Ernesto chase video

As promised-

Josh Morgerman - a hardcore storm chaser and founder of iCyclone has posted his video from Ernesto.

iCylcone


Cool graph of the barometer from his location--

Barometer drop


Link to his FB page--

iCyclone

Friday Storms.

This spring/summer has been above active storm wise for something you would remember--

HUGE hail event in late March that was up to 6 inches deep in places, Derecho event on June 29th that knocked out power to 90% or more of the region.

Friday MAY add to that event. At this point-- the SPC has placed our area under a 30% risk for 25 miles of any specific point. Considering we are 72-90 hours away-- that's a pretty bold call. We've got a stronger cold front moving in, and the deciding factor may end up being how much sun we get Friday. If we keep the cloud cover from the storms Thursday (not likely to be WIDE severe that day) Despite good parameters, we could avoid another significant event.

Tropical Wise, Florence formed and dissipated without much fanfare, as we expected. Ernesto has been all over the place forecast wise, but seems like it will make landfall in the Belize/ Mexico Yucatan region. top winds are around 80 MPH currently and could MAYBE touch 90 before landfall. I've got a friend who is a dedicated chaser and I'll share some of his updated when it gets rolling down there. His website is
http://icyclone.com/

Rainy pattern update--

This should be a cooler and somewhat wetter weak upcoming. I do think the best rain totals and rain coverage is south of our region, but a region wide .5 to 2 inch rain event is likely.

Latest QPF from the HPC shows minor changes--Best chance for rain will be Monday and then more showery and thunderstorm stuff Tuesday into Wednesday.



Earnesto is in trouble-- has not strengthened as much as thought AND is too far south. Landfall maybe Hondorus and or Belieze. Latest NHC plot--

Florence formed as we thought--as it progresses east, likely to NOT become a Hurricane and may just weaken as it goes well north of the Caribbean Islands. I don't see this as much of a threat to anyone. 

Maybe some rain?

Drought has been a "buzz word" in the news recently-- and some parts of the nation are in dire straights. Here in the Commonwealth of VA, it's dry- but not HORRIBLE dry. Parts of the Southeast, and much of the mid west are in HORRIFIC shape the rain wise.

With our "minor" drought conditions here (there was impact from the heat on local crops-- not specific to drought) we will get a nice break of cooler and wetter weather. We've had a ton of showers and thunderstorms but nothing "region" wide. I can think of 2-3 times this summer where the models showed a decent rain and we got NOTHING or very little. I do like how this looks at this point. As a reference, here is the HPC's rainfall total over the next 5 days.

These events tend to be more showery and the gradient won't look anything like that. However, I like how this looks and think we do see a region wide .75 to 2 inch rainfall over the next 5 days. A little more could be in the pipeline AFTER that. 

For those who enjoy tropical events-- Earnesto is fighting it's way through some tougher conditions and should achieve hurricane status later this weekend/early next week. The question is does it run into the Yucatan and just fade out or graze it, end up in the gulf as a more strong threat to the Gulf states region. My take now is I'm hedging more towards the graze into the gulf, but we've got plenty of time.  If you're a map person, the NHC has some good easy to read info on their website.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at5+shtml/203848.shtml?tswind120#contents

There was a nice flare up of convection near the Bahamas recently and that has slight potential to form but what I'm really interested is the flair up off the Africa coast-- labeled as LIKELY to become Tropical System in the next 48 hours. We should have Florence by early next week.

Stopping by the blog on a summers evening..

Well Howdy,

I must be the WORST weather blogger with the excessive heat and a few incredible thunderstorms that I've done NO updating on. NONE--

My goal is to improve that. I'm hoping to reformat the entire blog into a REAL website, have daily updates and a bit more features. Time frame on this launch is Oct (tentative)

Today's storm looked a little exciting for a minute, but once it approached there wasn't much where I was on Timberlake Road near Lynchburg. Other places had some hail--etc but none where I was.

So, my goal is to get more consistent updates and move away from the blog format. Winter weather is my greatest passion, but I do get pumped up over Severe and Hurricanes. I'll start to add more information on that as well to provide a more comprehensive service. With that, I'd suggest everyone follow Sean Sublette from WSET and Jamie Singleton when a severe event is on tap. For my money, they are two best local FB/Twitter guys. WxRisk.com is worth following on FB-- he does more medium and long range stuff and is "full of personality" as well.

However, a little pre thought about winter. It seems clear that we are heading into an El Nino. If you recall my winter outlook in Winter 09/10 about how a moderate,west based El Nino is best for our region. Breaking that down a little, anything above a +1.2 in regions 3/4 of the Pacific is GREAT for us. The model data is not exact but some guess have it CLOSE to 1.2 but not quite there. (East based El Nino's are another beast as well)  Anyways, if you want a decent winter-- just on stats alone that 1.2 places us in the best statistical place for an exciting winter.

Post storm wrap up

Wow, what an event!

It was a forecasting challenge but in the end just was a fun storm to be a part of. It's clear the highlight of the storm was between 5 and 6 PM where .22 liquid fell at the airport in Lynchburg. That was likely a tad above 10-1 ratios, so maybe as much as 2.5 inches fell that hour. I was out with my middle son making a snowman and sledding and it seemed every time we didn't move the sled, 5 minutes later it had a quarter inch on it.

In Lynchburg proper, we really lasted in the meat of the band longer than other locations in our area with another .10 an hour between 7 and 9 pm. Here's a view of the LYH obs--

My forecast overall- I'll give it a B. Had I held to my original map, I'd say that was an A. Using models as guidance can be very tricky. As the event was approaching it was clear there would be a 2 part event-- event one was the first push of moisture and it seemed it would have incredible "frontogensis" -- two airmasses collide into each other. In this case, it was the moisture from the sub tropical jet hitting the cold air sliding in from the north. This part of the event was decent- general 1-4 inches region wide but that wasn't the main show. The model data was much stronger on this in the 2 days before the event until that last second jog south in the models. 

The second part was caused by the mid level circulations-- 850 and 700 MB low. These are harder to forecast as their tracks are not as exact and where the best banding set up would be somewhat difficult to pinpoint. The late night model runs Saturday night pushed them down closer to the VA/NC border. My concern was we'd about get next to nothing (especially far east) from round one and round two would be more intense to our south. 

Round one went as expected and round two slide north vs the model data. About 6.5 inches of the snow in Lynchburg was from that second round associated with the mid level low. 

Here are some regional totals-- many are incomplete. If you check the time stamp, anything that is before midnight or so isn't the entire storm. 

http://kamala.cod.edu/va/latest.nous41.KRNK.html

I expect the LYH total to be 8 or 8.1 (current report is 7.7 but it's incomplete) Roanoke is 5.5, Blacksburg is 6.8 and Danville is 3. 

Enjoy the snow today-- 45 for a high today, 55 tomorrow and 60s by Thursday! It will all be melted by late tomorrow except the plow piles. 

Maybe a silver lining--

Tough storm. We went from being on the southern fringe of a northern VA event, to the meat of the heaviest band, to the northern fringe in 48 hours. My concern before of banding sliding to our N has not MAYBE turned into hope as banding is never modeled well 48 hours out and it become a short term, meso issue. As the upper air energy approaches that banding is become more defined a should hit PARTS of our area. That's going to be the show here--

Here is a link to the HRR, a short term new model. This is a " modeled" radar loop. If this happen, this will be a nice little event. Do note the first band brushes LYH to the north and the second COULD scoot just to our SE. Still, parts of our area would do well and there is a little more coming late.

I like my last call-- but this could add a LITTLE bonus snow.
http://rapidrefresh.noaa.gov/hrrrconus/jsloop.cgi?dsKeys=hrrr:&runTime=2012021912&plotName=cref_sfc&fcstInc=60&numFcsts=16&model=hrrr&ptitle=HRRR%20Model%20Fields%20-%20Experimental&maxFcstLen=15&fcstStrLen=-1&resizePlot=1&domain=full&wjet=1