Late June 2012 storms

[Kmlwx]

Are there places that archive model runs? Like 1-10 / 7-14 days out at this pt. I am writing something for CWG about "lack of warning" but did not really save any imagery leading up to the event.

I think the pattern was on the models - obviously the final pieces of the puzzle were very late to be clarified to forecasters. Even so, I think from a public safety stand point, there was good warning out ahead of the line once it formed. Hopefully you will word the article in such a way that Diane Sawyer doesn't go on the news and claim that the storms struck with no warning. I guess you are speaking more about days out ahead, though?

[Ian]

I think the pattern was on the models - obviously the final pieces of the puzzle were very late to be clarified to forecasters. Even so, I think from a public safety stand point, there was good warning out ahead of the line once it formed. Hopefully you will word the article in such a way that Diane Sawyer doesn't go on the news and claim that the storms struck with no warning. I guess you are speaking more about days out ahead, though?

yeah.. this is more about prior to it formed though i guess some of the thoughts as it was moving were a bit iffy.. i think generally the nws and local media ramped up the game pretty hard by afternoon/evening though. it's not even really going to be from an angle of blame but more of like "why wasn't the possibility even noted ever". are we going to always be in a place where we get 3-6 hours warning of a massive wind event?

[H2O]

Coming down I-95 on my way to Williamsburg saw plenty of trees down.

[Avdave]

I bet the NPS dude I chatted with at the Jefferson while soaked and in psuedo shock was excited to get the scoop early. I gave him a tutorial on the different types of severe weather and explained why a derecho was more often than not the king for damage. We tried to figure out what derecho meant but he only took two year of spanish in HS as did I.

thats one helluva pick up line

From VA emergency management

[H2O]

yeah.. this is more about prior to it formed though i guess some of the thoughts as it was moving were a bit iffy.. i think generally the nws and local media ramped up the game pretty hard by afternoon/evening though. it's not even really going to be from an angle of blame but more of like "why wasn't the possibility even noted ever". are we going to always be in a place where we get 3-6 hours warning of a massive wind event?

I wonder how much difference there would have been if they had talked about it all day and people got fatigued and then ignored the later warnings? I think they tried to let everyone know how serious it was going to be in plenty of time but I feel most treated this as a run of the mill tstorm

[MN Transplant]

Are there places that archive model runs? Like 1-10 / 7-14 days out at this pt. I am writing something for CWG about "lack of warning" but did not really save any imagery leading up to the event.

Univ of Washington model site lets you go back a while. Far from my bookmarks though, so no link.

[Amped]

Tstorms Firing near Chicago where the last one started.We don't have the a strong LLVL jet this time though.

[Avdave]

HRRR for 23z tonight -

Wow did the HRRR bust huge last night.

[Ed Lizard]

I bet the NPS dude I chatted with at the Jefferson while soaked and in psuedo shock was excited to get the scoop early. I gave him a tutorial on the different types of severe weather and explained why a derecho was more often than not the king for damage. We tried to figure out what derecho meant but he only took two year of spanish in HS as did I.

It means "straight". It is a fairly recently mad eup word, meaning 'straight", sort of a play of tornado coming from the verb "to turn" the way La Nina (the girl) was a created word to match El Nino (literally, the boy), named for the Christ child because South American fisherman would notice it hurting their catches around Christmas. 'La nada" (the nothing) is an even more recently made up term

But derecho implies "straight".

[wxmeddler]

Power on! Total duration 36 hours..

[Ian]

I wonder how much difference there would have been if they had talked about it all day and people got fatigued and then ignored the later warnings? I think they tried to let everyone know how serious it was going to be in plenty of time but I feel most treated this as a run of the mill tstorm

I think a very easy comparison is a few weeks ago for the "tornado outbreak." That was talked about heavily for days ahead. Granted, it was perhaps a little easier to "see" the potential as surface maps were showing precip and a low pressure development etc. But in the end that was "hype" for 99% of the population who was almost wholly unaffected other than perhaps seeing some scary clouds.

While I'm sorta proud for catching this about as well as anyone I've seen from range... I don't think I was in a position Thursday night to say it was about to happen. At that point it was still more about "the next few days have some serious potential if something can take advantage of it." So in that frame, why were public forecasts so benign looking? Why did SPC not even slight risk the day before it happened?

Maybe you're right and people would have ignored it. But some probably didn't even know it was coming at all since there was so little if any heads up prior. Plus teaching people what derecho is before the fact might be helpful. Yeah most wouldnt give two ****s but you never know how many would.

[Mrs.J]

One of my friends showed this link on FB. It is a high tension wire platform bent over by the storm. Not sure of the location, but it does say it was Potomac Edison's which is our power company.

https://www.facebook...&type=1

[Nikolai]

Power came back on around 3AM in McLean, thank jeebus.

Driving around yesterday, damage was widespread but rarely concentrated... one of the most notable areas was in Bethesda or Chevy Chase along a golf course (Reservoir Road, I think?) where many trees had limbs missing or were entirely down. Parts of McLean and Falls Church have telephone poles snapped in half, too. All areas had street closings, but far NW DC had the most.

[RodneyS]

That warning map you posted earlier was incredible. That thing really covered some ground. Props to you for being one of the main people who kept saying we wouldn't get missed to the south.

Absolutely. Great job, Ian, you were way ahead of the curve on this one. Power is still out in my area (Herndon - Fox Mill), which has never happened before for this long. Previous record holders in my neighborhood were Hurricane Isabel and the 32-inch snowstorm at Dulles in February 2010, which each caused outages of about 14 hours.

[Hoosier]

This pattern is favorable for wind events/derechos but it's pretty difficult to determine which one is going to enter "elite" territory like this one. I just don't think there is the skill to pick out which event could be a high end one much more than 12-24 hours in advance...and even that may be generous.

[Ian]

This pattern is favorable for wind events/derechos but it's pretty difficult to determine which one is going to enter "elite" territory like this one. I just don't think there is the skill to pick out which event could be a high end one much more than 12-24 hours in advance...and even that may be generous.

I agree, and noted that several times ahead of the event. But still.. no mention of risk? I dunno the right answer. Still, it's at least like a high end TS hitting the area in terms of damage.. so to say 6 hours lead is good.. not sure that's truthful.

[mappy]

LOL -- i kid you not, i just heard a little girl outside (presumably moving a branch near a car with her parents) say "the derecho was worse than a hurricane right?"

I'm not surprised - the problem is the media is describing it as being worse than a hurricane. I just read an article on MSNBC where O'Mally was interviewed and he mentioned hurricane.

Strong winds from the storms late Friday toppled massive trees onto cars and blocked roads, and officials asked residents not to drive until they could clear debris from the streets. When a hurricane is lumbering their way, state officials have time to get extra personnel in place so they can immediately start on cleanup. That wasn't the case with this storm, known as a derecho — a straight-line wind storm that sweeps over a large area at high speed.

"Unlike a polite hurricane that gives you three days of warning, this storm gave us all the impact of a hurricane without any of the warning of a hurricane," Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48032427#.T_CENPUumSo

[Hoosier]

I agree, and noted that several times ahead of the event. But still.. no mention of risk? I dunno the right answer. Still, it's at least like a high end TS hitting the area in terms of damage.. so to say 6 hours lead is good.. not sure that's truthful.

There was a lot of uncertainty over timing/location of initiation in the Midwest, which would then have an affect on what happens downstream. That being said, the threshold for issuing slight risk isn't all that high so I understand where you're coming from.

[Ian]

There was a lot of uncertainty over timing/location of initiation in the Midwest, which would then have an affect on what happens downstream. That being said, the threshold for issuing slight risk isn't all that high so I understand where you're coming from.

SPC actually did a pretty good job of location I think. D3 and D2 outlooks:

Clearly uncertainty is a big culprit here. But the wording was still sorta like "well there might be some isolated activity."

[Ian]

[Hank Scorpio]

Absolutely. Great job, Ian, you were way ahead of the curve on this one. Power is still out in my area (Herndon - Fox Mill), which has never happened before for this long. Previous record holders in my neighborhood were Hurricane Isabel and the 32-inch snowstorm at Dulles in February 2010, which each caused outages of about 14 hours.

I grew up in Fox Mill, and my brother + family as well as my mom still live there. Like you, they're still without power and the most notable damage on their street is a tree down on a house.

Good luck, I'm hoping the power comes back on reaalllllly soon over there.

[Ed Lizard]

Just saw this on internet. Not sure what velocity scale was...

[Amped]

Imagine if this were the weekend of the confrence.

[nj2va]

Power out.

[North Balti Zen]

Sry for starting outage talk in other thread, ian, I thought this thread was being closed and more talk there. My bad.

Sent from my DROIDX 2

[RodneyS]

I grew up in Fox Mill, and my brother + family as well as my mom still live there. Like you, they're still without power and the most notable damage on their street is a tree down on a house.

Good luck, I'm hoping the power comes back on reaalllllly soon over there.

Thanks, and you're right about limited damage in the Fox Mill neigborhood -- there must be a major feeder line to Fox Mill that's down big-time. When you look at Dominion Virginia Power's Interactive Map, it appears that there are only limited outages in Fox Mill, but that's far from the case. I haven't quite figured out how the Dominion grid works, but I can't complain too much because normally we get off easy.

[Avdave]

Wow, if this isnt a bunch of BS. The Baltimore sun should be embarrassed to have published this article. what a load of crap.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-storm-unexpected-20120630,0,5065918.story

Magnitude of Friday's storm shocked meteorologists, utility workers

Heat was a warning sign but no one expected line of fierce storms from Midwest to Mid-Atlantic

6:44 p.m. EDT, June 30, 2012

As of midday Friday, forecasters at the National Weather Service in Sterling, Va., were uncertain that the Baltimore area would see any thunderstorms at all later in the evening.

Without a cold front or a low-pressure system in place, they lacked the markers that would guarantee violent weather. If a disturbance did occur, however, all the heat and humidity in the lower atmosphere would serve as fuel.

"We knew that any thunderstorm that did develop could become severe," said Stephen Konarik, a meteorologist with the weather service.

That knowledge did not prepare them for what actually unfolded, a line of storms from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic that hurled winds at hurricane force and left millions of people without power. It took only a small, upper-level disturbance near Chicago to interact with all that heat and produce a rare, straight-line windmaker known as a "derecho."

"The widespread nature of the image we saw is a very rare occurrence," Konarik said. "We would not have been planning on that magnitude of event."

Certainly, Maryland residents, utility crews and emergency workers were caught off guard. "Last night was a historic event," Gov. Martin O'Malley said, describing a "nasty little line of storms that we had been tracking, hoping it would go north of us, but it cut right across us."

Residents, who had seen nothing more than vague warnings of a possible thunderstorm, were shocked as winds bent over trees and lightning flashed nonstop.

"We got no warning from the weather forecast — none," said John Leonhart of Homeland. "I guess it was a real surprise to everyone, apparently even them."

BGE had put extra crews on the street as it would in anticipation of a typical summer thunderstorm, said spokesman Rob Gould. But even when those storms turn out to be bad, they usually leave outages in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands.

Gould said BGE officials developed an inkling of the storm's potential just before 10 p.m., but even then, they expected it to lose potency as it crossed east over the mountains. Within an hour, the storm lashed the area full-force.

"This one came with a vengeance," he said. "This is hurricane-like, no question."

The difference is that when a tropical system approaches from the south, the utility has days to import out-of-state crews and to distribute supplies such as utility poles and transformers around the area. BGE spent a week preparing for Hurricane Irene last year, Gould said, bringing in more than 1,000 out-of-state utility workers. The restoration still took a week.

For Friday's storm, which did three-fourths as much damage as Irene, BGE had no outside help in place. Worse still, the storm came from the Midwest, which often supplies crews to help with bad weather in Maryland. Those crews are instead coping with their own damage, Gould said.

Help is on the way in the form of 600 workers from Texas, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee and Michigan, but Gould said many of them will not join the effort until Monday. Because BGE was caught by surprise, he said, customers should expect the restoration to last "deep into next week."

Gould said he has never seen a storm of this magnitude strike with such surprising suddenness. "As advanced as we are technologically," he said, "Mother Nature can still do what she wants to do, when she wants to do it."

Though Konarik didn't put it quite that way, he agreed that the storm was the kind of freak occurrence that might always defy prediction. "It's just a rare event," he said.

[snowdude]

Wow, if this isnt a bunch of BS. The Baltimore sun should be embarrassed to have published this article. what a load of crap.

http://www.baltimore...0,5065918.story

I guess they don't recall the Severe Thunderstorm Watch that was issued at least 5 hours before the derecho hit? That's enough warning.

Sure the magnitude wasn't exactly expected to be that bad when we woke up that day, but yeah that article is BS.

[mappy]

Typical media just trying to make headlines

[CheesyPoofs]

I guess they don't recall the Severe Thunderstorm Watch that was issued at least 5 hours before the derecho hit? That's enough warning.

Sure the magnitude wasn't exactly expected to be that bad when we woke up that day, but yeah that article is BS.

I can understand how this article can be read as an "attack the meteorologist!" article, and I'm sure the averge, uninformed (about weather) person who reads it will read it and go "yup, nothing new, weather man wrong again!!!" I don't think the article is *that *far off, however.

We started the day under a "see text." The entire DC area was not under a slight risk until the 20z outlook (the western extent of the LWX CWA was earlier though). We were then upgraded to a moderate risk as it became evident what was going on. I wasn't under a watch until around 9:15PM (I was sort of wondering why they weren't extending it further east), though the rest of the area was under one by 6:30 you point out.

Even as late as 7PM, many knowledgeable weenies ( ) and mets here were questioning whether or not the DC metro would experience any major effects. I think it is reasonable to say that it did take us by surprise, all things considered. Yeah, we knew that the ingredients were in place, but I think it was obviously difficult to predict the extent of what occurred.

Perhaps the article should have focused more on the relative difficulty of forecasting these types of events, as it does come off as kind of a "the mets were lost on this one" article. Again, I'm not putting any blame whatsoever on LWX (or the midwest offices) or the SPC but I kind of see where the article is coming from (in relation to it being difficult to forecast), despite it being written poorly. I don't think it's a case of the media trying to create a story out of nothing.