I think we have to keep an eye out for the last week of the month. Not only are we seeing more troughs coming from the southwest with some phasing and broaden, but also there may not be much cooling of GOM waters to keep high td's not far offshore.
Getting increasingly suspicious of that Christmas week period that you are watching. GFS ensembles, Euro ensembles, and CFS weeklies paint a large scale picture with some significant similarities to the pattern we just had, except for the big difference that the ridge is shifted southeastward into the northwest Caribbean and Bahamas. And as such, the latest GEFS mean takes a signal for a surface low near Christmas along a track from central Oklahoma through north central Arkansas toward eastern Kentucky. This period also matches the timing near the end of a big MJO velocity couplet in the Pacific, which Matt Grantham has found has often been associated with significant severe weather episodes in the CONUS.
Safety-rated bicycle helmets, motorcycle helmets, sports helmets, hard-hats, etc., will all help. Even a metal cooking pot in a pinch will help. Even a $5 Walmart bicycle helmet will help. It doesn't have to be some $500 something. Do try to provide something that covers as much of your overall head and neck as possible. While a top-of-head bicycle helmet truly will help, things with face shields/guards and things that have some neck protection added obviously add even more protection.
Thanks Fred! Time to start shopping around!
I think this has to do with the way the models handle cool-season events these days. It seems like most of them (the NAM being an obvious example) have a bias toward underestimating surface temperature and dew point, which is going to cause problems in the cool season when thermodynamics are almost always your limiting factor. We saw this illustrated quite starkly on Friday; the 3k NAM had progged a high of 71 in Memphis, but at 9 pm on Friday, it was 78 in Memphis. Fred and others have pointed out other issues with nocturnal cool season events in particular, such as prematurely decoupling the boundary layer after dark.
Not sure I’d classify Friday as a low CAPE event.
No, definitely not. I just meant as a general trend. Sorry, I should've been more clear there. Friday wasn't a case where under-forecast thermodynamics were the difference between an event and a non-event, but instead the difference between a "normal" cool season event and a high-end one.
O boy. If that look holds
Please ask whoever is in charge of this to just stop. That would make my part of the country a hot spot and they think tornadoes don't happen here despite Jarrel.
Someone needs to take this and pin it where anyone who comes to this site can read it. It really breaks this down for people to understand how they can help to be safer when they don't have many options. I told my wife about this and she now thinks we need to put a sealable bow with these items in our safe spot so we are ready.
