frostfern

It seems like summers have been trending dryer in the Great Lakes which sucks if you like thunderstorms and don't like droughts.

Do you think it would be worth trying to chase anything over central/eastern Michigan tomorrow? Storms will be moving so fast and the cloud bases will be low. I worry it may not be worth the anxiety, but then I will be disappointed if I miss something good. Scattered wet-microburst type wind damage looks a lot more likely than good supercell structure with tornado potential honestly.

It trends towards a death ridge when the trough finally moves out of the northeast. All the action will be in the northern plains unless an MCS can manage to dive down the east side of the ridge before it eats crap.

I spoke too soon. One run looked more progressive, then it went back to the cutoff solution.

It looks like CAPE increases late overnight into the morning over SW Michigan due to colder air aloft advecting in from the southwest. 1000 j/kg is enough for supercells with such extreme wind fields. I wonder if there will be a tornado watch with this. It's almost like a early spring / late fall severe weather setup.

Next week looks good for thunder according to ECMWF. Showing a progressive zonal flow with heat over the plains.

ECMWF has a good thunderstorm pattern for the western lakes next week now. EML with big CAPE looks pretty likely. It's just a matter of when/where favorable shear/forcing occurs.

I'd rather have thunderstorms than this stupid tropical system. With no EML and the primary band coming through during the night there probably won't be much of any thunder... then it gets cool and dry. Weird to have an October-like system with strong winds and a cold push in June.

Line totally weakened and split apart over West Michigan. Outflow got way ahead of the convection. Ludington got a pretty strong cell with a lot of lighting, but the southern part of the line kind of ate crap despite decent lingering instability and steep EML lapse rates.

I've noticed high temperatures can be kind of finicky based on when and where high dewpoints are able to mix up into the dry capping layer above. Sure enough, wherever the model was over-doing surface dewpoints, temperatures over-performed. It had dewpoints up in the mid-70s there. If that had verified the temp wouldn't have hit 100. Only in those super-extreme July heatwaves like 1995 do you get the triple-digit heat along with extreme humidity. In a normal pattern it's usually one or the other.

The good thing about this time of night is storms don't eat crap over the lake like they do if its still mid-afternoon. Should just slide right over the marine layer.

Yea. I enjoyed watching the Florida-style lake breeze stuff last week, but it was pretty hit-or-miss in terms of actually having a proper storm in your back yard. I'm hoping for a good light show tonight. Though the storms themselves are still a long way off I can see the anvil canopy spreading in from the NW now.

The line looks kind of stung out in an E-W orientation. It's not the best orientation for shear / cold-pool interaction. The storms seem further east than what was in the models too.

The thermodynamic setting is similar but the shear doesn't look quite as good extending to south and east. Derecho's can sometimes be CAPE-driven towards the end of their life-cycle though. The MCS can generate it's own shear via a rear-inflow jet. I'm worried if there's strong dry rear-inflow jet it could re-intensify coming in off the lake like in 1998. Sometimes a very cold Lake Michigan marine layer causes an air-hockey table effect. The rear-inflow can accelerate as it glides over the smooth surface of the marine inversion. It then crashes to the ground when it reaches the shore.

Lake breeze micro-cell on the southeast side of GRR just produced a nice tropical downpour. Only heard one soft rumble so far though. I would like to hear more thunder, but cells are just getting started and are still a bit low topped.

The CAMS are showing northern end of the line now just west of Chicago making it all the way up to GRR. I don't see it producing much lighting as whatever CAPE there is is tall and skinny, but the rain is going to be a problem as instead of moving east the line is supposed to just kind of slowly pivot around the low similar to a tropical rain band. 3-4" rain totals are not needed.

Does the instability actually reach Wisconsin and Michigan? Older runs just looked like a general rain.

I just remember it being kind of cloudy compared to normal. Or maybe I just couldn't enjoy the nice ones.

Based off the latest ECMWF, you may hit the first 80 before me. Maybe not right on the water, but inland certainly. Dumb blocking pattern means the first torch will hit places north and west while areas further south and east have cool northeasterly winds. Western Michigan might eek some mid 70s since we're the farthest from Lake Huron. I'm ready for 80, but I won't complain if it can at least be sunny. Just praying the cutoff doesn't retrograde any more than currently shown. I feel bad for Ohio people though. Really annoying pattern after already dealing with cold blasts the past two weeks.

Didn't get many of them last fall either though. It went from warm and wet to cold and wet. Summer humidity lingered late then winter came early. The transition was pretty abrupt and not very sunny... a lot like spring.

Today feels legitimately warm with full sunshine and light winds even though it's not even 60. Only nice thing about having a horribly cold early May is 60 degrees still feels somewhat good (so long as the sun is out and it isn't too windy). Would be nice to live in a place that gets a solid month or two of this kind of weather rather than just a day or two in transition.

I've never been to the Asian tropics. Costa Rica is kind of interesting with gap-wind patterns and micro-climates.

A death ridge in May sometimes means severe storms up north. May 1998 was hot and stormy in Michigan. WSW as opposed to SSW upper flow is usually better for the Upper Midwest. You need a good westerly component off the rockies in the 850-500 hPa layer to get steeper mid-level lapse rates. Otherwise the best instability is confined to the plains despite good dewpoints (most of May-June 2018). North-South meandering jet is bad whether it's a ridge or a trough. Somewhat zonal but displaced north is the best for anywhere north of I-80.

I think we'd need a major volcanic eruption for that to happen. With the reduced air traffic due to the pandemic, low temperatures on clear nights might be a degree or two colder than otherwise in high-air-traffic regions though... like anywhere in a 300 mile radius of Chicago. Who would have thought air-traffic contrail pollution can protect fruit growers. Of course only passenger flights are affected right now, so it might not be quite as extreme an effect as after 9/11 when all planes were grounded for a short time.

Only years I remember green maple leaves on May 1st are 2010 and 2012. Most years they're open but still have that early-spring reddish hue. This year they were mostly not open at all until the brief warmth hit last Saturday. If you have a lot of Norway maples around you might see more green as those will open early and green. Alder trees also leaf very early and are light green right away. I noticed the early flowers have hung on forever this year. Things have been really spaced out since there was some early warmth followed by cold.