2026 Mid-Atlantic Severe Storm General Discussion

[vortex95]

11 hours ago, JakkelWx said:

it happened again the same evening. woo storms!

I *never* get sick of +CGs, even when they do not strike close.  One time, I had one strike about 6 mi from me about 1 hr before sunset, and even though I did not see the bolt, the flash was unusually bright and "encompassing" (meaning it was bright all around me, not a flash in the distance) for the daylight hours, and I go, "ooo, there is going to be big thunder."  And I counted, 30 sec later, a really deep THUD!  The acoustics can be really bizarre!

[Eskimo Joe]

9 minutes ago, vortex95 said:

Or the Ivan tor day in Sep 2004?  What, like 40 tors in VA alone, and many clustered right up to the MD/VA border just W of DC!  I think that day is the only SPC MDT ever issued for a TC tor event.

There were so many tors in VA that day, that if you look at a map for the CONUS showing which month tors are most common for each state, VA says "September" -- all b/c of that Ivan tor day!  It shows how a single outlier event can skew climo big time.

Biggest tornado outbreak in this region. 

[Hank Scorpio]

52 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Biggest tornado outbreak in this region. 

That outbreak produced the one and only tornado I've ever seen. I was working at Dulles that day and very wisely ignored the "take shelter" commands issued via loud speaker. Instead I ran up onto the enclosed pedestrian bridge between terminal A and B just in time to watch the tornado drop near the main terminal.

[high risk]

Sign me up for the 00Z HRRR.

[high risk]

1 hour ago, vortex95 said:

Or the Ivan tor day in Sep 2004?  What, like 40 tors in VA alone, and many clustered right up to the MD/VA border just W of DC!  I think that day is the only SPC MDT ever issued for a TC tor event.

There were so many tors in VA that day, that if you look at a map for the CONUS showing which month tors are most common for each state, VA says "September" -- all b/c of that Ivan tor day!  It shows how a single outlier event can skew climo big time.

       

      SPC issued MDTs on back to back days with Ivan.   The first day over the southeast somewhat busted, as too much cloud cover limited instability.   On the second day, we did eventually get a MDT into parts of northern VA, but the threat was not obvious until it evolved in real time.    This was the initial outlook of the day.  The area with a 5% got a SLGT.    (The probabilities ramped up starting with the 1630Z outlook.)

       

[vortex95]

3 hours ago, high risk said:

Sign me up for the 00Z HRRR.

Wow.  You get the classic "discrete cells ahead of line" which you always have to watch closely for tor potential, then big clusters w/  training psbl and FF threat.

And now much of the DMV could do well on Wed as the front gets hung up w/ more training and FF threat.

The 00z HRRR is really big for QPF. 48 hr totals 5" max just NW of DC and a whopping nearly 12" max near WAL!  Well, we do need the rain.

00z RRFS is very similar to the HRRR for big QPF w/ the 5" max just S of DC and an 11" max near WAL.

Winds aloft look better than the last event for svr wx.  I esp. like the 250 mb speed max approaching late in the afternoon, so discrete supercells should sustain better.  Tor threat is there but not high-end.