frostfern

Is anyone following the unusual storm that caused extreme flooding in Greece? The storm caused up to 20 inches of rain in 12 hours! Its wild for a place that normally gets 25 inches annually. A cutoff low wrapped an “atmospheric river” of extremely humid air originating from the southern Mediterranean into one of the more mountainous portions of the Aegean coast. Its hard to find detailed meteorological info on the event.

I'm kind of annoyed I didn't just stay home now. I missed a really insane positive CG barrage right over city. My dad told me the picture frames in the house were all crooked because the thunder shook the entire house. The tornadic portion was a ways north, but there was apparently a lot of lighting bolts well to the south. Everyone has commented the thunder was unusually loud and seemed different from normal. I wish I knew some way to get archived lighting data.

I was looking at archive from RadarScope. It costs like $15 per month for the Pro version, but I only upgrade before a good event then cancel the next month. That's cool that thomp2mp found a site that offers it for free. It looks like there were broadly rotating supercells out ahead of the main downdraft / wind-shift line that was moving south. The data shows rotation passing over the area, but it looks like its mostly ahead of the downdraft where the damaging winds are shown coming from the north. Was there two different events, one from the south, then another from the north? The exact time would be helpful. I think if there was a tornado in your area it was probably a shallow gust-nado type that the radar might not detect. The way the line was absorbing rotating elements definitely gave the wind a boost in some areas. The Williamston and Comstock Park tornadoes were both a result of downdraft-dominant segments catching up to and absorbing supercells. I normally think cell mergers are not helpful for tornado formation, but in this case it looks like they caused a temporary boost. The mergers did limit the track lengths though, thankfully. There probably was enough shear and overall energy for a major long track tornado if a more discrete cell had formed somewhere and remained separate.

On radar it looked at least as strong as the Gaylord tornado last year. Only a tiny part of that path was rated EF-3. The trailer park wreckage was horrific and deadly, but it was only rated EF-2 since that’s just what happens to trailers in a tornado.

Where do you live? It seems there are only two locations being evaluated in the GRR region, Webberville in Ingham County and Belmont in Kent County. Reviewing the radar loops both of them were associated with brief supercells being absorbed into the line from the front.

Oh no! You didn’t lose any trees did you? There were trees down everywhere in southern Ionia CO. I ended up south of Portland and it was developing on top of me before I could find anywhere with a view. The area was so woodsy and branches and limbs were everywhere. When I got back to I-96 I thought I was home free but then there was 1.5 hour traffic delay from trees across I-96. I didn’t dare try an alternate route. There was a tornado warning back at my parent’s place and the sirens went off. They went to the basement, but the possibly tornadic circulation was quite a ways northeast and none of us even lost power.

Big tree across I96

Stuck in a traffic. Debris on the road.

I decided to chase and MBY got slammed. lol. I got screwed because new cells popped up ahead of the line and slowed me down so much I couldn’t get ahead. It caught up. Derecho chasing is just impossible. Incredible lighting but hard to see bolts due to so much rain.

Should fill in soon.

It was weird seeing light fog at a temperature of 82 earlier today.

My guess is the stuff around Milwaukee will struggle to move out over the lake because of lake breeze divergence at peak heating, but new convection will form along 131 just north of I-96 around 7 or 8 pm and move southeast.

There is a subtle wave at 700 mb over eastern WI. The 700 mb temp drops slightly just ahead of it indicating lift. I think we have to wait for that to cross the lake.

I don't know how I missed it. There is some cumulus popping up in the middle of Lake Michigan now.

There is initiation in Wisconsin now. A good sign that the cap is breakable. I wonder if SPC will extend the risk there. Hopefully they are writing up a mesoscale discussion.