Severe Weather potential 9/8/12

[weatherwiz]

You did a nice job yesterday... don't beat yourself up!

These kinds of things are fickle... but from a meteorological perspective it was an exciting day with the low topped supercells during the morning and midday followed by a dying (AWT) squall line.

I just enjoy watching these things unfold... as you do as well. Most people are IMBY whiners with severe weather lol.

You're one of the best convective posters on here, stop

The thing is I care about virtually the entire northeast, especially NY/PA and perhaps I bring alot of that into here. As much I love severe and and would love to see it I know how rare it is for me to experience it...I always hope so and think about it but I have to look outside what happens at my house.

I'll admit...I thought CT and most of MA would get hit alot harder than we did...I saw that instability and opened my eyes. I didn't fail to realize that s/w was further NW than modeled and we just didn't have the forcing it appeared we'd have.

As for the tornado potential before the line I think that worked out quite well...sure we didn't have TOR's here but the cells acted just as we thought if they were to develop, which they did, but they just didn't produce.

These threads would probably be alot better if individuals didn't expect severe in their backyard. i just don't think everyone realizes a 45% hatched 9for example, wind) means there is a 45% chance of severe criteria wind/wind damage within 25 miles of any point within the area.

I just often feel everything negative is directed right at me and it's b/c I look outside of what happens where I live and I care about the entire region while most others only care about what they see. It just makes it not fun at all and not worth it.

[CT Rain]

The thing is I care about virtually the entire northeast, especially NY/PA and perhaps I bring alot of that into here. As much I love severe and and would love to see it I know how rare it is for me to experience it...I always hope so and think about it but I have to look outside what happens at my house.

I'll admit...I thought CT and most of MA would get hit alot harder than we did...I saw that instability and opened my eyes. I didn't fail to realize that s/w was further NW than modeled and we just didn't have the forcing it appeared we'd have.

As for the tornado potential before the line I think that worked out quite well...sure we didn't have TOR's here but the cells acted just as we thought if they were to develop, which they did, but they just didn't produce.

These threads would probably be alot better if individuals didn't expect severe in their backyard. i just don't think everyone realizes a 45% hatched 9for example, wind) means there is a 45% chance of severe criteria wind/wind damage within 25 miles of any point within the area.

I just often feel everything negative is directed right at me and it's b/c I look outside of what happens where I live and I care about the entire region while most others only care about what they see. It just makes it not fun at all and not worth it.

Just ignore them. Look at the number of posters and pro mets who will post on a 50 page thread about a 1 inch snowfall!!!! If you throw cold water on a 1-3" clipper threat you're an idiot or a debbie downer lol.

I am like you... if there's severe weather even over the border I'm very interested. I just am fascinated by those kind of storms.

Your forecasting skills have improved dramatically over the years... you should be proud!

[ChrisM]

The thing is I care about virtually the entire northeast, especially NY/PA and perhaps I bring alot of that into here. As much I love severe and and would love to see it I know how rare it is for me to experience it...I always hope so and think about it but I have to look outside what happens at my house.

I'll admit...I thought CT and most of MA would get hit alot harder than we did...I saw that instability and opened my eyes. I didn't fail to realize that s/w was further NW than modeled and we just didn't have the forcing it appeared we'd have.

As for the tornado potential before the line I think that worked out quite well...sure we didn't have TOR's here but the cells acted just as we thought if they were to develop, which they did, but they just didn't produce.

These threads would probably be alot better if individuals didn't expect severe in their backyard. i just don't think everyone realizes a 45% hatched 9for example, wind) means there is a 45% chance of severe criteria wind/wind damage within 25 miles of any point within the area.

I just often feel everything negative is directed right at me and it's b/c I look outside of what happens where I live and I care about the entire region while most others only care about what they see. It just makes it not fun at all and not worth it.

I really didnt realize trolling scoots and you would make you so upset lol. You're a good forecaster, the event pretty much verified. There was even a tor warning right over my house...the first time I can remember. Don't freak out wiz, you're fine. A LOT of people listen very closely to what you have to say.

[CoastalWx]

I really didnt realize trolling scoots and you would make you so upset lol. You're a good forecaster, the event pretty much verified. There was even a tor warning right over my house...the first time I can remember. Don't freak out wiz, you're fine. A LOT of people listen very closely to what you have to say.

When did you troll me?

[CoastalWx]

I will say that when someone posts about some factors that aren't favorable, and the post is followed by " oh wow wee wow CAPEs are 1500j" it's sort of an eff you to the met. Lots of weenie posts yesterday.

[CoastalWx]

Believe it or not, SNE mets know what they are talking about.

[weatherwiz]

Just ignore them. Look at the number of posters and pro mets who will post on a 50 page thread about a 1 inch snowfall!!!! If you throw cold water on a 1-3" clipper threat you're an idiot or a debbie downer lol.

I am like you... if there's severe weather even over the border I'm very interested. I just am fascinated by those kind of storms.

Your forecasting skills have improved dramatically over the years... you should be proud!

Thanks man, this really means alot!

Anytime I see a threat that comes close to the CT border I just don't know how to play it...many times nothing significant will happen but what happens if something happens once and there was no warning given?

I know I need to do alot more than just looking at parameters. Actually, too be honest, the night before when I was looking at soundings I saw that inversion above 700mb and mentioned it to myself but I completely ignored it and I believe that was a major factor in not having those early supercells produce.

My feeling is people interpret potential as to what will occur but I guess you can't blame them but then how do you portray forecasts to them? If we didn't mention anything and these same people got nailed they would complain...so is it a lose/lose situation?

[CT Rain]

I will say that when someone posts about some factors that aren't favorable, and the post is followed by " oh wow wee wow CAPEs are 1500j" it's sort of an eff you to the met. Lots of weenie posts yesterday.

Honestly all you had to do was post the 18z ALB sounding to make the severe weather weenies upset lol

[CoastalWx]

Honestly all you had to do was post the 18z ALB sounding to make the severe weather weenies upset lol

Yep

[CoastalWx]

Wiz you do fine. Nice job recognizing the threat.

[weatherwiz]

I really didnt realize trolling scoots and you would make you so upset lol. You're a good forecaster, the event pretty much verified. There was even a tor warning right over my house...the first time I can remember. Don't freak out wiz, you're fine. A LOT of people listen very closely to what you have to say.

I'm not upset at all...even though it seems like it but I'm just wondering at where the busted forecasts come from...I know it sucks when you don't get anything good when you're in the risk area...trust me, this KILLS me and always has but eventually you just have to learn that for one person seeing the chance of seeing severe, even in a GREAT setup is rare...I would like to look at people that live in the Plains and ask them how many times per year they see severe criteria...despite the fact they get mod risks several times per year.

[CT Rain]

Thanks man, this really means alot!

Anytime I see a threat that comes close to the CT border I just don't know how to play it...many times nothing significant will happen but what happens if something happens once and there was no warning given?

I know I need to do alot more than just looking at parameters. Actually, too be honest, the night before when I was looking at soundings I saw that inversion above 700mb and mentioned it to myself but I completely ignored it and I believe that was a major factor in not having those early supercells produce.

My feeling is people interpret potential as to what will occur but I guess you can't blame them but then how do you portray forecasts to them? If we didn't mention anything and these same people got nailed they would complain...so is it a lose/lose situation?

In retrospect things really made sense yesterday.

Look at that wretched Albany sounding... and also some of the model soundings from the morning.

There was an area of instability here in SW SNE and NYC Metro that was in the lower part of the troposphere below the 500mb part of the sounding that looked like severe weather vomit. Given the degree of shear and the increasingly moist boundary layer/instability it's not a huge surprise that the initial batch of showers was able to become surface based with some strong low level rotation.

As the dynamics waned and the line ran ahead of the strongest QG forcing there was no way that squall line was going to be able to produce into SNE.

[weatherwiz]

Honestly all you had to do was post the 18z ALB sounding to make the severe weather weenies upset lol

I had completely forgot about that sounding Was just too caught up with everything else

Wiz you do fine. Nice job recognizing the threat.

Thanks!

[ChrisM]

I'm not upset at all...even though it seems like it but I'm just wondering at where the busted forecasts come from...I know it sucks when you don't get anything good when you're in the risk area...trust me, this KILLS me and always has but eventually you just have to learn that for one person seeing the chance of seeing severe, even in a GREAT setup is rare...I would like to look at people that live in the Plains and ask them how many times per year they see severe criteria...despite the fact they get mod risks several times per year.

In new england even if yby sees a svr event verify one in every 5 years I'd say you're lucky. We don't live in Kansas. The reason Scott, Ryan and others almost always nail forecasts is because theyre cautious, and it works here. I was 90% kidding last night, hope you're not upset.

[Damage In Tolland]

Are we done for possible severe events in New Eng for the season..or maybe 1 more shot somewhere down the road?

[weatherwiz]

In retrospect things really made sense yesterday.

Look at that wretched Albany sounding... and also some of the model soundings from the morning.

There was an area of instability here in SW SNE and NYC Metro that was in the lower part of the troposphere below the 500mb part of the sounding that looked like severe weather vomit. Given the degree of shear and the increasingly moist boundary layer/instability it's not a huge surprise that the initial batch of showers was able to become surface based with some strong low level rotation.

As the dynamics waned and the line ran ahead of the strongest QG forcing there was no way that squall line was going to be able to produce into SNE.

This all makes perfect sense...what I did was for the line coming in was look at the instability we had and got excited...looking back after it was obvious it wouldn't sustain...especially with weak mlvl forcing.

Also, for that late morning/early afternoon activity...was their alot in the way of mid-level rotation? I bet the llvl's were rotating like crazy but without solid mlvl circulation going on it would be very difficult to get spinups. I know down by NYC they had a bit more working than we did.

[CT Rain]

In new england even if yby sees a svr event verify one in every 5 years I'd say you're lucky. We don't live in Kansas. The reason Scott, Ryan and others almost always nail forecasts is because theyre cautious, and it works here. I was 90% kidding last night, hope you're not upset.

Look at the probabilities from the SPC.

45% of severe within 25 miles of a point is really meh. That's like less than a 50% chance of seeing severe in a given county.

The hatching, in retrospect, was overdone and the eastward extent was as well but we were likely very close to having several tornadoes in our area with that setup. Hell, OKX issued 8 tornado warnings yesterday!

[weatherwiz]

In new england even if yby sees a svr event verify one in every 5 years I'd say you're lucky. We don't live in Kansas. The reason Scott, Ryan and others almost always nail forecasts is because theyre cautious, and it works here. I was 90% kidding last night, hope you're not upset.

What's weird is though since about 2006 I've seen svr criteria about 6-7 times...some spots just are more lucky than others I guess.

[weatherwiz]

Look at the probabilities from the SPC.

45% of severe within 25 miles of a point is really meh. That's like less than a 50% chance of seeing severe in a given county.

The hatching, in retrospect, was overdone and the eastward extent was as well but we were likely very close to having several tornadoes in our area with that setup. Hell, OKX issued 8 tornado warnings yesterday!

And that's thing thing...that's why the TOR mention yesterday verified...not just b/c there were 2 confirmed TOR's but we had the supercells which had the rotation...how can you forecasts which cells will produce and which will not....we can't. If we saw no supercells than I could see a bust on that part but we had the cells but they just didn't want to produce...outside of NYC.

[ChrisM]

Look at the probabilities from the SPC.

45% of severe within 25 miles of a point is really meh. That's like less than a 50% chance of seeing severe in a given county.

The hatching, in retrospect, was overdone and the eastward extent was as well but we were likely very close to having several tornadoes in our area with that setup. Hell, OKX issued 8 tornado warnings yesterday!

Like I said, I called my parents from Hartford and told them to go into the basement because ed (ctsnowstorm) texted me saying that there was a tor sig heading right at my house. That's nothing short of impressive, and it was scary for a few minutes.

[CT Rain]

This all makes perfect sense...what I did was for the line coming in was look at the instability we had and got excited...looking back after it was obvious it wouldn't sustain...especially with weak mlvl forcing.

Also, for that late morning/early afternoon activity...was their alot in the way of mid-level rotation? I bet the llvl's were rotating like crazy but without solid mlvl circulation going on it would be very difficult to get spinups. I know down by NYC they had a bit more working than we did.

Most of the rotation was really from the ground up through 10kft from what I saw (and I wasn't able to watch too closely). But that's what you'd expect given the setup. The EF1 in Canarsie had very little rotation about 4500 ft AGL with virtually nothing showing up on OKX but the EWR TDWR showed it very well near the ground.

Props to BillG at OKX for those warnings... he did a great job monitoring OKX, EWR, and JFK. That's a lot to handle!

[CT Rain]

Like I said, I called my parents from Hartford and told them to go into the basement because ed (ctsnowstorm) texted me saying that there was a tor sig heading right at my house. That's nothing short of impressive, and it was scary for a few minutes.

Yeah the storm's rotation really tightened up over Harwinton. I thought it could have dropped something.

[weatherwiz]

Most of the rotation was really from the ground up through 10kft from what I saw (and I wasn't able to watch too closely). But that's what you'd expect given the setup. The EF1 in Canarsie had very little rotation about 4500 ft AGL with virtually nothing showing up on OKX but the EWR TDWR showed it very well near the ground.

Props to BillG at OKX for those warnings... he did a great job monitoring OKX, EWR, and JFK. That's a lot to handle!

When I first saw that TOR for NYC I was looking at the OKX radar and there was crap...I changed to the TDWR and was my jaw dropped....I think I even posted a screen shot. I think down there being right on that axis of higher theta-e air really helped...plus there had to be some mesoscale factors going on that we just couldn't detect...that area has had several tornadoes since 2006 and alot of it definitely is mesoscale but some of it we just cant detect.

[ORH_wxman]

I just don't get that excited about most severe threats here...but that said, this one was fairly typical of many threats for our region. We've actually seen about 3 or 4 of the variety where we could say that it looked better to the west....overall it was really this types of points that should be remembered:

1.) Better instability and forcing to the west with a "dirty" airmass over SNE always screams NY/PA to Hudson Valley threat...maybe someone in western/southwest SNE gets lucky too....but for the majoirty of us its pretty ugly, you can usually slice about 50-100 miles worth of lognitude off the severe lines on SPC in that setup.

2.) As mentioned times before, we rarely do well without great ML lapse rates.

3.) When the main threat might be a low-topped TOR spin-up threat in SW SNE...people need to understand that 99% of the population will probably get nothing even in that area and keep expectations accordingly.

Those mets that did post in here about the setup were pretty spot-on from what I did read.

[CT Rain]

I just don't get that excited about most severe threats here...but that said, this one was fairly typical of many threats for our region. We've actually seen about 3 or 4 of the variety where we could say that it looked better to the west....overall it was really this types of points that should be remembered:

1.) Better instability and forcing to the west with a "dirty" airmass over SNE always screams NY/PA to Hudson Valley threat...maybe someone in western/southwest SNE gets lucky too....but for the majoirty of us its pretty ugly, you can usually slice about 50-100 miles worth of lognitude off the severe lines on SPC in that setup.

2.) As mentioned times before, we rarely do well without great ML lapse rates.

3.) When the main threat might be a low-topped TOR spin-up threat in SW SNE...people need to understand that 99% of the population will probably get nothing even in that area and keep expectations accordingly.

Those mets that did post in here about the setup were pretty spot-on from what I did read.

I don't think it was really the "dirty airmass" I think it was more an issue of missing out on the best dynamics.

I was content with the low topped tor setup... not sure why so many expect a few spinups means their BY will get slammed lol.

[CT Rain]

If we can get convective initiation prior to the main forcing tomorrow (which is possible given very little CIN) we should watch out for rather unimpressive looking cells dropping TORs.

bump

[ORH_wxman]

I don't think it was really the "dirty airmass" I think it was more an issue of missing out on the best dynamics.

I was content with the low topped tor setup... not sure why so many expect a few spinups means their BY will get slammed lol.

Yeah well I certianly do not think the dirty airmass helped when the line went east....i.e. there was no backup for when the best dynamics were too far NW....if we had some real instability to work with...we may have been able to cold-pool our way to the line sustaining itself a bit better. But I agree that missing the best dynamics was a primary driver.

We've seen it not help us before...ala 6/6/10...it probably hurt us that day too. (the bad ML lapse rates were primary reason, but having too weak of instbaility to try and counter that obviously doesn't help us)

[CoastalWx]

When a moderate risk is put across SNE, it will get people excited no matter what...even if we say we don't really expect that kind of damage happening. The SPC are the pros that issue the forecasts and they do a great job over most areas. I think sometimes their forecasts can be pulled back a bit over the northeast.

[ORH_wxman]

When a moderate risk is put across SNE, it will get people excited no matter what...even if we say we don't really expect that kind of damage happening. The SPC are the pros that issue the forecasts and they do a great job over most areas. I think sometimes their forecasts can be pulled back a bit over the northeast.

I think most of the time in here, people do a good job of identifying when the threat is pretty marginal and mainly for extreme W areas or SW areas. There's obviously a lot more fickle elements to the severe weather in SNE versus west of us due to the ocean to our south and some of the CAD tendencies over our area (i.e. sfc warm fronts may have a hard time getting north as models say at times)....so its impossible to expect SPC to nail the lines all the time in an area where they are only forecasting for a small percentage of the time versus the much larger threats out in the central US.

[CoastalWx]

I think most of the time in here, people do a good job of identifying when the threat is pretty marginal and mainly for extreme W areas or SW areas. There's obviously a lot more fickle elements to the severe weather in SNE versus west of us due to the ocean to our south and some of the CAD tendencies over our area (i.e. sfc warm fronts may have a hard time getting north as models say at times)....so its impossible to expect SPC to nail the lines all the time in an area where they are only forecasting for a small percentage of the time versus the much larger threats out in the central US.

They'll never get the exact areas down for sure. Those nuances you mentioned are reasons for that. But given the data, I was surprised it extended so far east.