2026 Mid-Atlantic Severe Storm General Discussion

[NorthArlington101]

Bar doors getting blown open. Oh no!

[yoda]

1 minute ago, Kmlwx said:

I can't imagine their page is hosted onsite - but I may be wrong. Probably just coincidental. 

I guess so... just getting a lot of internal service errors no matter where I go on the NWS website past 15 minutes 

[DCAsnowhole]

On a super delayed plane at DCA. Listening to ground ATC they just said tower was shaking and ground surveillance radar went out! Plane is shaking!


.

[snowfan]

3 minutes ago, NorthArlington101 said:

Bar doors getting blown open. Oh no!

Free the beer!

[nj2va]

This wind is crazy. Already lost power but thankfully came back.

[MN Transplant]

Core of the wind went south of me, which is fine. Getting some rain which is extremely welcome.  Still haven’t had a real thunder event this year. Just some rumbles in the distance.

[Eskimo Joe]

DCA just gusted to 52 kts

[Kmlwx]

Just now, Eskimo Joe said:

DCA just gusted to 52 kts

I'm surprised it wasn't a touch higher, honestly. 

[mappy]

Got home from dance taxiing before the storm 

[WxUSAF]

Woah those were big gusts with the outflow 

[Eskimo Joe]

2 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Woah those were big gusts with the outflow 

Just imagine if this thing hit at 4pm with some better lapse rates and a touch more shear.

[SnowenOutThere]

3 minutes ago, mappy said:

Got home from dance taxiing before the storm 

Sorta weird how these storms didn’t have the sky filling effect they sometimes do. Had a good shelf and then some smooth bands but didn’t build up as a thunderhead and barely had cirrus. Made me seem insane when I kept telling my coaches a storm was coming in. Any met want to take a stab at why these looked atypical?

[SolidIcewx]

2 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Just imagine if this thing hit at 4pm with some better lapse rates and a touch more shear.

Smoke city

[AmericanWxFreak]

Sorta weird how these storms didn’t have the sky filling effect they sometimes do. Had a good shelf and then some smooth bands but didn’t build up as a thunderhead and barely had cirrus. Made me seem insane when I kept telling my coaches a storm was coming in. Any met want to take a stab at why these looked atypical?

Had a similar thought looking at them approaching.

[snowfan]

[mappy]

10 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Woah those were big gusts with the outflow 

Here too. We sent the kid out to the pool to grab floaties just before gust front hit

[snowfan]

[wxmeddler]

The whales mouth was very good. Very high LCL's though. Would estimate 35-40 mph which lines up with most of the non-sonic wind reports.

[WxUSAF]

4 minutes ago, mappy said:

Here too. We sent the kid out to the pool to grab floaties just before gust front hit

Yeah wind is legit. Very little thunder

[H2O]

Was able to get this before it hit 

 

[H2O]

3 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Yeah wind is legit. Very little thunder

Had 30-40mph here with the gust front

[H2O]

9 minutes ago, mappy said:

Here too. We sent the kid out to the pool to grab floaties just before gust front hit

This is why we have kids. So we aren’t doing it 

[AmericanWxFreak]

Driving along the spine of the shelf was sort of a cool view

[wxmeddler]

33 minutes ago, Kmlwx said:

Any reason that it seems to be more prominent this season than prior ones? Or is that just recency bias? 

It's always been an issue, but it seems when models get upgraded to more vertical levels it's more of an issue.

[Kmlwx]

Nice outflow/gust front winds but pretty mundane with the precipitation itself. Still will be nice to drop the temperatures tonight...still will be soupy but it was brutal out today. 

[vortex95]

21 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Agree 9/10 times. IMO, this is the 1 out of 10 times I'll differ given the numerous 250 Anniversary event from Baltimore to DC. In a situation like this, it's just easier to slap down a big polygon and say "it's coming everyone".

I get the big metro area part, but look at this warning in NY/PA. Larger than the MD one, and much more rural.

Not saying one should treat a more populated area differently than a less populated area, or an area w/ more outdoor events than another.  Ethically, that is wrong as all people and infrastructure are important, but it does not seem always consistent w/ watches/warnings. 

It's no secret, as one example, that there is a bulls-eye of svr tstm watches centered over the DCA-BWI area and less in surrounding areas.  It's not simply due to climo of the area.  That suggests it is not done from an objective forecast science standpoint.  It's no different looking at tornado warnings in various CWAs, and some have *way* more warnings than the adjacent ones, and again, that's not b/c of sudden difference in supercell/tornado climo.

And this all leads back to public apathy caused by too many or excessive warnings.  More is not always better.  There comes a point of diminishing returns.
 

[George BM]

40 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

Sorta weird how these storms didn’t have the sky filling effect they sometimes do. Had a good shelf and then some smooth bands but didn’t build up as a thunderhead and barely had cirrus. Made me seem insane when I kept telling my coaches a storm was coming in. Any met want to take a stab at why these looked atypical?

Yeah these storms reminded me of a lower CAPE day but with steep LLLRs still allowing for big wind. 

Kind of similar to June 26, 2024 with a line of impressive wind producing storms with limited lightning.

Hopefully LWX was able to launch the 00z sounding before the storms rolled through. The sounding would probably show some clues as we did have large CAPE and decent MLLRs (6.5+C) during the day.

[WxUSAF]

A smidge over 0.2”. 

[SnowenOutThere]

17 minutes ago, George BM said:

Yeah these storms reminded me of a lower CAPE day but with steep LLLRs still allowing for big wind. 

Kind of similar to June 26, 2024 with a line of impressive wind producing storms with limited lightning.

Hopefully LWX was able to launch the 00z sounding before the storms rolled through. The sounding would probably show some clues as we did have large CAPE and decent MLLRs (6.5+C) during the day.

The lack of lightning does indicate how these storms were relatively low topped. Just seems odd as forecasted soundings showed a high enough EL point and we had big CAPE throughout the layer. I’m sure something caused it though. 

[George BM]

3 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

The lack of lightning does indicate how these storms were relatively low topped. Just seems odd as forecasted soundings showed a high enough EL point and we had big CAPE throughout the layer. I’m sure something caused it though. 

Sounding is in.

Experts?