frostfern

Yea. I wasn't able to chase the excitement that hit the southern part of the state last week and it's been zzzzz IMBY lately. Low 60s and clouds. Not much real rain or thunder. Thankfully not cold, but dreary nonetheless.

Rain underperforming up here. Nearby pond water level is still low.

Last night the lights came out briefly shortly after midnight. I slept through the first show Friday night.

I've observed that outside of the deep south and plains, tornadoes sometimes favor the margins of the highest CAPE. There was a super sharp CAPE gradient over far SW Michigan. The later batch of convection was associated with the leading edge of even higher CAPE with dewpoints near 70 pushing into the OV later in the evening. This effect I've observed might just be a side effect of the wind being more backed in the lowest km near warm fronts or other types of horizontal temperature gradients. The Michigan storms also seemed lower topped due to being closer to the upper low. CAPE was possibly fatter despite being less overall. The storms were also more strongly forced under an area of vorticity advection aloft as opposed to being driven by afternoon heating.

Always a problem when it's far from the radar. There's a significant hail spike too.

I'm interested to see how long that tornado has been on the ground. It's been going for miles.

I just got a massive anvil bolt from the blue way up in GRR. Boy it shook the ground hard. It's barely even sprinkling.

Classic hook.

If I were chasing I'd be watching that Three Rivers cell. It's a bit more isolated than the one to the north.

That cell near Three Rivers is in a good environment.

Looks like there was a brief tornado between Dowagiac and Decatur MI. It's messy looking though. Huge rain wrapped blob.

That tornado warned circulation heading towards Dowagiac MI is getting stronger. Hint of CC drop in last scan.

Storms actually missed north yesterday. There was some decent hail near Ludington. This just isn't a Great Lakes setup though. It's a plains setup. Best bet for stronger convection farther north and east looks to be next week Thursday. Still uncertainty though. Still way better pattern than last year at this time when there were hardly any storms anywhere in the US. Keeping my fingers crossed there is no blocking again this May. That just killed spring storm season last year.

The sun is out and its nice and humid. I can feel the warm front inching back north.

Hoping a train sets up at some point with this pattern. Nice one over northern lower at this point. Models showing mostly boring stratiform for here though. EML is all eaten up by time the front is nearby.

Not really, but thanks. No damage reports, so it was a weak EF0 at best (doubt it gets any confirmation). The hail, well that definitely over-performed. The sun wasn’t even out most of the day so I wasn’t even expecting to hear thunder. It’s impressive to get severe hail with dewpoints in the 40s. It’s more common at high altitudes, like Colorado.

Tornado warned mini-supercell just to my south. Sirens went off. Too bad its dark.

Rotating cell.

Best lightning bolts since Feb 7.

Its got a little rotation on it. Kinda high based though.

Nice rumbler off to my north. Heavy graupel / small hail producer.

Might be a nice triple-point moving through here tomorrow. I hope the trend is to slow it down.

Possible up your way. The next system looks to immediately melt it all here. Kind of useless this time of year. I’ll take it now if April can flip back to warm / thunder.