Eskimo Joe

You can see how insidious this infection has become in society from the image @mappy posted. Even Allegany and Kent Counties, which have the slowest population growth and lowest density, have cases all from community spread.

Even with the proactive levels, we have something like a 17% - 20% positive test rate in the Free State. We're able to hold things like this without breaking the system but man we are walking a knife blade here.

One big failing of the American media has been to not bring real experts on and challenge the stupidity (Dr. Oz, Dr. Drew) and educate the public. The one report that showed something like 1 - 2 million dead was an extreme outlier and should have been laughed off the stage. Instead, CBS and the NY Times and Fox News ran stories on it.

I think some folks attempt to compare COVID to flu because that's the only thing they can wrap their brain around. Flu acts a bit like COVID in that it is spread kind of the same way (surfaces, aerosolized environment) but the flu is really only a danger to folks with significantly compromised immune systems. We also know a lot more about the flu than COVID. Healthy people with no underlying conditions are dying from COVID and if you have something even as "simple" as asthma and get COVID you go downhill fast. Of course, there's a certain slice of the country that just cannot or will not accept any infectious disease as being serious unless it's gotten to the point of what you see in a movie. Those folks are bizarre.

It is dubious to compare Flu-A/B to a strain of coronavirus. With Flu-A/B we have a systematic, global bio-surveillance process to identify hot spots, several vaccine derivatives that can be tweaked to adapt to the downstream flue season and event some in situ prophylactic (tami flu). Almost none of this exists with MERS, SARS or COVID. We have a bungled approach to testing a small portion of what we think is an infected person. There is no treatment protocol or prophylactic.

All good points, none of which will likely be resolved until about <12 hours out. We're just going to have to look for trends, timing, etc an monitor upstream conditions. If we see an overperforming event in Dixie Alley with discrete action ahead of the main line, all bets are off and it could be the event of the spring. If it's QLCS mess behind stratiform rain then we fail.

Flip side....it rains a lot and we get a QLCS that wrecks the trees because of saturated soil. Either way, the Sunday PM to Monday midday is looking busy in these parts.

Monday is starting to look interesting up even towards Baltimore and Frederick. It's going to be interesting to see how Sunday plays out down south...if things go as planned down there then we probably stand a good chance of seeing a decent line move through.

Posted by a met who I believe works for Mt Holly WFO

Bring us home

Some beefy winds have taken down some healthy, large trees in far NW Montgomery and portions of Frederick County. Not your typical rotted root bal, healthy hardwood oaks and such.

That cell approaching Kent Island is trying to wrap up and has a bit of a flying eagle look to it. Wouldn't shock me if PHI put a TOR possible SVR out with it. LWX has waterspouts mentioned in the SMW.

IMO, the virtual classroom this year may start to become more of a thing. It would be a good prep for those who want to go to college because a lot of college courses are going virtual. Heck, my master's degree was fully online and I had access to a far wider array of classmates and resources than I would in a brick and mortar environment.

This IS NOT how the Strategic National Stockpile or emergency management as a whole in this country is supposed to work. It's beyond asinine that we have to bid on our own resources against the private sector and the Feds at the same time.

Couple of 52 kt pixels with the activity over Laurel and DC proper. Really isn't going to take much convection to bring any severe level winds down to the surface.

Per GOES16, decent uptick in lightning with the activity from Walkersville on north into Carroll County.

https://inws.ncep.noaa.gov/a/a.php?i=44300457

SPC issued Blue Box until 20:00 UTC. WCN going out shortly.

Expect most other jurisdictions to follow suit:

Yup. https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/md/2020/md0324.html Baltimore and points NE are primed.

A lot of the states are not going to be able to handle this. Between the logistics coordination for PPE, surge and this political hand grenade that was dumped in our lap, it's a tenuous time. There is an unusual amount of discord and lack of support from the Feds this go around and it's significantly complicating things on the state and local level.

click the link!

The Feds are ending Federal funding for testing this Friday unless something changes. Can't have a pandemic if you can't test for it!

Almost every lab is backed up and many are low on the reagents necessary to run the tests. Our output is a trickle nationally of what's coming in, especially in the DC to Providence corridor.