frostfern

The dewpoint gradient out ahead of the warm front is pretty insane here in SW Lower MI. There is a jump from mid 20s in the northeast to 60 in the far southwest corner.

Its nice to hear a good loud crack of thunder finally. First of this year here. I had only heard a few very soft distant rumbles before.

Widely scattered lighting strikes with surface dewpoints in the low 30s. Weird pattern. Thankfully temperatures are hanging in the 50s so RH isn't very low. The spring greenup isn't far enough along to prevent torching.

Both GFS and Euro now have three rainy systems through May 10. Missing the warm sector by 100 miles or so each one. Sad.

Yea. I imagine it can be even worse just west of the lake with an east wind. MCS low cloud debris, east wind off the lake, etc... all conspire to prevent good surface warming. It does get increasingly possible to hit 60 even with a very cold trough overhead by the middle of May, but those pesky afternoon instability showers often knock it back into the low 50s before the day is done.

One of the annoying things if you're watching the 850 mb maps. I usually figure +10 C or more means at least 70, but then you have bunch of convection passing by to the south and you're socked in with that shallow cold cloudy layer and sitting at 48 F despite +12 C at 850. Ugly shallow inversion just north of the warm front always happens.

Go away.

The summer warming trend in the eastern US has not come with a lot of real heatwaves. It's just consistently a little bit warmer on average. 2012 was the only "extreme" summer in recent memory. 2018 ended up pretty warm in the north, but it was almost entirely due to humidity and lack of cold front penetration. A lot of humid days with highs in the middle to upper 80s and muggy nights around 70. 2017 was the only cool summer in recent memory. Most have been warmer than average, but without any major heat waves.

Will have to keep an eye on where the leading edge of the cloud cover ends up. Its almost like a reverse dryline.

I wonder how often it is that the first day to surpass 70 is also the first 80. GRR hit 82 today. Previous maximum was 67 on the 12th and 13th.

GFS and Euro are back on board with a brief zonal severe threat around the 30th, sandwiched between typical trough patterns. Now that I mention it again it will probably be taken away again. Sad that is the only possible interesting thing to look forward too. This current warmup looks like a complete dud as far as any storms in my area. ZZZZZZZ......

I'm going with the Euro, but we'll see. GFS is often too flat. Early May doesn't look good on any of the ensembles, but there might be one warm day towards the end of April before Hudson Bay high wins out.

I don't want to jinx it, but it does look like another brief "torch" is possible at the very end of the month, at least for the western parts of the subforum. Could support some severe WX with one of those transient flat-topped/zonal ridges. Prospects of prolonged warmth in early May still don't look good though.

It's because you didn't upgrade your service to Spring Plus.

I guess last year was okay. It was very up and down through May though with some late frost. Unlike this year it was dry. 2020 was similarly very up and down with late frost. Flower season was very long both years as there was a mild stretch in early April that got things started early. This year is slow to get started. 2018 was also extremely slow to get started, then summer came in the middle of May and stayed.

The Euro is looking less boring now. Don't mind one last snow. There's decent QPF so it will be heavy enough to accumulate a little. Then the warm front is already pretty active on it's way north by Friday. At least no drought this year. When it finally warms up the green-up should be nice and lush.

I don't know what it was here IMBY. It was strong enough to toss empty garbage bins into the road. You just don't expect to drive into flying debris when the sun is out.

Another problem with the last system was there was a more subtle southern stream vort lobe that came around the base of the larger trough at the wrong time. This smaller wave had enough deep dynamic lift to trigger a lot of morning precip over the warm sector. That wrecked the steep mid-level lapse rates that were in place ahead of the system the day before. It also backed the 500 mb flow north of it so much that the deep level shear was gone until it finally sheared out to the north late in the day.

In the summer you can get decent CAPE without super steep mid-level lapse rates because there's more moisture. In the spring mid-level lapse rates are everything. Once large scale convective precipitation occurs, it not only cools the boundary layer, it warms the mid and upper levels through latent heat release. You can't really recover the cold temps aloft with surface heating alone. They need to advect back in from the west. That's my take on it.

April is definitely Big Dog Season for the northern plains. High elevation areas in and around Denver get clobbered some years too.

I just hope the next warmup features some sunshine along with the warmth.

Thursday is garbage day. My mom was driving and a bin blew into her car and cracked the windshield. I guess it suddenly blew into the road and there was no time to swerve or slow down. Bad day.

Warm and wet beats cold and grey by a little. Disappointing even here though.

Stuck in the low cloud soup all damn day and won't even hit 70. Sure, the dewpoint is 62, but if you're not outside to feel that it doesn't look much different from a gloomy day an the upper 40s. Then it's back to cold. Tomorrow is gonna feel nasty with the wind. Feeling kinda hopeless looking at the long range. GFS is probably cold biased after 7 days, but still too f**ing long. Just hoping the next warmup isn't another short rainy BS one like this week. Four years in a row now of cold springs and mild falls. Would honestly prefer the other way around. Feels like an AGW pattern shift or something.

I have depression when it's sunny. SAD just amplifies it.