West Coast BC Bomb

[baroclinic_instability]

It seems reasonable that the HPC surface analysis is pretty close. Granted, there are no buoys at the center of the low, but the buoys used by HPC are reasonable for a rough interpolation to be used. With that in mind, check the 06z to 09z surface maps.

19 hpa surface pressure drop in 3 hours!

The models have been consistently tanking the offshore low, but the lowest I had seen the last few days was the NAM dropping it 24 hpa/9 hours. Quite impressive, to say the least. I have never seen a 3 hour pressure drop that extreme in my meteorology life.

[Cyclonicjunkie]

Is that an eye?

[baroclinic_instability]

Definitely a good example of marine cyclogenesis! It certainly resembles an eye.

[bluewave]

Wow,check out how rapidly the pressure fell!

[New England Storm]

Wow look at that storm that amazing, better looking then a lot of the tropical systems we had this year. One of the best looking cold core system I have seen.

Is that an eye?

[Ginx snewx]

To NESTORM poster, reply without reposting please especially if your only contribution is a smilie

Nice storm, great pfalls.

[PSUBlizzicane2007]

Hmmm... are there any phase diagrams for this system? I wonder how warm-core it is (polar low?)

[usedtobe]

To NESTORM poster, reply without reposting please especially if your only contribution is a smilie

Nice storm, great pfalls.

Ginx.

Impressive, back in the day's of the old LFM and PE, the models would sometimes completely miss the development of these type bombs. Back in the 70S when I work the cloud and weather desk, I forecast a 988 mb low where the model had nothing, my low was just starting the occlusion process and I think my forecast was around 12 mb fall in 24 hours or so. I was so proud of myself for introducing a low that I was sure would verify. LOL, my low only would produce some rain as it approached the coast. Mother Nature's low ended up being in the 950s or upper 940s and it blew down trees. They really can be impressive bombs and back then trying to forecast which one would be a bobm and which wouldn't was humbling.

[Ginx snewx]

Ginx.

Impressive, back in the day's of the old LFM and PE, the models would sometimes completely miss the development of these type bombs. Back in the 70S when I work the cloud and weather desk, I forecast a 988 mb low where the model had nothing, my low was just starting the occlusion process and I think my forecast was around 12 mb fall in 24 hours or so. I was so proud of myself for introducing a low that I was sure would verify. LOL, my low only would produce some rain as it approached the coast. Mother Nature's low ended up being in the 950s or upper 940s and it blew down trees. They really can be impressive bombs and back then trying to forecast which one would be a bobm and which wouldn't was humbling.

Very interesting perspective Wes, sure have come a long long way. Saw some gusts near 60Kt on the buoy reports.

[Roger Smith]

This is a link to hourly data from Sandspit, located on the east side of the Queen Charlotte Islands (that we are now asked to call Haida Gwaii) about midway along the east coast where the two main islands meet.http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/forecast/24_hour_conditions_e.html?yzp&unit=mNote the near-hurricane force northeast winds here, outflow from fiords on the mainland partly responsible for that.Data buoy 46138 located to the southeast of that land station is now close to the center of the low. There's a ship apparently moving into the heart of the low (from 15z and 16z positions, would think it is coming out from the port of Kitimat which is the location of a large aluminum smelter) and that ship was reporting 47 knot northeast winds. Will be interesting to see what track it takes now as it seems to be reporting hourly. The models are showing this low hovering around the south end of the QCI (HG) and translating south as the arctic high swells up, most of the energy will go inland today and fire off frontal waves in southern BC but the low itself is supposed to be west of the Olympic Peninsula of WA state by Friday (and filling). The winds here in Vancouver picked up very quickly around 0800 PDT and it went from almost calm at my place to a 40 knot wind from the southeast. I guess the low (which is 300 miles to my northwest here) is sucking in air through the narrow inside passage, and we'll probably see some extreme gusts near northern Vancouver Island in the next few hours as this bomb process plays out, then it will all settle down as the energy moves away inland.

[baroclinic_instability]

Ginx.

Impressive, back in the day's of the old LFM and PE, the models would sometimes completely miss the development of these type bombs. Back in the 70S when I work the cloud and weather desk, I forecast a 988 mb low where the model had nothing, my low was just starting the occlusion process and I think my forecast was around 12 mb fall in 24 hours or so. I was so proud of myself for introducing a low that I was sure would verify. LOL, my low only would produce some rain as it approached the coast. Mother Nature's low ended up being in the 950s or upper 940s and it blew down trees. They really can be impressive bombs and back then trying to forecast which one would be a bobm and which wouldn't was humbling.

I can only imagine how humbling it must be to forecast out there. Interestingly, not that the CMC is all that good, but it went back and forth considerably on intensity 1-2 days before the system finally bombed. One run it was tanking out then the next run it barely had a surface low. I wonder how far this system would have deepened had it remained over water a bit longer.

[baroclinic_instability]

Hmmm... are there any phase diagrams for this system? I wonder how warm-core it is (polar low?)

Where do you find phase diagrams for a storm?

[k***]

very nice IP low

[Ed Lizard]

Where do you find phase diagrams for a storm?

FSU

Look at that

http://moe.met.fsu.edu/cyclonephase/gfs/fcst/archive/10111712/29.html

[Stebo]

FSU

Look at that

http://moe.met.fsu.e...0111712/29.html

Interesting to say the least.

[k***]

aren't there a few lows a year in that area that undergo warm seclusion?

[Ed Lizard]

That low between Hawaii and the Western Aleutians doesn't look too shabby either.

[usedtobe]

I can only imagine how humbling it must be to forecast out there. Interestingly, not that the CMC is all that good, but it went back and forth considerably on intensity 1-2 days before the system finally bombed. One run it was tanking out then the next run it barely had a surface low. I wonder how far this system would have deepened had it remained over water a bit longer.

Who knows but back when models had less vertical and horizontal resolution and more primitive equations and less data (satellite data) ove the oceans, they could really make huge errors on bombs. Made it fun to forecast but also humbling as you could look pretty stupid pretty easily.

[Cyclonicjunkie]

You sure this is not tropical or subtropical?... LOLZ

WOW

[Ed Lizard]

Canadian also analyzes it as warm core...

[Ed Lizard]

Stupid Canadian radar network...

[Ed Lizard]

18Z GFS

[aslkahuna]

Usually get a couple of lows like this off the BC and Pac NW coast about every year around this time of the year. When I was in Germany, I also saw some classic Channel Bombs in the English Channel tracking into the North Sea.

Steve

[Mallow]

aren't there a few lows a year in that area that undergo warm seclusion?

Usually get a couple of lows like this off the BC and Pac NW coast about every year around this time of the year. When I was in Germany, I also saw some classic Channel Bombs in the English Channel tracking into the North Sea.

Steve

Yep, this isn't that uncommon. Just usually goes unnoticed.

[Stebo]

Yep, this isn't that uncommon. Just usually goes unnoticed.

I was waiting for you to pop on this thread, as I knew you'd be the one who'd know.

[Roger Smith]

Ed, the Canadian radar network has been improved considerably in the past five years and now covers just about the whole populated southern half of the country, but I think the Prince Rupert area will be the last to get coverage simply because it isn't that needed, convective activity is rare, the weather is almost all frontal systems with steady rain that shows up fine on satellite imagery and surface reports -- and also there used to be coverage from Ketchikan AK but that seems to be off-line, at least today. Until recently we didn't have radar anywhere in the B.C. inland regions, just on the coast, but stations were opened up in Vernon and Prince George. These are difficult regions to provide good radar because of mountain ranges in different directions, so they had to place them very high up to overshoot the terrain. Radar coverage from the Rockies east to the Atlantic is just about 100% now, but there won't be radar in the subarctic or arctic for the foreseeable future, mainly because the need is very low there also. Kind of cool to watch the low bounce off the Coast Ranges at least that's what it looks like on a satellite loop.My previous post got garbled after I posted it, not sure why, I saw the link separated out from the text, then when I looked again it was wrapped into the text. There are still some odd things going on here, I am getting viruses galore this week which is unusual.

[kwt]

Usually get a couple of lows like this off the BC and Pac NW coast about every year around this time of the year. When I was in Germany, I also saw some classic Channel Bombs in the English Channel tracking into the North Sea.

Steve

Its certainly an impressive looking storm on the Sat.imagery.

As for the channel and the North Sea, yeah we do get some of those pretty impressive storm, every now and then you also get a nice cold airmass to the north and the system bombs into the cold air which obviously leads to only one result....not common to get that sort of set-up this side of the Atlantic however...

[Roger Smith]

Now it looks like a microcane heading south, and it's sucking in colder air here, feels cold enough to hail or snow but just dark clouds so far. Some hail showers reported earlier not far inland from here, northwest of YXX (Abbotsford BC).

[Cory]

We got some crazy winds out of this in SE Alaska. The gradient between that low and the high up north created winds of 110 mph at our Cape Spencer observation site and we had a 136 mph gust on Sheep Mountain near Juneau.

[aslkahuna]

Ginx.

Impressive, back in the day's of the old LFM and PE, the models would sometimes completely miss the development of these type bombs. Back in the 70S when I work the cloud and weather desk, I forecast a 988 mb low where the model had nothing, my low was just starting the occlusion process and I think my forecast was around 12 mb fall in 24 hours or so. I was so proud of myself for introducing a low that I was sure would verify. LOL, my low only would produce some rain as it approached the coast. Mother Nature's low ended up being in the 950s or upper 940s and it blew down trees. They really can be impressive bombs and back then trying to forecast which one would be a bobm and which wouldn't was humbling.

The LFM was damn near worthless for big west coastal systems because of the boundary problem. The model didn't know what to do with a system when it crossed 140W into the Fine Mesh grid. Many times the storm would be halfway to Utah where I was sitting making forecasts in Dugway before it got a handle on it. The LFM was especially bad with splitting systems and which stream the energy would go into. Of course when I started forecasting in MO in 1962 all we had for models was the single layer baroclinic and barotropic which went out a whole 72 hours.

Steve