csnavywx

90/77 here. Absolutely soupy and miserable.

Such a huge difference from here. At 6.70" on the month already at NHK. Almost certainly going to add to that total tomorrow. Outside shot of reaching 10" this month.

Yep, fat CAPE profiles tomorrow with some solid 2500-3000 values showing up on fcst soundings this morning. There's *just enough* shear for high CAPE to mostly compensate, so wouldn't be surprised to see a similar setup to Wednesday, if a bit less organized. Edit: Theta-e profiles indicate about 25K/C in between the boundary layer and mid-levels and combined with PWATs around 2", that argues for some wet microburst activity tomorrow as well. There's very little to no capping, so I would expect a bit earlier of a start time for initiation than usual. Any storms that fire early will have a good chance of being able to pulse to severe limits before weakening.

Combined with winter temps, that'll end up being the kill-shot in the long run (few decades). Easy to forget that diabatic processes only go so far during the summer. If you keep mixing in much-above normal airmasses into an otherwise favorable ice-retention pattern, the lower limit is raised and the window shifts towards melting, even in good patterns. We may yet stay in this "transitional plateau" for a while longer but the creeping risk of a rapid collapse will eventually catch up as winter freezing degree days drop below a critical threshold and summer T-min increases during low pressure regimes, narrowing the stable space upon which the current pack is balanced. My eye is on the mid-2030s for something like that.

Might be faster if we don't figure out why CH4 seems to be taking off again over the last 10-15 yrs (and subsequently stop it). It rose 15 ppb last year and we might beat that this year. That's going to significantly bolster warming at those rates. I don't think any of AR5's scenarios -- aside from RCP 8.5 -- had it rising like this. (RCP 8.5 had 1923ppb for 2020 actual, and we were at 1880ish; no other scenario is as high as current until after 2040).

I'm gonna add on just a bit to what Don said for this particular event. In this case, the incredibly strong Rex block that is baking BC and WA/OR had its origin in an unusually juiced episode of convection along the Meiyu/Baui front in E. Asia. Moisture transport for that event likely originated over the SW Pac and E Indian Ocean, both of which are running above normal over a very wide area (and abnormally high ocean heat content to boot), which very likely contributed to amp'ing the intensity of the event. The latent heat release from that event helped boost the N.Pac jet significantly, causing a big downstream rossby wave break and the big ridge/block. So in a way, there's even an entangling between enhanced and extreme rainfall events and this heatwave. It's just not the kind of thing that's inherently obvious until you start digging.

After the miserable bust of Saturday, it looks like we've got a somewhat better chance today. Issues include a cap and some deep mixing potential. We're also going to probably be a bit dependent on LEWPs or bows surging well out ahead of the front to get the job done, since forcing locally will be pretty weak.

Some high-based shallow convection (just showers for now) SW of DC on the lee side. It's possible this activity could become surface based as it gets further east.

CI appears likely soon W and SW of DC.

So far, so good. That mass of convection will probably produce a coherent MCV for the region later on today. SPC keeping an eye out as well:

New MCS is up and going over OH and IN. Initiation likely in the next few hours over IA. HRRR really pressing this (in the form of an MCV or remnants) as a viable trigger for tomorrow. It looks like the current MCS may track far enough south to prevent it interfering with insolation too much tomorrow morning.

There tends to be a delay of several months between when an ENSO phase begins and ends and the atmosphere responds. It lags by 2-4 months or so. So, we're still probably feeling some of the effects of the faded Nina. The current drought episode in the West is probably being exacerbated by it (by helping shift the jet north and imparting extra subsidence). Sometimes those effects "spill over" downstream into the Plains.

Nina years tend to have a higher chance for summer drought but this isn't always a given. As far as climate change goes, the trend has been for (so far) has been for relatively rapid increases in rainfall and absolute humidity (dewpoint) in the STL area but relatively modest increases in temperature. There's some evidence to strongly suggest this is due to the rapid increase in corn planting area and density, which transpires rapidly and has served to keep temperature increases somewhat muted at the expense of increasing humidity. Since corn and crop land area has reached near its maximum nowadays, I would expect temperature increases to start taking over. If that's the case, the future may include a bit more rainfall on average, but with ever bigger swings between wet and dry. Increasing whiplash or flickering, if you will. Drought sets in and ends quicker, rainfall tends to come in bigger bursts and less towards gentle, soaking rains.

It appears to be a continuation of an overnight MCS that gets going over IA/IL tonight. HRDPS has it too (and the 12km NAM to a lesser extent). It's a possible scenario. HIgh bust potential tonight, though, especially with effectively 3 convective complexes (including the decaying one over OH right now) "in the way" before we get there.

I have a problem with a lot of economic studies and projections concerning climate change because they do not incorporate risk of ruin. The amount of risk and potential damage goes up exponentially with each degree of warming. I think it would be nigh impossible to calculate warmings of 4-6C just because of the non-linearities involved. Even 2-3C could really be stretching it.

It looks like a remnant EML plume gets wrapped in ahead of that front. As long as we can get some forcing strong enough to trigger convective initiation on Sat. afternoon, there will likely be some severe and good parameter space for some evening supercells.

This 1000 times over. Science is a developmental process, which means you aren't going to always get it right on the first go, or it might need to be adjusted or tossed down the line. In this case, he's refuting his earlier research based on new evidence. That's called updating your priors. The only real failure would be to *not* do this.

Don't sleep on the Monday shortwave. A compact, digging shortwave embedded in NW flow aloft possibly intercepting a plume of moisture and instability fed in ahead of the wave. One of the major questions is timing. A bit earlier and this could easily cause some significant trouble, given the progged shear and instability values progged on the NAM (and trending on the GFS).

3-day total up to 3.21" so far with rain continuing.

All this juice and increasingly dirty ridging is going to make for some decent late afternoon and evening boomers this week.

I find that it's the fructose that comes without the fiber that's the issue. Fruit is fine (unless in excess). HFCS, sucrose and fructose added to foods all tend to pile up and add a lot of load to the liver (since fructose largely can't be absorbed by tissues, unlike glucose -- it has to be processed by the liver), which then partially converts it to lipids that get stored. It's pretty uncanny just how similar ethanol and fructose get processed. The difference is, with ethanol, you eventually get tipsy or drunk and get a signal to stop. With fructose, you don't, and it since it doesn't trigger leptin production in the same way as glucose, the brain doesn't get a signal to stop either. Added sugars are *everywhere* and tough to avoid.

Yeah, that's one of the more academically interesting things about what we've learned so far. During the LGM (and a few glacials before), CO2 approached the lower limit for C3 photosynthesis and despite the cooling, we never came close to freezing over completely. It's probably impossible for the system to do another Snowball episode like it did ~600 Mya as the sun is some 7% brighter now. Another 7% is probably game-over for multi-celled life as the stable climate space in which there's enough CO2 to sustain plant life will disappear. Even in the current era, just the brightening since the PETM and Cretaceous is enough to lower the necessary CO2 to tip into the "hothouse" state by quite a bit. I don't think it would take 1200+ ppm anymore. Maybe 600-800. (This is assuming that the NH and SH act symmetrically, which they almost assuredly do not -- the NH will be hotter sooner).

The thing that kills me with this one (that keeps popping up like a zombie) is that none of them have ever come up with a source and then provided evidence for that source. You'd think this would be easy to check. Indeed, if it were coming from the ocean, for instance, you'd expect to see outgassing to the atmosphere and a net flux of CO2 from the surface (and thus an increase in pH over time through the water column). But, instead we see a decrease in pH.

It's not a debate when one "side" refuses to acquiesce to any standard of falsifiability. As I've said several times over the years in this forum, I challenge anyone still not convinced by the current theory of the field to state the conditions under which they would change their minds. If you cannot think of a scenario under which you would, then that's faith, not science. If you want to be taken seriously scientifically, then state it. No goalpost moving. It's okay to discard and then amend or re-think your hypothesis after updating your priors. Nobody should fault you for that. However, I (and others) will absolutely fault you if you continue to demand to be taken seriously when you refuse to update your priors and refuse any standard of falsifiability. That's not a "free speech issue", that's a *you* issue. You are free to say whatever you want. We're also free to call you when you state crap. Ignorance is fine, nobody comes into this world fully equipped to deal with it. Willful ignorance is not and shouldn't be. The world is hard enough to deal with without having to sit around and debunk willfully distributed crap all the time. I know the conditions under which I would change my mind, and so, I'm comfortable with the theory *because* it is falsifiable and it is able to make predictions.

This needs to stop soon or feedback will begin to kick in. It's been bizarre watching these high-based TS/shower events over the past few weeks. Looks and feels more like the West with the huge T/Td spreads, inverted V soundings and huge daytime mixing layers -- which have been sneakily depleting water via evapotranspiration while not providing much precip in return.