frostfern

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.

I have time to chase. Just waiting. The sun is coming out and the dewpoint is in the lower 80s with mist in the air. Feels like walking through a warm wet washcloth.

MUCAPE to the west was peaking around 5000 J/kg into the wee hours of the morning. That is insane for this area. There was also a modest E-W oriented low level jet aimed right into it. It intuitively reminded me of a flame building backwards into the fuel.

This continues the trend for here this spring/summer. Not all the models were showing that line, but its frustrating the ridge wins out the one time you don’t want it to. There’s plenty of CAPE, but its just hard to get convection going with +12 at 700hpa. The upper 70s dewpoints are still on the way though. Oh boy. What fun.

Its hard to get 80 degree dews here with the cooler lake and lack of corn directly to the southwest, but 75+ dewpoints may creep in here tomorrow evening for the first time all summer. I remember some upper 70s dews in early June last year and the year before which was unusual. I don’t think the corn wasn’t anywhere near full grown then. This year its barely gotten above 70 and most days its been in the upper 50s or low 60s. Its been very comfortable compared to some years.

It seems like there's some high level smoke yet again along with the cirrus shield today. Maybe it's just pollution trapping due to the massive warm front cap aloft. Sky is that odd milky yellow color.

Hope to see an MCS come crashing in from the north on Wednesday.

Mid 30s dewpoints in Iowa in August doesn’t even seem climatologically possible without antecedent drought conditions.

ECMWF is way better for me, so long as it doesn’t trend any more SW with the boundary. It has a ridge rider pattern.

Would be nice to get one solid storm before the warmth is gone.

Ready 2 soak.

Where are you? I’m seeing massive towering clouds all over the eastern sky. Hard to believe they are actually a long ways away. Its not quite dark enough to see the lightning yet from here.

I’m having trouble looking forward to winter. Last year had some huge lake effect storms that made people not in the lake effect zones jealous, but there were also a ton of days with solid clouds and temps in the 30s. The constant darkness and gloom just gets to me after a while. I love snowstorms, but I get really tired of the endless gloomy periods.

The high yesterday was 65 at midnight. It stayed between 61 and 64 all day during daylight hours with a thick cloud deck pretty much at ground level, along with drizzle and showers. Rained 0.6”.

I was thinking more the period from Aug 25 to Sep 7 in 2018. There were a few tornadoes on Sep 1, but it was mostly a ton of lightning and heavy rain. I don’t know what it takes to get that kind of low-level jet with 70+ dews repeatedly surging up into MI vs stalling near the southern border as is more typical. If there was an easy way to access the data I’d look it up. I suspect something was going on in the Western Pacific, like recurving typhoons, but don’t know. It was atypical as the previous summer was pretty dry from what I recall. In any case, I think I’d much rather go on a spring chase vacation on the plains to witness a tornado.

Overall disappointing summer here too. The best storms were April 4-5. There was an ultra-rare baseball sized hail supercell I drive 20 miles south to see that evening, then loud cracking thunder that jolted me awake at 5am the next morning. The two big July I-94 squall lines came through at a bad times where I couldn’t chase. I wasn’t really feeling well enough to drive anyways though. Last year the best show IMBY was Sept 20, so I suppose there is still hope. It was completely non-severe but had amazing lightning nonetheless.

Frustrating how the models are more consistent long range than short range. The early ECMWF consistency didn’t really make a lot of sense though. I’d expect that kind of pattern with a developing low to jump around each run. I just hope the season lingers like it did 2018 and 2019. Those years were full of storms, and well north of I-80 warm sectors, right up to and even into October.

I noticed the dewpoint up with the lake breeze here yesterday.

It trended south.

GFS still refuses to budge. It doesn’t even show a good closed low until it’s moving away. Really hope the ECMWF doesn’t lose it too.

Thanks to the constant death ridge over the SW parts NA, there’s a subtropical jet that normally isn’t there this time of year. I have seen that jet appear in summer from time to time other years, but never this consistent. Between this and the neverending blocking from May through the first half of June, I don’t know how people can say its normal climatology. These patterns just didn’t used to lock in for such long periods.

Hope a nice solid squall line comes of this. Like halfway between GFS and ECMWF would be nice. It would be nice to know if the pattern that follows will be good too.

Yea. Individual major events are impossible to predict from teleconnections alone. Especially severe weather events. The El Nino phase does statistically favor Dixie Ally for severe though, and a strong one usually means a mild and dry winter for the upper Midwest. 2015 had GHDII though so its impossible to know for sure. I didn’t even remember that was a Nino winter as I wasn’t living in Michigan that year.