frostfern

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.

Best lightning here was Sunday night with the initial warm/occluded front. It was mostly very small cells popping up between 3 and 4 am to my northwest, but somehow they had quite a few of those high-current CGs that shook the ground despite being a good 5 miles away. Just hoping to hear a little bit more thunder this evening before the cold front is totally through.

Yea. That southern stream system backs the 500 mb flow to its north. It's a bubble of weak shear and crapvection that has to get out of the way.

This is incredible for Iowa. I reminds me of Pilger Nebraska.

If it doesn’t hit 70 today or tomorrow its gonna be a while. Accumulating snow is possible IMBY next week. Never fails.

It looks like the kind of situation where coverage peaks after dark, but there’s enough instability it won’t even matter. It will just prolong the tornado threat into the late evening. Might get some really long tracked tornadic supercells.

The lakes aren't as big of a factor when you have a strong low level jet and with a backed surface wind there can even be some enhancement from the lake breeze. Though they don't tend to produce a directly over the lake, supercells can usually cross it just fine. I think the really big outbreaks had an exceptionally strong westerly dry push off the Rockies. The dryline moved all the way east to the MS river. There was a similar type of event in November of 2013, but of course the heating was less due to the November sun angle. If that kind of synoptic event happened in April with the longer days there could very well have been very large destructive tornadoes into Michigan. As it was there were still a few QLCS-type tornadoes into Michigan with waning instability after dark.

Yea. It's not a terrible day, but the front just came through at a bad time. I enjoyed waking up to some claps of thunder around 4am this morning. As much as you can enjoy being awoken too early. Somehow missed the rain completely though. I think a cell passed just barely north.

The synoptic warm front will be way north, but Tuesday evening/night convection will have neutralized the steeper lapse rates until more can advect in from the SW. Iowa into Illinois won't have a problem but that's too far to drive. Its so hard to get good instability into S Mich/ or N Indiana this time of year. I guess weak tornadoes can still happen with a skinny CAPE when the dynamics are really amped, but not as fun as something like 4/7/20. That was a weird NW flow situation though. I don't know how the old school outbreaks in the 50s and 70s happened. Somehow there wasn't convection the previous day in the plains to eat up the instability?

Hopefully we can do a first 70 tomorrow. 67 on March 17 is the highest so far.

ECMWF is hinting at a strong MCS rolling east out of Iowa Tuesday evening. It would follow the northern edge of a nice EML plume coinciding with warm sector dews in the lower 60s. There's decent mid-level lapse rates with the first wave on Monday too, but the problem is the dewpoints are only low to mid 50s with that one due to the last cold front completely scouring the GOM. How this first wave plays out will effect where the warm front ends up being Tuesday evening though.