thunderbird12

Up to 2" Hail at the Red Rocks concert venue in CO last night resulted in 90+ injuries and 7 transported to a hospital, per a recent BOU LSR and recent media reports. Definitely some high-impact storms yesterday. Tough luck to have two Panhandle/west Texas towns take a direct hit from a big tornado in one week. Tough day for the CAM guidance yesterday, especially across Texas. As alluded to in the tweet above, there was some signal for the Houston area eventually getting hit, but I don't think any model came close to getting the timing or evolution of those storms right. Several HRRR runs did a good job yesterday showing the potential for an intense supercell cluster across the Panhandle and South Plains area...until it completely gave up on that scenario a few hours before the event began. Weakly forced scenarios with huge CAPE are always going to be a challenge.

12Z HRRR is the odd model out, showing essentially no development on the dryline this afternoon. Of the other 12Z HREF members, the FV3 and WRF-ARW have development into northern OK, and the 3km NAM and WRF-NSSL have development all the way into southwest OK (and the 3km NAM all the way into northwest TX). Definitely a trend toward more dryline storms compared to the 00Z guidance. Still probably a close call either way as to whether storms go or not on the dryline.

Survey says...no tornado: https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/wx/afos/p.php?pil=PNSLZK&e=202204162236

Occasional moderate-to-heavy sleet in Norman this morning. Heard a couple rumbles of thunder as well. It's not often that you get to hear thunder when it's 12 degrees outside.

It's been a wild event, but the softball-sized hail report in northeast KS might be the most unexpected report of the day.

100 mph Russell KS just gusted to 100 mph.

The bulk of guidance suggests the tornado threat will maximize across extreme eastern NE into western and central IA between 4-7pm CST, as effective SRH increases ahead of the line. It will be interesting to see how the line evolves as low-level shear becomes quite intense by early evening.

The streaks are hourly-maximum 2-5 km updraft helicity, basically an indication of where stronger midlevel rotation has tracked over the last hour. The streaks on that plot are unusually long due to insane storm motions.

Over 1,000,000 power outages in Louisiana now, and outages starting to climb (40,000+) in MS as well. KMSY is reporting again after a 2+ hour hiatus. Wind gusts to "only" 55 mph (after several hours of hurricane-force gusts) on the 11:15 PM ob. Hopefully that trend continues, since the wind needs to abate help the ongoing rescue efforts. The original eye is nearly gone on radar. Looks like Ida's time as a hurricane is finally about done.

It was just a position update, not a full advisory where wind speeds are specified in knots, so no reason it couldn't be done, I guess.

KMSY sustained 62 mph gusting to 90 mph as of 8:37 PM CDT.

Wind obs available again from KMSY as of 8:16 PM CDT...sustained 56 mph gusting to 85 mph. Edit: Looks like there was a peak gust of 87 mph at 8:05 PM.

The combination of extended power outages and potentially compromised water supplies could turn into a really big deal, even if New Orleans avoids catastrophic wind damage and flooding. Hopefully the various relief agencies involved are better prepared to deal with the aftermath if Ida than they were for Katrina.

Also, looks like KNEW (New Orleans Lakefront) hasn't reported anything in over an hour.

Most important thing to note is sustained winds of 54 kt (62 mph) with gusts to 72 kt (83 mph).