker snowfield in Washington next week to tide me over, and maybe get into some of the snowfields in the Canadian Rockies if the Mounties let me across the border. I’ll post pics to earn my ban.

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My weather station is out of service so nothing scientific on rain, just heavy, and had some brief pea sized hail on the cell/line that just went through Rockford. Good lightning producer but no wind to speak of before during or after.

I respect your opinion. I have one too. I love this place. I love our weather. No place I’d rather be.

I love it here at 43 north / 90 west. NC IL is my own personal paradise. Admittedly if I wasn’t an hour from ORD for a quick escape when I need a change of scenery maybe I’d feel different. To each their own.

Top event of the winter. Not even close.

Ripping on the IL/WI state line in ne Winnebago county IL. Stacking up, right around 1” so far.

Flight was cancelled. Now I try to be a nice person, but doorbell cam still showing not even a snowman fart on the front walk. Beavis topping rant incoming.

Sitting here north of Rockford staring at 0.0. Have to fly out of ORD this afternoon. As bad as it gets. No consolation prize of snow at home, white knuckle drive to ORD, and likely delay/flight cancel. I will not feel guilty next Rockford jackpot.

N of Rockford here, yeah, we had the snow magnet for a time but seems we’ve lost it. Times running out on a nw shift for current storm, but it wouldn’t take a whole hell of a lot for us to be in the money. Still a chance…

Geos

Civil war 1 - whole sub vs Ohio. Civil war 2 - Chicago vs UP. We ain’t never needed a spread the wealth storm as bad as we need one right now.

Unpopular wish - Tonga volcano keeps emitting and creates a year without a summer and it snows in June.

Short range thread has devolved into a civil war vs Ohio. Sad times. Need a GHD 3 for unity and sanity.

Day 1, 2022 looking good.

Losing hope. The PV is staying locked up tight. Wanted to hate bump the wad posts from early season but I don’t think I’m going to get the chance. From Judah’s blog last Wednesday - below. Since then the progged cooldown has disappeared. The first path seems to be the inevitable outcome. What a waste of a season. I feel that we have approached a fork in the road for the winter. The first path is an overall mild winter with an ongoing T-S-T coupling that favors a positive AO, a strong stratospheric PV and relatively mild temperatures. We are currently entering a period that is an interruption to the overall mild pattern, it will likely last into the beginning of the year but much of January and February will be mild. The alternate path is that we are concluding our extensive mild period and the continuation of the mild period is being discontinued or disrupted by favorable placement of ridge/high pressure centers that in the short term is allowing the NH landmasses to cool significantly. But I do think for the relatively cold pattern to have longevity, it needs to involve the stratospheric PV either through a classical SSW or alternatively a stretched PV but in the former disruption, it would likely need to occur multiple times to have a discernable impact on the seasonal means.

get outta here!

That this is the year in play and seemingly a lock for latest measurable just sucks for a winter lover at 43n. December has been plain ugly. Still optimistic for the switch flip into 2022. GFS hinting at -nao and strong Greenland block, hints of PV disruption last week of the year, etc.

The Doppler on wheels fleet doesn’t really leave the plains and isn’t broken out for every event. May end up being that the current era of ef5’s are just storms with a Dow there to get a good wind measurement. Not condoning that as that’s going to just be a skewed/biased dataset, but it seems to be the way.

The low humidity cold airmass we had 12/5-12/7 was some fantastic snow making weather with 10-15 degree wet bulbs. I failed to take a pic at peak base but you get the idea with this pic from when I was laying it down. The past 18 hours have zapped it all away.

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This is actually a really interesting way to look at tornados and weather events, imho. It very well could have produced the highest recorded energy release of any tornado ever. In the linked paper below from 2007-2013 the tornado with the most total energy release is the Tallulah-Yazoo City-Durant tornado of April 24, 2010 with a total kinetic energy of 516.7 terajoules. TKE is a formula of length, width, and wind speed. I don’t think there’s an all time TKE ranking so for sure others likely had a higher TKE. For comparison a low end, relatively short ef0/ef1 would have a tke of 10-20 gigajoules. Average background atmosphere kinetic energy in settled weather would be sub 1,000 joules, so just an amazingly massive concentration and release of energy in a long, wide, f3-f5 like this event likely will end up being. A lightning strike is like 1bn joules of energy transfer, so maybe a prolific lightning event would end up with higher exchange of energy between cloud and ground. Be interesting to understand and rank the most energetic events. Would a derecho a la Iowa 2020 have more tke than a long track f5 monster? Ref (from 2015): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4489157/#!po=1.66667

rip Texas power grid redux