Torchageddon

What is this June looking like as far as departures from normal in Phoenix AZ and southern AZ as a whole? Is it going to be similar to 2016 and 2017 where records were broken and it was an exceptional inferno? I really want to know however if there is any risk of it being cooler than normal in the mid-part of June down there. I don't know if any mets visit this board from southern AZ but if there is one who happens to read this please give your take on the climate pattern we're in and what the long range or showing for this June.

I'm already near 17ºC which was the high yesterday! Forecast still lagging like crazy thinking 19ºC will be what I top out at...unless something causes that cap barrier I'm thinking fat chance; today its going over 20ºC for the first time this year. Problem is the same will be for the UW weather station (now 16ºC) . EDIT 1:10 pm: TWN says I've reached 20ºC for the first time this year, not quite sure if I believe it due to the absurd temperature rise within 1.5 hours. It would be one of the fastest climbs in April history if the data is true so I'll go back and look at the hourlies to see later. The other suspect point is my afternoon forecast still shows 19ºC...

Oh yeah I forgot about the midnight madness. I usually think of the lowest temperatures that occurred some days that broke the record high straight off. One of my favorite crazy highlights was Winnipeg was forecast to be 30ºC or close when the average high for whatever day was -0.8ºC. There was even a humidex forecast even higher at 32C (didn't verify). TWN was calling it a once in 1000 year temperature. Breaking records by 20ºF margins is something you don't see. Today was amazing, the 2nd real day of Spring thus far. No light jacket needed at all, the temperature ended up being 3ºC higher than forecast so about 17ºC. Its been a while since a forecast busted that low. Now tomorrow was increased to 19ºC so things are improving very rapidly. There is still a decent amount of icy snow in the shaded areas.

The March 2012 heatwave itself is estimated to be a once in 2000-4000+ year event on deviations, not just rare but the rarest of all. Its more extreme and unlikely than the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season and the Super Outbreak, the latter being a bit closer. The overall month of March 2012 may be a different level of rarity where its not that unheard of but since the whole month was above average in our part of NA I tend to think it would be tough to get it more anomalous without the Mar 15-23 event. I disagree that there is even a comparison, including the big picture. Now this April is likely far more insane south of us like in IL and parts of the Midwest but scope differences makes me still believe in the leafout of 2012. Mid-March of that year was so unbridled that I got a legit severe thunderstorm in the middle of the night that kick-started the insanity and to put that in perspective I haven't had any severe thunderstorm since then (over 6 years). Its quite rare to get any decent thunderstorm in April and many Mays go by without any mid-grade storm where I live but to get something that produced "large" hail and lightning like that WF passage was just so unreal. Just two years later we had -20ºC temps and 45 inches on the ground.

Amen. I love the perpetual trough especially coming from the Euro when this lame-ass April continues its historic misery. That is scary though. This is the most snowcover I've ever seen this far into April.

Right now I see melting out there despite sitting at 0ºC so I must be above freezing. I'm going to be floored if I don't even pick up 1/10th of an inch of ice from this storm...that and the lack of precip so far this Sunday (before the regular rain begins) really is insane. Even if the sleet and ice pellets had been FZRA it wouldn't have come close to the amounts forecast consistently (and just hours before the timerange)...the hourly forecast of the heaviest freezing rain being noon (I checked 3 hours before) didn't produce anything until 45 mins in and that wasn't much! Forecast winds and gusts would've been a once in a 10 year event if true. TWN increased the wind speeds instead of lowering them this morning - I'm not even getting half those values! LOL. What on earth are those models outputting to give me these forecasts. There was a news article from TWN titled "A storm that lived up to the hype" or something along those lines. I'll share my thoughts on that until its all over however hours later the headline could no longer be found interestingly .

Someone presumed they halved the ice amounts because Saturday's freezing rain didn't materialize and I tend to agree. This morning and still now they have "potentially historic ice storm" in their text. For my county its "Significant freezing rain beginning this afternoon...".

I haven't checked the local radar/surrounding obs until now to really see the overview. Comparing my forecast to that of Hamilton's, I now am "suppose" to get a worse icing event than them!! After changing over to a winter storm warning EC put me back into a freezing rain warning. TWN says heaviest will be at noon. I'm skeptical of all of that.

It was raining 40 minutes ago but it looks like it just changed over to ice pellets over the last few minutes. I would have to go out to see if its mixed with anything. My Obs from 8:45 had light freezing rain.

Its moderate freezing rain in Hanover currently. Now I'm perplexed by this development. How is it that all of you south of me have ice pellets...I should be busting with sleet not FZRA. Concerned that a major ice storm won't pan out? When I got up I also noticed the winds were not high at all. I wonder if its going to be like Superstorm Sandy here where the winds are quite calm with the rare super gust thrown in. TWN showed wind gusts of 72 km/h this morning and I'm getting nothing even approaching. I have gusts to 29 km/h . Other thing is the tiny amount of ice that was on everything from yesterday morning is gone. I'm pretty certain its FZRA as its that silent hard-to-see precip but because of the higher rate I can clearly view it. My TWN forecast remains the same but they increased the winds even more to 86 km/h gusts this aft. and added a bit more freezing rain .

Which model are they using, the 00z NAM increased amounts at least for me (from .5" to .8"). I don't believe the HRRR, spreads the icing around in a unrealistic fashion. The afternoon forecast of snow or 10 cm of ice pellets of course didn't verify. It was some unknown precip. with mainly small ice pellets/sleet. Ironically enough it turned over briefly to snowflakes at 6:45 pm before it ended which is early evening - forecast was to change over to ice pellets from snow . I have around 1-1.5 inches of sleet on the ground. A hour to my north got the big snowstorm where likely it was the most to fall in a low pressure system since 2011 or even 2006 . I just got a power flicker as I finished typing this and one 7 hours ago but nothing else .

This exactly. At times TWN has the wrong obs for my spot but is correct atm showing light ice pellets. Intellicast shows a bunch of locations as snow and way too cold; it sure isn't snowing. I don't trust the mix radar imagery line(s). I seem to have what you describe (ZR with PL). The power crews will hate that one! EDIT: Power is already starting to flicker...goodness!

The first pingers started at 7:27 am with some freezing rain coming just before it. My forecast increased the amount of precip and rose the winds, boned. Let the games begin!

This is a coincidence as I just got to March-April 1975 in my data collection on when the first 20ºC reading occurs every spring. I noticed that 1975 is similar to what regime we have currently but I didn't look at precip or storms. One difference is I believe we will be colder than mid-late April 1975. And I was using the same EC website but it was the Kitchener station.

TWN was giving me 10 cm of ice pellets for Saturday and then before I could screengrab the ludicrous weekend forecast they changed it to heavy snow on Sat afternoon (10 cm in a few hours). My hunch is that what snow I get will be the most interesting or "best" of the entire fall-winter-spring seasons. It may not be the heaviest or most blizzard-like (who knows though), but the most memorable. Either way I expect more changes and I don't trust TWN forecasting until it is 6-10 hours away. I will enjoy this amazing setup as Lord only knows how long its been since anything fun has taken place here.

I think I got to 12ºC, extremely pathetic but I was fine with that because I didn't want the warmth to surge too far north (reason coming up). While this cold streak may be setting some type of record for consistency there is something I go by to determine how extraordinary this is: what date the first 20ºC or higher reading lands on. A bit arbitrary but I still like to use it. The UW Waterloo station has a contest for it and today was a close call: got to 18ºC as a high at 6:00 pm. What a relief, I hate those sneaky spikes that ruin the streak. What I've been waiting for years is unfolding with this stat in particular. The delay of the first 20ºC+ reading is in uncharted territory now since the inception of this station in 1998. Its never gone pass April 19th in 20 years but now for 2018 its definite and there is no end in sight because this pattern isn't heading for the door. I started an excel spreadsheet a few years ago from Kitchener to see what the first 20ºC or higher reading was for every year starting in 1914. The latest I've come across (I'm picking it up again past 1974) is May 13 during 1919. This is not Waterloo though but its close enough as I wanted a large dataset. After the nail-biting period from 5-7 pm that temperature at UW just freefalled. I think it nearly dropped 2.5ºC in 15 minutes and within the hour got a 2C windchill!

It was my worst. It started late evening and went into the middle of the night April 13 IIRC. I had no power for 5 hours where the one that December that devastated Toronto didn't even cause a brief outage but I was lucky because 1 minute north of me there was. This upcoming possible event would be very similar except far more precip is in the mix and would be ongoing during the day. It would fall virtually on the same day 5 years ago as the other ice storm.

This is getting absurd. I thought 2016 and 2017 were a bit too boring but then 2018 came along and said "Hold my beer." What in the actual hell is this? My interest in weather is "gone" now because of it. What is a tornado outbreak? I forget what that is. Aside from one interesting non-severe thunderstorm in September of last year, nothing since then has really been neat/noteworthy. This last winter had nothing of value whatsoever so I rather it was 2011-2012 instead because then at least there was less of it. I wish I was in a warm climate to miss it entirely because not a single lake effect band did anything except something moderate on Christmas Day. No winter storms. I absolutely hated this March we just had and ranks up there for most miserable. Now we're 1/3rd into April and so far this is the single worst April weather I've ever lived through. I'm stunned at the magnitude of atrociousness. It is a VERY bad sign when its being compared to 2014...I would sooner move to Arizona than experience anything like that again. My loathing of 2014 is unbridled and without limits. I should've moved to southern Arizona in late 2013. I haven't followed weather closely due to the exceptional spell of mundane except maybe this small thing: the first 20ºC day. There is that contest with the UW weather station for when it first reaches that and seeing how long we go without getting over could be fun to follow. In at least 20 years its never gotten past April 19th but that sure will happen with this pattern. My concern is this Thursday where it will be the closest yet to 20ºC. Here's hoping that doesn't get wrecked too by Thursday's warmth spike. I thought in 2014 it would be May the way things were but there is always a sneaky spike to screw the "streak".

This is the beginning of my least favorite time of year here. The winter winds are in full swing, its incredibly cold with heavy snow at times ongoing this evening. A shocking -18ºC windchill forecast tonight which is one of those special instances not just because its rare for Nov.10th but because its been a very warm few months and then to switch suddenly to that kind of cold is hideous. Even the cold earlier in the week I haven't been tolerating very well it seems. I'm not going to be spending time outdoors during the next 36 hours as the high is -4ºC tomorrow. Interesting to note today is the first time snowflakes were seen as on Halloween I just saw some minor ice pellet action. I have never seen flakes this late which makes me wonder if the balance factor will give way to a very snowy November. I have 3-4 cm on the ground already and 10-15 cm are forecast before morning. Its a pretty classic first snowsquall for sure!

Did you see totality during the total solar eclipse after that appointment? Traffic wasn't as bad as thought and it may have been possible to race to it.

I was pondering this yesterday. I have never seen a tropical cyclone RI when moving over 20 knots and especially not 23 knots. It would be an unique happenstance if Nate did it but when I saw the 5:15 - 6:15 UTC frames come in early this morning my enthusiasm for the idea was dashed. That was the exact time when Nate signaled that steady to quick strengthening was on the menu. That might be the fastest rate possible (increase of 35 knots in 24 hours) for a TC moving 23 knots forward speed. EDIT: Yes I see what was just posted above me lol. I think we're so used to explosive rates that what is RI and what is not is skewed now. I was thinking rate increases of 20 knots in 6 hours when I posted.

My anomalies here are likely even more absurd. So far (and its only 1:30 pm), I'm at 31ºC with a humidex of 38!! That's a record for sure. Phenomenal heatwave that is way longer than I would normally think in late Sept. Latest so hot humidex and temp on top of that. Toronto reached 33.1ºC yesterday IIRC - their hottest temperature of the year so far (!!!) and beat the old record by 2-3ºC. Also the hot spot in all of Canada. Just incredible and a Top 2 event for 2017 locally.

I screencapped the whole NHC front page for the 11:00 pm EDT cycle. Unbelievable!! The level of action in the Atlantic during the last 48 hours is astounding.

Is it the same guy who said s*** twice last night on his show when talked to by Bill Wier? That was funny, after the first the bar owner kept talking as usual and then just slipped in another later - Bill then said okay we have to end this now .

Everywhere I look I see outlets and people exclaim this hurricane to be the most powerful hurricane in the "Atlantic" in history. If the GOM and Caribbean weren't in existence than yes it would be. The play on words is causing everyone to think this is stronger than Hurricane Wilma - very unfortunate and cringey. The measure of strength for tropical cyclones is pressure but the general populous doesn't really know that. I'm already seeing the clichés abound despite avoiding reading much today online - unbearable seeing predictable drivel. Should've done this Wednesday but better late than never - In before the "Could've been worse" and "Dodged a bullet"! Those main 2 have company with these: "sigh of relief", "good thing", and "Miami got lucky",