frostfern

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.

This is what 90" SWE looks like. Mount Rainier in early April 2008. The depth was 19 feet.

I’m just annoyed Alek had me thinking the earlier low was 968, not some BS at 200+ hours. Not that the GFS has that much better chance of verifying a bomb inside 200 hours, or even inside 24 if we’re totally honest.

At 264 hours.

If current op runs verify it could get very warm and very windy. Haven’t seen a 980 low in April in recent years. A little scary if there’s any instability with it.

I prefer a share-the-wealth more. Don't need tornadoes, but I'd like enough instability to actually hear some thunder. It's been a long time here. 3/5 had a lot of wind but no thunder here.

I lived in Western Washington for 8 years. I noticed the "cloudy" days there are not as solidly overcast as they are here. During cool season there's always that marine instability that breaks up the clouds between showers. You get a lot of mostly cloudy days, but not a lot of solidly overcast days. Solid stratus, when it happens, is more of a late spring and summer problem. There the transition from winter to spring is so boring and gradual you hardly even notice. It's early summer that's extremely changeable, as the weather changes dramatically depending on whether the flow is onshore or not. I prefer the Midwest though. Much more interesting. I could never live in a perpetually scorching climate either.

Torch / freeze cycles are a Michigan problem. We have a lot of fruit trees.

It looks like a hailer setup with dews in the 50s and steep lapse rates. It's just that the instability doesn't make it very far east.

It looks like an active pattern with warmth trying to build north out of the southern plains once the weekend trough moves out. The GFS isn't really honing in a particular system amping though, so I don't trust it. GFS almost never amps the correct wave coming out of the SW US. Op ECMWF is amped early with more warmth but less moisture return. Ensembles are still spread all over. It looks like there will be a battle between spring and winter shaping up, but its not really within range as to how it plays out. No matter where the frontal zone actually ends up, a SW flow pattern will materialize at some point, which is more exciting than what we're having now.

In early April I can still suck it up. I start getting upset when it's still cloudy and stuck in the 40s and 50s in May. Just waiting for the blossom-killing torch/freeze cycle we seem to get every year in late April / early May. Would be nice to avoid that for once.

Diurnal timing has a huge impact this time of year. Pray the system is a little faster.

The general GL troughyness developing in the 6-10 period after a brief zonal pattern looks real though.... unfortunately. Wish it was just the OP GFS so I could throw it out. I'm over winter when "cold" is upper 30s and melting pellet snow. Only high elevation plains and far north still get proper big dog snows this time of year. I don't really understand season total stat nerds. Just can't get excited about stat padding. If it's no longer on the ground I just don't care anymore. Not even 6" of concrete will really excite me this time of year. Winter had it's last chance in March. It's over.

Looks like no thunder north of Dixie for the first half of April. I don't really see a snowstorm either. Just 40s and blah... maybe some 50s if we see the sun. Pretty boring... as usual for April these past few years. Can only hope for a pattern change in the latter half at this point.

It has always been bad IMO. It had a few good years, then it went back to its normal bullsh*ttery.

Kinda far out but March 30 could be interesting for IL, IN, and even southern MI. Need a deep low to get enough moisture north after this cold pattern though.