Out of retirement for a short (long) post on March severe weather potential in Michigan

Note that this post doesn't represent a permanent return to the blogosphere, but I felt that I needed to make a post here being that we're in a rather exceptional situation this year and what I have to say would be a bit unwieldy to squeeze into a Facebook post. I may continue to make posts like this from time to time, but don't expect anything regularly.

To business:

The two long-range models I trust the most (the GFS and ECMWF aka the Euro) are predicting a very rocky, stormy month for the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley regions.

There are two main reasons for this: abnormally warm, moist Gulf air surging up from the Gulf of Mexico, and the jet stream - the atmospheric engine that drives pretty much all of our weather patterns - is on the war path. Typical for this time of year, the jet stream tends to be a bit more amplified. Think of an amplified jet stream the same way you think of amplified sound. If the jet stream is more "zonal", it's flatter, and therefore not as loud (stormy). But when the jet stream is marked by numerous peaks (ridges) and valleys (troughs), you get air patterns violently mixing with each other. Ridges are marked by warm air surging up from the Gulf of Mexico, while troughs are marked by cold air being pushed down from the North Pole and Canada. We see this much more actively in the fall and early winter months and again in the late winter/early spring months. Keep in mind that meteorological spring starts on March 1st, which is today.

What is VERY atypical, however, is to see this kind of pattern over the Great Lakes region, at least in the manner it's manifesting. Normally, the jet stream will become much more amplified and sink very far south, bringing our typical winter temperatures and the occasional winter storm. What's happening this year is that we're getting a pattern a bit more like what you'd see in Oklahoma or Kansas. You can probably guess where I'm going with this - severe weather. With the record high temperatures we've been seeing come a jet stream which is much more oriented to our latitude. We tend to see this in the late spring and early summer months, and that's why our severe weather season corresponds to late May/early June. Instead, Michigan has now seen its second severe weather watch of the year to close out FEBRUARY. Consider that last year, we hardly had any in the state, and now, even before the start of spring, we've had two. This is a bit alarming, and it's making me wonder what's in store later.

Going back to the long range models, the pattern is expected to persist, at least for the first half of March. I'm noticing a very nasty looking feature in both the Euro and GFS that could arrive in about seven days. It's still wayyyy too early to predict what exactly is coming, but as of right now it definitely looks like a potential severe weather maker for the Great Lakes region, if not necessarily Michigan. The Euro looks especially nasty, and it tends to be the more accurate of the two during the winter months.

The latest two consecutive runs of the Euro, and to a lesser degree, the GFS, predict a strong jet stream to be aligned with the arrow on this map about a week from now.

The last two consecutive runs of the Euro indicate what I refer to as a "Kamehameha Wave", a nickname of my own. I'm a big Dragonball fan, and a few years ago I noticed that certain coupled jet features - especially at mid-level - look very close to the way the characters from that series form their energy attacks. In fact, it's a great analogy to exactly what's happening in the atmosphere. When the jet stream "decouples" and becomes separated into a northern and southern feature like this, one can assume there's going to be a TON of energy right in the middle. Provided that enough moisture streams into the "strike zone" - the area just to the east of the southern portion of the jet and in the warm sector - that energy can cause significant severe weather.

When this energy moves eastward into a warm, moist strike zone, all hell can break loose. Squall lines, supercell thunderstorms, and tornadoes all thrive in this environment. The Great Plains states tend to sit in this strike zone starting right at this time of year. With a jet stream typically further south across the central plains, these orbs of energy crash right into them just as meaningful moisture is surging back from the Gulf of Mexico. Only this time around, the moisture has been pouring into our area, bringing us ridiculously high temperatures for this time of year. As this pattern continues, more and more of these energy orbs are going to interact with it, leading to nastier and nastier weather.

Again, the jury is still out on the March 7th situation. It must be emphatically stated that this type of pattern is VERY ODD for Michigan, and patterns like this are by no means assured to stick around. I'm actually fairly surprised that it's lasted as long as it has - normally these types of things retreat after a few weeks, but not this time. An early spring may indeed be on the way to Michigan, but that spring might be a bit more like the Great Plains's version of spring, and to that end we'll need to be extra weather aware.

The drought continues... but the geek will not - Farewell for now

This will be a dual-sided post. We'll start with the announcement, as the actual weather information should be relatively brief.

I've always had several passions: technology, literature, art, and science chief among them. Growing up in a community devoid of pretty much all four was not very easy. If you wanted technology, you either had to be rich and invest a ton of money into your hobby, or you had to rely upon what you could scare up here and there. This changed in the 90s as computers became more accessible and affordable, but when it came to learning anything about them, to this day, you're pretty much on your own if you come from rural America.. or at least my corner of it. The same goes for writing, art and science. Communities such as mine appreciate the practical over the whimsical and informative, and there's little question as to why, as it serves them very well.

Growing up, I never was sure which one of my passions would steer my destiny. At one time I had the aspiration, as do many gradeschoolers, to become a doctor. Looking back, I'm fairly certain that had I dedicated all of my time and effort into achieving this goal, I could've. I have family with a medical background, know plenty of nurses and am familiar enough with biology and chemistry to have made it work. It helped that I was in and out of hospitals for either myself or my family members for most of my youth, and witnessed such events as brain aneurysms and heart attacks when I was very young (for the curious, the victims were my family members, and they all survived their ordeals). I think observing the doctors, however, is what wound up putting me off of it. Long, unpredictable hours. Impersonal contact and coldly delivering potentially devastating news frequently. The slightest mistake spelling disaster. By the time I was a teenager, these types of situations did not appeal to me in the slightest. I loved to draw, but unfortunately I wasn't any good at it. I loved music, but I didn't see much of a future in it. I thought about being a writer, but neither journalism nor authorship came without extreme risk. Journalism would've required hundreds of hours spent trying to impress superiors, hoping to hit it big with a story that would make headlines. Attempting to write books, no matter the genre, was essentially sink or swim. I may yet do it some day, but just getting published, let alone making enough from your product to support yourself seemed like a long shot at best, especially when you come from a community where such ideas were dismissed as arrogant, head-in-the-clouds nonsense. And there were the other sciences, such as meteorology. I loved earth science. I loved weather. Some of the very first books I read were about storms and tornadoes. When I was 6 years old, I visited the library - the very same library I currently live across from - and would check out dozens of books on the subject. They were full of what I know today are complete myths and nonsense: tornadoes form from mammatus clouds, tornadoes have wind speeds of 800mph and more. Tornadoes cause such drops in pressure that buildings are known to explode - better open those windows during a tornado warning! Over the years, the information became more steady, and the myths were debunked, but it always fascinates me that we still have such trouble understanding a phenomenon that has been around at least as long as we have as a species, in this day and age. To me, the weather represents the last 'magic'. We've harnessed the power of the atom and have been successfully bending it to our will for over 50 years, but we still can't figure out how water vapor can, pretty much all on its own, create destruction on par with our most devastating weapon.

Come high school, I always knew it was going to be weather or technology. Don't get me wrong; I had just as much of a passion for tech as I did for tornadoes. I was exposed early thanks to my "granduncle", who loved to tinker with computers. I got to play around with modems before most people knew what they were, and when the internet revolution came, I was ready and waiting for it. To this day, I miss the "wild west" that the internet was in its early days, and all the fun ways you could mess with people online. Soon I learned to build my own machines, and machines for others. I was the one all of my family members went to with computer questions. I've worked support, development, network administration and network engineering. Eventually, this is what I made a career out of, and I don't regret it. The stability is great, as the demand for those who 'get' technology is always high. The pay varies depending on where you are, but its usually a cut above other fields. The prestige is mixed; some revere you as a sage while others see you as a child wielding an expensive gun pointed at even more expensive targets. It's a mixed bag, but you (usually) feel appreciated and needed.

The passion for the atmosphere and nature always remained. I learned about what made the atmosphere tick in my own time and begin to comprehend the long-winded hyper-esoteric posts put out by the National Weather Service and Storm Prediction Center. I felt, as I usually do, that people would learn to appreciate not only the atmosphere but the people who try to figure out what it's doing more if they had a translator, so I began to make equally long-winded Facebook posts breaking down the terminology. When I started this page little over a year ago at the behest of some of my friends, it was as a fun side-project and as a way to condense an incredible amount of Facebook posts into an easier to maintain format. I had a medium where I wouldn't have to worry about going over a text limit and could post multiple, captioned images or video without too much hassle. I was learning as I went and had a lot of fun.

However, unfortunately, things have changed. Quite a bit of personal turmoil has risen in my life lately, and I no longer find myself quite as inclined to post here. I've actually come to think of it as a chore - something I'm obligated to do, rather than something I look forward to. I don't do very well with that, and have been thinking about the future of this blog because of it for the past week or two. The final straw came today, when some work-related trouble arose because of it. The wrong people are reading this, and the last thing I need in my life is to wonder if more stress is going to enter my life because of a hobby. So, I've sadly come to the conclusion that the best course of action is for me to suspend making posts at this time, effective immediately. I will still post news on upcoming weather events on Facebook for those on my friends list (Phill.Wilson.509), but these too will likely be fewer. I may come back to this some day, but time will have to tell. For now, I believe there are more than enough resources out there for those who are looking for weather information and analysis without the need of a hobbyist such as myself attracting any more malcontent.

So I wrap up my final post for the foreseeable future with some information from the Climate Prediction Center. I wish this could at least be happier news considering the circumstances, but unfortunately nature, too, seems to be against me this year. I meant to make a post on this last week, but considering all that's been going on its no surprise I haven't got around to it.

In short, the drought we're experiencing in Mid Michigan and the Thumb is expected to persist into October. In looking at the long range models, I don't see any indication of much help on the way. The jet stream is incredibly weak this summer, and when it has amped up it hasn't been in our neck of the woods save for one or two occasions. Thunderstorm activity in general has been negligible, and even the portions of the state that aren't officially in drought are abnormally dry. It's going to take a massive weather pattern alternation for this to change, and I just don't see it happening any time soon. We have had plenty of moisture to work with, but days of high pressure ridges followed by extremely weak cold fronts isn't going to cut it. We need stronger cold fronts driven by powerful upper level disturbances in order to make it rain and thunder in Michigan, and they just aren't there. Time will tell what August and September bring, but I'm not optimistic.

With that, I close the book for the time being. Thanks to all who've supported me with this experiment. I'll be around, and I may yet come back to this some day. As always, it's wait-and-see.

Phill

Storms appear to be re-intensifying as they approach Thumb

Be advised that these storms appear to be intensifying a bit as they approach/cross the bay. Flood Advisory was just issued for Huron County. No severe warnings yet but the reports I'm reading indicate some damaging winds and these storms look like they're right on the threshold. If they intensify AT ALL as they make incoming on the thumb it could be a wild ride.

Some severe warnings going out - Nasty storms popping up in western lower MI

A very nasty cluster of storms just popped up about 50 miles south west of Cadillac heading toward a town called Luther. Baldwin also looks to be on the receiving end of this storm.

This thing has a lot of moisture in it and it looks as though it could produce some torrential downpours in addition to damaging winds and penny size hail.

Chance of rain, thunderstorms this afternoon in Mid Michigan

There is actually a good shot at thunderstorms developing in Mid Michigan late this afternoon. Mixed layer instability should build to around 1500j/kg by 5PM, however bulk shear values will not be particularly impressive at only around 20kts. This should mean severe weather chances are slim to none, but we could get a good soaking or two from the thunderstorms that do pop up. I wouldn't rule out a brief severe wind gust being possible either, as these updrafts and subsequent downdrafts may be short lived but strong.

More widespread rain and thunder is in the forecast for Thursday, but there's quite a bit of uncertainty as to just how much instability will be present, and we may only wind up seeing remnants. Here's hoping for a couple days of soaking to offset the continuing drought, now expected to last into October. More on that in a full post later.

Rainy, stormy Sunday/Sunday night - heat will depend on storm coverage

The remnants of storms currently blowing through Iowa and Wisconsin are going to heavily influence our forecast tomorrow.

This system appears to be weakening as it moves east. Tomorrow morning may include some rain/thunder for the northern portion of the state per NWS Gaylord, but I'm with NWS Detroit in thinking its influence should be negligible tomorrow morning, making the NAM4KM's forecast a bit unreliable and the temperatures likely on the hot side. A marginal risk for severe weather does exist with any storms that form tomorrow, as the conditional threat for severe wind is there, but nailing down exactly where the biggest threat would be is going to be impossible until this thing evolves a bit more. I'm of the opinion that it's not going to be a very robust threat either way, as the weakening trends with this system should continue as it draws closer.

Severe threat coming earlier than expected - Severe Thunderstorm Watch issued for most of LP, eastern U.P.

A storm complex is now expected to maintain its vigor and move southward through the state. As such, a Severe Thunderstorm Watch has been issued for most of the state until 5:00PM EDT.

The main threats are damaging winds and hail. I'm still concerned that we'll see another round of storms form this afternoon and plow through the area, but these may be more isolated/discrete in nature. A 2% tornado threat remains in effect by the SPC, which I'm assuming is referencing this second round. They've yet to issue an enhanced risk but this is pretty much certain to be on the way in a later update.