frostfern

There was also a tiny cell over the GRR airport this afternoon. Black cloud base drifted right overhead, but the rain shaft only appeared once it moved off to the SE of me. I heard about two claps of thunder as it slowly moved away, but not even a single drop of rain fell IMBY.

Same happened at GRR. Little backdoor cooling off Lake Huron and a thin cirrus canopy around mid-day wasn't enough. Lower dews allowed it rebound late in the afternoon once full sunshine returned. It briefly hit 90 between 5pm and 6pm. From here on out the only event that could possibly thwart a long streak of 90s will be random thunderstorms. I don't think the coverage will be widespread enough tomorrow, and wednesday through friday look so hot that it may hit 90 early, so even an afternoon storm/outflow probably won't get in the way.

I don't think it's going to get to 90 here today either. There's definitely some kind of very weak back-door cold front here that the models didn't emphasize enough. The easterlies brought in an airmass that's a few degrees cooler and also a few degrees dryer (dewpoints dropping down into the lower 60s). There's even some pop-up storms in the far SW corner where this little weak backdoor front is converging with the lake breeze.

Well, a lot of places will need a good rain, especially the southeastern part of the state. 2012 was very very dry into August. There was a derecho around the 4th, but it missed most places to the south. There was spotty severe weather (some large hail), but significant rainfall was scattered at best.

The problem with only looking at deaths to estimate the true infection rate is it ignores changes in behavior. In general older people are being more cautious. It's mainly 20 and 30 somethings going to bars and parties. These are the main super-spreading type events. In Lansing close to 100 cases were linked to a single freaking bar!!! While the initial infected are mostly mild cases involving young people, when the amount of community spread reaches a certain threshold, older people will be involved again and death rates will climb again. Many vulnerable people still have to work and shop and they will come in contact with careless spreaders. Also not that not all non-deadly cases are "mild". Even people in their 20s who never required hospitalization say it was the worst illness in their life and nobody even knows how long certain problems last. Many people still have symptoms after 2 months!!! Even people who were never hospitalized!!! Many people never know they had it, but others become ill for a protracted period of time. It isn't a brief illness like the flu.

Hope models are wrong. There is an annoying tendency for the ring of fire to skip Michigan completely. No guarantee it will even rain here significantly any time in the next week. Nothing sucks more than a dry cold front after a scorching heat wave.

It seems Lake Michigan has already warmed to the point where it's adding humidity to the air. The wind switch from easterly to northwesterly added a decided amount of humidity without knocking the temperature down much at all.

It seems a little dryer here today compared to yesterday with a better east wind again. Don't know if there was a little bit of a backdoor coldfront push as it's actually little cooler as well. It's only 86 whereas yesterday it was already 90 at this time. Maybe it's also the band of high clouds overhead right now throwing the forecast off, but I don't think it will reach low 90s today, even with lower dewpoints. It was annoying how the very weak lake breeze just seemed to add humidity without really cooling it off at all the past couple days. Dewpoint somehow managed to creep up to 70 in the narrow little lake breeze convergence zone, along with low 90s temps. Heat index was definitely worse than forecast due to lake breeze.

Illinois has always had more general summer convective rainfall than Michigan and it's a sharp gradient right near southern Lake Michigan. I think maybe the gradient has shifted a little from being more NW-SE oriented to NNW-SSE oriented. For instance, northern Wisconsin may be getting more thunderstorm days while NE Ohio / SE Michigan / SE Ontario are getting less. I wish I could look at the data to confirm this though. It just the mid-summer pattern though. Increased stratiform precip in every other seasons has caused a general increase in precipitation overall. Also, infrequent but very heavy rain events associated with tropical moisture may be becoming more common and this can easily cancel any drying trend due to decrease in continental ridge-rider type MCS activity.

Lake Michigan is a major barrier in these weak-flow patterns. Chicago is a wet summer microclimate with ample lake-breeze convergence whenever there is SW flow. SE flow that is moist enough to actually trigger thunder with lake convergence is more rare. SW flow is always the most moist.

The arctic was cooler back then. Climate change is reducing the baroclinicity. These amplified wavy jets, east coast cutoffs, etc.. are garbage for t-storms in lake shadow areas.

Highly amplified patterns seem to be becoming more common. It's either a massive ridge in the center of the CONUS with NW flow, or digging east coast cutoff low. Both scenarios are mostly dry east of Lake Michigan, because the low-level jet is confined either the Upper Mississippi Valley (former case) or High Plains (later case). More zonal patterns that bring interesting weather to the Great Lakes by pulling the low-level jet east are so transient lately.

The sad thing is some places in the world have managed to keep numbers low without hanging a threat of destitution on millions. The barrier to management in the US is ideological.

You better believe lots of people will place blame and not have a lot of sympathy for the selfish.

Could also load up on Lysol. Take a long ass needle and inject it into the lungs as a preventive measure.

If people were willing to fight a virus like they fight a war against an invading army things would be different. Worship of individualism and capitalism is the undoing of the US. Nice for the people who can afford to stock shit and hide in bunkers. People who've been living paycheck to paycheck will come for your ass regardless.

The downward trend in Michigan is over :(.

For western zones maybe. It's hard to say how long it takes for the ridge to build east with the new east coast cutoff clogging things up. Backdoor easterly flow knocking down the ridge looks possible at times. Looks like a warm dry pattern, but intense heat confined to the plains for a while. I just hope Friday night delivers some rain here because after that things get real dry.

It's all relative, but in mid-summer generally the farther west you go the better. This looks like a repeat of 2018, warm but blocky with no ring-of-fire setup until late August. Probably something to do with arctic warming. Stratiform tropical system will be the only drought buster for the lake shadow.

After Friday it's back to the boring blocky pattern.

It became a big MCV / QLCS while crossing Lake Michigan. Wisconsin always gets the peak severe, but sometimes the late night leftovers here in Michigan are still good. Most times the Wisconsin evening MCS just dies completely, then afternoon stuff pops way to the east the next day. Annoying aspect of summer climatology here. The severe stuff often survives through west Michigan though. It's just when there aren't severe setups with good shear and/or low-level-jet the lake shadow dominates.

I remember the MCV coming through around 2 AM on the 22nd being incredible in terms of constant lightning bolts.

June 21-22 2010 was wild. I don't think I'll ever experience that again.

Usually mature multicell clusters and concave-type structures produce good CG barrages. Bow echo's are often tilted back towards the stratiform region so a lot of the CGs land on the back side under the rain. It's often hard to find a lot of CGs out in front of a bow. QLCS type storm will produce lots of CGs in rain-free zone where there is a concave kink or curve to the line. The convex/bowing segments don't tend to have a lot of CGs out front. They tend to be on the back side instead. Having a big anvil also seems to play a role too. Very new/isolated storms that haven't produced much of an anvil yet can be kind of lightning-sparce even when they have intense updrafts (even hail and such). I mean, they often do have a lot of lighting but it's usually predominately IC and not noticeable during the day.

I've seen a lot more IC activity compared to CGs. I think the big MCS with a large anvil and stratiform region produce more frequent CGs. Afternoon pop-up stuff doesn't always perform in terms of photogenic CGs, and that's what it's been this year. I think low cloud bases and heavy warm-process precip can be a problem for lightning photography. You often can't see the lighting until the storm is practically over you, then it's hard to photograph. If you don't get a strong MCS that produces lots of bolts-from-the-blue ahead of the rain shafts, the window for getting lighting is really brief. It's so much easier to film big bolts out west where you have high bases and much less precip. The Arizona monsoon can be amazing.