2025 Severe Weather General Discussion

[NorthArlington101]

4 minutes ago, yoda said:

We'll see... some pickup in lightning and warned cell in W MD 

Family says the storm in Harrisonburg is fairly vigorous, even if it doesn’t look intimidating on radar 

[midatlanticweather]

Lots of hail signatures on the storms on the western Loudoun border. I will let you know as they hit Purcellville 

 

 

[87storms]

Pretty remarkable CAM agreement on an intense line rolling through the area in the early afternoon tomorrow.   (The NAM Nest is a bit later than any other guidance, but it has a notorious slow bias on convective timing.)   The reflectivities look amazing, but is there really any severe potential with it in the DC area?    The wind fields are amazing, and if we had even 500 j/kg of sfc-based cape, we'd be looking at widespread damaging winds and QLCS tornadoes.    But there really isn't any instability shown by any model.  Maybe the HRRR squeezes out 50-100 j/kg, but it looks warmer than most other guidance.     So, I have to wonder if this will be just  a short period of torrential rain followed by stratiform.    Before I totally poo-poo the threat, however, it's worth noting that sometimes the incredible shear and overall dynamics can drive severe weather with a forced line in an environment with basically no cape, so I won't rule out a damaging event with an isolated brief pinup, but I don't think that it's likely.
The better environment actually establishes itself over northern VA and areas to the north and northwest in the evening hours, as the very cold air aloft arrives, steeping lapse rates.    Go look at sfc-based cape fields for the early evening hours.   The values aren't awesome, but they're notably higher than during the early afternoon event.    Wind fields are still decent, so any cells would likely be supercellular have hail and wind potential.    Unfortunately, the upper system arrives just a bit too late, and nighttime sfc cooling with reduce the potential as the evening goes on.    The best severe threat with this round will be over eastern WV, northwestern VA, and up into PA.   Maybe an isolated cell can pop across the DC metro area, and it would have severe potential if it did, but the threat appears low there at this time.

Seems like things played out this way. Little more energy with the last round, but the evening arrival may have lessened the impact

[Rhino16]

I had some cool pea sized hail today from an odd storm that had a really cool streaky look from the precip / hail.

[high risk]

1 hour ago, 87storms said:

Seems like things played out this way. Little more energy with the last round, but the evening arrival may have lessened the impact

         Thanks for noticing!    My forecast was pretty good, except that the storms (while sub-severe) persisted all the way east into the DC Metro area this evening.   The CAMs were too quick to really disintegrate the line.

[Eskimo Joe]

9 hours ago, high risk said:

         Thanks for noticing!    My forecast was pretty good, except that the storms (while sub-severe) persisted all the way east into the DC Metro area this evening.   The CAMs were too quick to really disintegrate the line.

I fall for this all the time too. Rich Thompson from SPC hammers this in his lecture that convection from maturing or mature systems will often persist longer than what the CAMS illustrate. We saw this during both April 2011 severe weather outbreaks where tornadoes occurred from Alabama up into Pennsylvania.

[Kmlwx]

Unrelated but useful for severe season - does anyone know when the RRFS will be back online after the winter outage?

[yoda]

Day 8 mention in this mornings SPC day 4 to 8 disco

[yoda]

@Kmlwx @high risk @Eskimo Joe

Of course the usual caveats... but LWX AFD this afternoon already mentioning concern for severe thunderstorms next weekend 

LONG TERM /WEDNESDAY THROUGH SUNDAY/...
Dry weather will prevail through the end of the week. A backdoor
front will slide north to south Wednesday, then lift back north
as a warm front late Thursday. There is an outside chance of a
shower as the front lifts back north at the end of the week.

A powerful area of low pressure and strong associated cold front
will develop over the Plains later this week, then track east by
next weekend. Current guidance has a strong FROPA next Sunday.
Increasing moisture ahead of the front combined with increasing
low-level winds raises concerns for severe thunderstorms, but
the magnitude of the threat will depend on the exact timing of
FROPA and how much instability is able to develop.

[yoda]

Borrowing this from the Tennessee Valley forum

1 hour ago, jaxjagman said:

NSSL

 

[Kmlwx]

Yeah...way too far out to say anything definitive - but interesting to see a robust signal already on guidance. 

[Kmlwx]

CSU MLP looks a lot less favorable for severe than it did over the weekend. Timing seems off potentially. Still way too far out to say anything with confidence. 

[high risk]

10 hours ago, Kmlwx said:

CSU MLP looks a lot less favorable for severe than it did over the weekend. Timing seems off potentially. Still way too far out to say anything with confidence. 

Yeah, the GFS timing would be terrible; hug the Euro. 

[yoda]

Day 6 SPC OTLK 

 

[Kmlwx]

@WxWatcher007 - I was being SO serious when I said I wanted to turn it into a blanket. It arrived today. Well worth it. 

[Kmlwx]

Re: the Sunday severe risk - timing is still shifting around quite a bit...but I could see it being similar to the other day...

[WxWatcher007]

26 minutes ago, Kmlwx said:

@WxWatcher007 - I was being SO serious when I said I wanted to turn it into a blanket. It arrived today. Well worth it. 

Truly truly wonderful  

I have to find the original image lol I only have a copy right now. 

[Kmlwx]

1 hour ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Truly truly wonderful  

I have to find the original image lol I only have a copy right now. 

I'm going to burrito myself inside of it whenever we have a short range severe weather threat. Maybe it will protect against being socked in by clouds/busts.