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Friday Morning Warm Front Storm Potential


bluewave

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While the instability forecast for Friday morning is going to be on the weak side, we have seen

these morning warm frontal passages perform above what we might expect. We will see

a strong LLJ and a low closing off to our west. It also looks like the NAM is trying to create

a coupled upper jet region near us with the split flow. At the very least, we may just have

some heavy thunderstorms to track in the morning into the early afternoon.

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Nice thread bwave and I agree with your ideas. If the near term guidance is correct there could be an isolated severe weather threat along the warm front and in the (very) small warm sector to the south and east of the surface low tomorrow. The SPC SREF mean is indicative of good low level shear with 0-1km helicity over 250-300 m2/s2 in Northern NJ, Northeast PA, and Southeast New York. These parameters are also positioned favorably on the nose of the low level jet and increasing surface based instability...with the SREF mean SBCAPE over 1000 j/kg in Central NJ (closer to 750j/kg near Northern NJ and 500 j/kg or less north of there).

We'll once again be dealing with poor lapse rates but dynamically this system is actually fairly strong over a small area...with a juxtaposition of favorable low level shear and some surface instability coincidentally in the NYC Area as well as Central/Northern NJ..and to a lesser extent Southeast NY and Western New England (with much more meager surface based instability there despite favorable dynamics).

It will be interesting to see if we can get any strong storms developing along the warm front tomorrow or southeast of the surface low in this environment..I would imagine the updrafts would be somewhat weak but could produce some low level spinups.

SREF_1KMHEL_SSB_MEDIAN_MXMN__f033.gif

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^^^^

Very nice post, Earthlight. We have even seen some isolated low level spin ups in the past with high helicity values

and mostly elevated instability along morning to early afternoon warm fronts. It's usually a wait and see

situation with what the radar actually looks like tomorrow morning into the early afternoon. The 4km NAM

was also hinting at some possible training of cells and heavy rain potential.

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^^^^

Very nice post, Earthlight. We have even seen some isolated low level spin ups in the past with high helicity values

and mostly elevated instability along morning to early afternoon warm fronts. It's usually a wait and see

situation with what the radar actually looks like tomorrow morning into the early afternoon. The 4km NAM

was also hinting at some possible training of cells and heavy rain potential.

Definitely. The one caution flag I would throw up is that the NAM and SREF have been just a little too robust with surface based instability in these types of events the last few occurrences. But even with slightly undercut instability parameters, the synoptic scale set up still argues for potential isolated strong storms and a weak tornado or two from the NJ Shore to Long Island/NYC and maybe Northern NJ.

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It might be hard to actually advect the good SB CAPE values into the high helicity values. There is going to be a VERY SMALL area, if any, where the two are actually juxtaposed.

As we saw a couple of weeks ago, 500-750 J/KG of SB CAPE is usually not enough. We had really high SB CAPE values for the September 8th tornado event, however.

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NAM JFK sounding for 15z. Nice very low-level lapse rates which should help updrafts stay somewhat robust...nearly 1000 J/KG of SB CAPE, which is borderline but okay...and aiding from the lapse rates might help a tad more. Nearly 150 m^2/s^2 of 0-1km helicity, which is also good. Considering how putrid the lapse rates are past like 900mb, the 0-3km helicity doesn't really matter since updrafts are not getting up that high.

As John said, though, the NAM has often overdone the SB CAPE in these setups, which would instantly put a dent on things. If the SB CAPE is not what is modeled, we're really going to need to get those steeper lapse rates/"mixed" layer up to the full 1km to fully utilize the helicity in place.

NAM_218_2012092712_F27_40.5000N_74.0000W.png

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As hinted at earlier, the SPC SREF decreased surface based instability by 300 or more j/kg across the board for Friday afternoon. It could be argued that the best juxtaposition of low level shear and instability occurs around 12-15z. The 0-1km helicity parameters are extremely robust from 12 to 15z over much of New Jersey and Southeast New York...but the instability doesn't really spike until after that point. A noticeable disconnect between the two..likely owing to both the time of day and the timing of the LLJ. This...combined with the lacking deep layer shear profiles should really mitigate the threat for severe weather Friday. Still..I think there is an outside chance of a spinup or some strong wind gusts.

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Statement as of 8:46 AM EDT on September 28, 2012

The National Weather Service in Upton NY has issued an

* Urban Flood Advisory for...

Kings (Brooklyn) County in southeast New York...

Bronx County in southeast New York...

New York (Manhattan) County in southeast New York...

northern Nassau County in southeast New York...

Queens County in southeast New York...

* until 945 am EDT...

* at 843 am EDT... an area of heavy showers and embedded

thunderstorms developing over the region is producing rainfall rates

of around 1 to 1 1/2 inches per hour. This activity is expected to

gradually slides northeast of the region through 10 am. Excessive

runoff from this storm will cause minor flooding of urban

areas... highways... streets and underpasses as well as other drainage

areas and low lying spots.

Precautionary/preparedness actions...

Do not drive your vehicle into areas where the water covers the

roadway. Most flooding deaths occur in automobiles. Turn around and

find another Route.

Be prepared to take action if the flooding threat increases... or a

warning is issued.

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I think LGA just missed out on the heaviest of the overnight stuff. That's what it looked like on radar when i checked it last night.

LGA reported .37" for that overnight stuff. Most out of any local station. They JUST missed out on the very heavy band around 8:00am today where NYC got .88" in 1 hour. At home in Astoria, I caught that band and easily also had .75" during that hour.

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