frostfern

The Morch, April, May had some amazing lightning shows and of course the surprise tornado. After that it was just off-and-on heat, underperforming dewpoints, and weak dry cold fronts. Spring was interesting, summer was boring. Lately it has been the opposite. Most severe opportunities are mid-June or later... more like typical climatology.

It's really up in the air at this point. If the elevated stuff currently over southern Minnesota reaches my side of the lake this afternoon there could be a supercell or two that becomes surface based. The surface wind will certainly be backed along the warm front, pooling some higher dewpoints up against the lake meso-high. Even without discrete cells, a lake-breeze / warm-front combo can produce QLCS tornadoes and/or mesocyclone wind damage. That has happened more than once here, even later at night.

I don’t know how to feel about a derecho followed by 100+ heat indeces IMBY. My folks are in the process of moving and having power out into Tuesday will be a nightmare. Hope it misses south honestly.

Yea. If I were them I'd adjust the orientation. It will probably be more NW-SE. Northern Indiana will get hit. Northern Illinois, not so likely.

Maybe their thinking is the farther north solutions have less wind threat due to the best instability being slightly elevated in those cases. The warm front is moving north and will have some clouds associated with it. In any case, I think 80 degree dewpoints will eventually overcome any cap once a strong cold pool is established. Even if Illinois is missed, it could still do the hard right turn moving into Michigan then back build across Indiana.

It would be nice to have a progressive MCS coming out of the west for once this year. I get tired of going between a ridge where the good convection is always NW, and a subtropical cutoff where it's just cloudy muggy soup with not a lot of instability to work with.

Yea. They were slow movers. Where it did rain it rained hard, but a lot of places missed out. There wasn't a ton of thunder here, just occasional soft peals, but the rainfall rates were very tropical. There was just under 2 inches here yesterday, but there was far less just a few miles north and west.

There is a stationary rain band stalled IMBY. The feature really isn't moving at all. SE side of town is getting absolutely inundated. Surprised no flash flood warning. The puddles are huge already.

Hard tropical rains today. Just a little soft rumbling thunder, but major downpours. Looks like no drought any time soon this year.

Well. People take tornado warnings very seriously in Indiana. Not so much in northern Michigan.

Hi-res radar loops I made of Gaylord tornado event. Basic Reflectivity Loop Close Up Radar Analysis

I'm getting Flagstaff AZ. The page isn't working.

Does anyone know where I can find the 3PM sounding before the tornado? Also archived local mesoanalysis at a similar time. I'm making my own writeup.

I remember looking at the radar. I was watching the cell for about 45 minutes. It seemed like there was some contamination of the velocity field from birds or something at one point. It was hard to read. They usually don't issue a tornado warning until they see evidence of a strong circulation near the ground. I recall the circulation was evident a few scans before the tornado warning went out, but it was fairly broad looking. I have seen many similar looking circulations that produced minor RFD wind damage but never produced a proper tornado. I do feel that given the classic look of the cell and the path of the circulation towards a populated area, they could have put out the warning a little earlier and risked a false alarm. It's a tough call though. Hindsight is 20/20. I think I will download the full radar loop.

I think I ate at the Culver's that got wrecked three years ago.

I made the right decision. I saw how fast the predicted storm motion was. I didn't have a partner/driver. I'm not going to chase tornadic storms moving at 55 mph through the woods alone. Need AT LEAST two people in the vehicle.

The terrain goes from 580 feet elevation near Traverse City to 1350 feet at Gaylord. That amount of elevation gain was enough to hold back the marine layer (like a dam) and tap much greater surface instability as the storm moved inland. This allowed the elevated circulation to intensify and dig down to the surface.

The clear air CGs are impressive. Also looks like significant hail again. Too bad its in the middle of the woods.

Guess its good Im not there. It moved dangerously fast through a lot of trees. Hard to find an escape if caught.

Its looks bad news. I saw a debris signature.

Monster circulation headed straight for Gaylord. I didn’t go.

I’ve given up on chasing. Cells will be moving NE way too fast.

I have only heard one semi-close lightning strike this season. Late April I think. All it does is drizzle lately.