Junorch obs and discussion 2026

[CT Valley Snowman]

Friends of mine moved from Palmer, MA to Canton, IL about 30 miles SW of Peoria last year.  They've been learning the whole Midwest severe thing firsthand. i was updating them today as sirens were going off.  

[40/70 Benchmark]

93 today.

[CT Valley Snowman]

Another complex of storms to the SW.  The rich get richer. 

[WxWatcher007]

A little concerned that I only saw two fireflies in my backyard tonight. Hopefully they’re just early. 

[WxWatcher007]

LGA G69 on that latest thunderstorm 

[Hailstoned]

48 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

A little concerned that I only saw two fireflies in my backyard tonight. Hopefully they’re just early. 

So far, they seem sparser than in previous Junes here; hopefully, just not out in force yet.

[vortex95]

16 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

All I know is after this weekend deep summer is canceled UFN.

You do realize that cooler can mean a lot of tstms and SVR!

[vortex95]

13 hours ago, kdxken said:

Something's not matching up. The ponds are nearly full in my area. That doesn't happen in extreme drought.

MSM cherry-picking again.  Sure you have svr drought SE NH and ern MA, but that is just one local area.  Take a look at the drought status 3 months ago compare to this week for the NEUS and Mid-Atlantic (attached).

Overall improvement for the NEUS and Mid-Atlantic.  A large area of svr drought is gone in NNE. Yet you get ppl just focused on one small area, not telling you the larger picture.  SE NH and ern MA do not exist isolated.  Watersheds flow into this region, and if adjacent watersheds in decent shape for precip, then that mitigates things downstream.

The term "drought" is treated as singular and simple term.  It's not like that at all.  But some never let the details (or key facts) get in the way of a particular narrative (all gloom and doom and the end is nigh).

The MSM narrative is to push drought all the time, as if it never should occur, any that occurs is unusual, and we can't handle it as society, never mind it is just one more thing to hype to scarce the public for ratings.  Drought exits in the U.S 10-15% of time on avg, and it waxes and wanes in irregular cycles.  This is not cause for alarm in itself.

The NEUS and Mid-Atlantic have not had a multi-year drought since the 1960s.  How is that possible if droughts are getting worse w/ time everywhere?   Short-term droughts are common and par for the course.

If you want to see a deep dive and analysis about how drought conditions and declarations are misused and abused, take a look here about conditions in WA currently.  The morale here is that there is more to the story.
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-is-no-drought-emergency-in.html
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2026/05/why-washington-drought-emergency-should.html
 

[vortex95]

13 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

The problem is their methodology. If we have lower precip  winter, they count as a negative. But in winter, all the precip  it’s either going into the ground or to the lake and rivers, etc. Nothing is absorbing it. So it makes it look like we are El Paso but it’s just kind of silly if you asked me. It’s definitely been dry but extreme is kind of ridiculous. We actually had decent rain last summer too.

There are 4 types of drought:
- meteorological
- agricultural
- hydrological
- socioeconomic

All go into the drought status monitor we see, but it can me misleading. 

For instance, two of the factors have nothing to w/ actual precip.  Agricultural and socioeconomic deal primarily w/ land/water management (or the lack of) and demand over time from increase population/infrastructure (data centers anyone?).

And it goes one step further within the categories.  You can have plenty of rainfall, but a lack of snowfall, so the reservoirs and lakes are full and water table high, but snowpack is below avg. 

And keep in mind, the current U.S. Drought Monitor we look at weekly w/ its current standards and guidelines did not exist prior to 2000.  So that is not long enough to determine trends either way.  What we call drought and how we measure/categorize it has changed over time as well.

From my observations long-term, the U.S Drought Monitor has a tendency to overdo it, and it is misreading b/c most ppl just think lack of precip for drought, when it is much more complex than that.

[vortex95]

13 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

Logan is referenced all the time. Have an intern look up the coops and they’ll see it’s off by 2-3” total LEQ for the late Jan and late Feb snow events. But the media just blindly runs with it.

And here we have yet another factor that misleads.  Bad data and using a single point!

[vortex95]

Wxwiiz mad he missed this???  CoastalWx proby just MEH!  LOL.

Look what happened Thu just over the border in Pauling NY.  Hail up to 2" in diameter.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1E8jBs32e1/

 

Video of hailfall:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=999500782484311

 

Serious wind damage right over the CT border in Quaker Hill NY.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1TsM5ejxkj/

 

NW flow delivers!  The LTG plot reminded me of July 10, 1989 a little.

Also, June 20, 1995. See here:

https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/remembering-the-1995-hail-storm/16546/