jojo762

Still plenty of 100-120mph bins showing up on KMBX at ~3KFT. Impressive given that Zeta has been on land for nearly 300 miles now.

Given all these highly impressive sustained winds/gusts, this will almost certainly be upgraded in post-storm analysis. 136mph?? That’s pretty top-tier, as anything higher (and usually a lot of gusts lower than that) destroys anemometers.

GFS = most bullish with snow/ice Euro = most bearish with snow/ice CMC = in the middle with snow/ice Ive seen this a few times... guess who wins?

Obviously the satellite presentation has become fairly impressive, but a bit surprised that NHC continues to nudge up the intensity. Hasn’t been much flight-level and certainly not any SFMR data to support 120mph. edit: does look like the NOAA plane did just find 111kt (128mph) FL-winds though..

Highest FL wind was 87kt though... so that SFMR of 91kt is a bit suspect.

Recon didn’t go straight through the eye like normal, they turned a bit once inside, hence the abnormal readings.

Potential eye of Delta has warmed to ~-40C on IR compared to the ring of <-80C towers around it.

Tomorrow is probably gonna be a fun day, anticipate rapid re-intensification... Outflow and cloud/convective patterns have greatly improved with Delta today... Latest IR imagery is pretty telling that it’s about to take off as we have intense convection starting to wrap around the COC.

Looks like recon extrap pressure was just a tad below 977mb. Not bad. Swath of hurricane and tropical storm force winds is much broader now, albeit there isn’t really an obvious wind max now near the eye.

Dropsonde data suggests that the pressure jumped 10mb from 963 to 973 from the second to the third pass... seems off?

Tiny eyes = higher potential for rapid changes upward/downward... still a hocked that this went from a rapidly intensifying 145mph category 4 to a 85-100mph storm (the upper end of that is probably generous).

Current IR presentation is definitely bottom-tier for a 140mph category 4 hurricane... imagine it’ll improve overnight prior to nailing Cancun.

I assume NHC is going to be coming out with a special advisory to update the intensity forecast? That’s 15mph off from what was initialized at 10pm CDT.

Per latest NHC update, Delta is now a hurricane.

NHC now forecasting a major hurricane to impact Yucatán peninsula, including Cancun. Yikes. Anyone happen to know what the oceanic shelf is like there (how surge prone it is)?

Certainly an interesting look to the core of Beta this afternoon on KHGX...

Max wind/pressure predictions prior to landfall? I’ll go 120mph/958mb.

On to tomorrow... models hinting at a narrow zone in Nebraska featuring higher tornado potential. Biggest failure mode appears to be upscale growth/clustering of convection.

Looks like the potential storm of the day might be taking shape near Ashley, ND... Pretty solid circulation on going, with classic supercell characteristics taking shape on reflectivity. EDIT: Overall looking like a pretty tough day so far for chasers as most picked northeastern ND, which got ruined pretty quickly by a large temperature gradient on the N/S warm front, which given storm motions isn’t exactly favorable...

Today could be a big time day across South and North Dakota and into Minnesota... The whole gamut of severe weather is likely today. Strong tornadoes are possible with any discrete convection; but this presents the question of the day, how long, if at all, will storms stay discrete? If they do there’s a good possibility the plains sees its biggest tornado day of the year — if things get grungy quickly storms will still produce lots of severe weather, but probably not many tornadoes. Everything is there for an anomalous day in the northern plains, but will it happen? Stay tuned.

Today features an extraordinarily anomalous setup (at least I can’t exactly recall seeing anything like it) across large parts of Washington and Oregon, where an ENH risk for severe wind gusts exists.

Looking like today’s tornado potential might nearly be toast as these early storms south of Waco have pushed out a southward surging outflow boundary that does not appear to be stopping any time soon. Non-zero tornado potential will likely exist with any convection that stays surface-based and attached to the eastern end of the OFB (I.e., cells immediately northwest of College Station, TX).

Considered making the drive from Kansas down to central Texas for tomorrow, in what will very likely be the only central/southern Plains severe threat for at least a week or week and a half. But decided to hold off in lieu of hope for better northern plains potential later on in June. As Quincy referenced, in spite of what will probably discrete/semi-discrete storm modes for a few hours after initiation, dew-points are very unimpressive tomorrow for central Texas, and low-level shear will be pretty mediocre until roughly 00z -- and at that point storms will probably be a sloppy mess. Ultimately there will likely be beautiful supercells tomorrow, but much like Friday of last week, these supercells will likely struggle to obtain strong enough low-level rotation to produce notable tornadoes. All the twitter talk about a 10% sig tor for tomorrow completely ignores low-level thermos/kinematics that are critical for tornadogenesis in favor of mixed CAM output showing potentially discrete storm modes. Tomorrow probably is not worth a 7 to 9 hour drive down there for me... unfortunately this is how May 2020 severe chances will end on the plains. Unless tomorrow pulls a rabbit out of the hat, we will end up with the lowest number of May U.S. tornadoes since 1970. FWIW I'll go with a hypothetical starting point/target of Temple, TX.

00z LBF sounding did show a pretty stout cap at ~700mb last night... so probably a combo of both a several degree bust on forecast surface moisture and heating AND a traditional capping inversion.

Funny how tons of chasers (myself included) get sucked into NW KS after being near Wichita Falls yesterday by a few HRRR runs... should’ve been obvious things were going to struggle given the initiation location relative to the moisture axis as well as the warm 700mb temps. Most well documented rain shower of all time.