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Severe Weather 3/15 - 3/16

warneagle said:
A look at some of the devastating damage in my neighborhood #ArlingtonStrong #WeWillRebuild

(I’m actually not even sure the storm knocked over those barrels, could’ve been a Maryland driver)
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Horrific damage. I know what it's like to actually have to get up off your rear end and pick something up off the ground.

Luckily, robots will be doing that for us in ten years, so the common man can become even fatter and lazier.
 
Brice W said:
Crapvection will always be an outlier no matter what ingredients are in place.
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It’s why a stout EML and the right balance of dry/moist air is so essential for upper echelon outbreaks. Also doesn’t hurt to have a fast moving morning round (4/27/11 and 4/3/74 both featured this) that leaves subsidence in its wake. Just to further make a developing warm sector even more hostile to junkvection while instability builds.

Timing, storm mode, and crapvection can really take out a setup.
 
Muwx said:
It became pretty obvious last night that this setup was in real trouble but you’ll get banned here if you point that out too early.
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No way, I think everyone is entitled to their opinion. Forum has always been fair, now if you predict a bust and Armageddon happens, expect the hate comments lol
 
ColdFront said:
It’s why a stout EML and the right balance of dry/moist air is so essential for upper echelon outbreaks. Also doesn’t hurt to have a fast moving morning round (4/27/11 and 4/3/74 both featured this) that leaves subsidence in its wake. Just to further make a developing warm sector even more hostile to junkvection while instability builds.

Timing, storm mode, and crapvection can really take out a setup.
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What do you think it would really take for a true tornado outbreak in the Mid-Atlantic?
 
Aaron Rider said:
You know, this is really an obnoxious post, for arrogant tone alone, but also because numerous people yesterday opined precisely that the setup looked questionable
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I distinctly recall that the moment all CAMs agreed on the Super Nothingburger Solution (that verified) everyone immediately started questioning whether they would stick with the moderate.
 
jiharris0220 said:
The flaws with this event really was the storm mode, which is easily explained with these skew Ts and trough orientation.
View attachment 52065
As y’all can notice, the vertical profiles are all almost completely saturated and thermodynamically flat, (little change in temp with height).
This explains the low CAPE values and very messy storm mode as the inversion layer which helps build vertical instability is simply nonexistent, therefore utterly no resistance to the very strong forcing mechanism. Thus creating a cascade effect of the instability in the OWS crashing so all you get is anemic convection.
View attachment 52067
Looking at the trough orientation, it becomes even more obvious why theres so much upscale growth other than the strong forcing mechanism (the trough). It’s quite positively tilted, with the winds in the right exit region being parallel with the PBL winds. I couldn’t draw up a more unfavorable set up for discrete storms.

The lower than expected helicity values can likely be attributed to the fact that the PBL wind profiles are not veered at all, they’re mostly directional, which lowers the tendency for updrafts to rotate. This is despite the fact the surface low is below 990mb in intensity, but again, it’s parent trough is positively tilted.

Lastly, this system just ended being much more progressive than modeled, not like it would’ve mattered much, but just an extra nail in the coffin.

These red flags came into view as late as 2 days ago across all models, obviously though it would’ve been irresponsible to call this event off that early, and the SPC can’t just undo a forecast until it’s staring them in the face that it won’t happen. Unfortunately, they will probably catch some flak for this even though the moderate risk was absolutely justifiable at the time they issued it.
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I agree. Just wasn't a producer as it seemed to be forecasted by some and within the models as well. IMHO you just about have to have those higher Td's(dewpoints) 65+, better near 70F to really crank out serious severe weather, especially tornnadic supercells. The kinematics were there for the most part but probablity not the best geometrical orientation (0-1KM) was still modest, and maybe a tad of capping involved near 650-700mbThese low CAPE/High-shear events just come back flat most of the time of what was being projected by forecasters and the models.
I've lived throught the 1974 and 2011 outbreaks so I've seen and experienced a little bit of the atmosphere's violence that can happen.
 
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eep said:
I definitely think this forum freaks out sometimes if someone is skeptical of a set-up. I get that you can easily get humbled when talking critically of the SPC, but sometimes some skepticism is necessary.
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I think we have both camps to be fair. I don’t want to get into a “state of the sub” type discussion but I’ll throw my hat in there since I’ve been on here a few years.

I think as long as one presents their argument clearly and without overwhelming hyperbole, like @jiharris0220 or @WeathermanLeprechaun do, all opinions are welcome. I haven’t seen anyone get banned or anything over a difference of opinion or saying a set up may not workout.

Now, there is constructive criticism of the SPC, and then there’s unnecessary vitriol. Saying a set up like today bu$ted, and it totally did, and that the SPC was over bullish a few days out is fine. Hell, I’ll say it now. Saying the SPC is trash now, using unnecessary hyperbole about them, or tweeting at offices/forecasters is different.

I actually think we have a good mix of opinions here and as long as I’ve been here 99% of them have been welcome. Now, others may disagree and voice that, but it’s a forum and that’s what we are here to do. Talking about weather.
 
Multiple of us believed in the high end potential yesterday. It was plausible. But eventually the 00z model runs came in and it became evident that prefrontal convection was very questionable and sigtors were questionable too. That convection gobbling up instability making for a less threat.

The model trends favored a significant event, but things downtrended and of course, many people are gonna get flack for calling for a high end event when they later backed up on it and realized that this potential could be axed.

The SPC will get flack for this (and admittedly, i think their continuity policy is BS, if a setup clearly looks like it will not meet expectations, it's best to downgrade the risk. I get that this makes for confusing messaging but it's better than still overselling the event even when it won't verify.), meteorologists will get flack. We go by the models, and sometimes we die by them. CIG was a good idea but admittedly, I'm beginning to see the overuse in it. Today deserved a moderate yesterday, but last night, it became evident it wasn't the case.

CAMs inside 24 hrs are usually right on downtrends, any more than that and there's still a window open for change. Also, regarding the point that someone has continously made on here for the past year that if you call for a FCAD before a events over, you'll get shouted at.

Through my time of lurking and in the weather community, there's reasons you don't call off events before they're done. I would argue today was a rare exception where you could be pretty confident about a severe underperformance. Opinions are respected on here. So many events have been called off (the deadly OK event two weeks ago) i wouldn't use this as some sort of point to try prove anyone wrong.

Was 5/6/24 a severe underperformance from what was expected? Did it still have a notable event? Yes.

The best we can do is learn from this event and how to publicly message a downtrend. The majority of the public however do not take "This could change" into their brains so I expect a LOT of flack and flaming on social media the next few hours.
 
ColdFront said:
I think we have both camps to be fair. I don’t want to get into a “state of the sub” type discussion but I’ll throw my hat in there since I’ve been on here a few years.

I think as long as one presents their argument clearly and without overwhelming hyperbole, like @jiharris0220 or @WeathermanLeprechaun do, all opinions are welcome. I haven’t seen anyone get banned or anything over a difference of opinion or saying a set up may not workout.

Now, there is constructive criticism of the SPC, and then there’s unnecessary vitriol. Saying a set up like today bu$ted, and it totally did, and that the SPC was over bullish a few days out is fine. Hell, I’ll say it now. Saying the SPC is trash now, using unnecessary hyperbole about them, or tweeting at offices/forecasters is different.

I actually think we have a good mix of opinions here and as long as I’ve been here 99% of them have been welcome. Now, others may disagree and voice that, but it’s a forum and that’s what we are here to do. Talking about weather.
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If I think a event won't pan out, I may be incorrect but at least I'd have reasons to suggest it as a possibility. It's tough constantly switching opinions because these models are all we can run off until the day comes. I switched opinions a lot yesterday because I was uncertain on how storms would really evolve throughout the day with prefrontals. Most of them remained sub-severe as i had expected.

One thing is that the significant tornado in Lawrence County, TN i had noted at the HRRR morning run which was very accurate in storms firing in NW AL and going on to potentially pose a sigtor threat. I take many events as a lesson in forecasting. Today's a good example. Everything is a learning experience, and for the majority of the community, it's best to see what went wrong with this setup and how to better message these false alarm high end setups.
 
WeathermanLeprechaun said:
The SPC will get flack for this (and admittedly, i think their continuity policy is BS, if a setup clearly looks like it will not meet expectations, it's best to downgrade the risk. I get that this makes for confusing messaging but it's better than still overselling the event even when it won't verify.), meteorologists will get flack. We go by the models, and sometimes we die by them. CIG was a good idea but admittedly, I'm beginning to see the overuse in it. Today deserved a moderate yesterday, but last night, it became evident it wasn't the case.
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It kind of got buried, but I made a similar point. The SPC seem to be a bit more bullish with the new outlooks and CIG parameters. Most likely just calibrating this new approach with actual outlooks/events now.
 
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