It’s opening day for —

OK, so not the Mets, but it IS opening day for —

Well, ok, as you can see from these stories, there is a long strand of wet weather straddling the east coast through the mid-Atlantic. Once you are a little bit inland, though, happy opening day, baseball fans!

As seen in the video from NBC news, tragedy has befallen Baltimore Harbor, where a cargo vessel leaving the harbor lost power and steamed directly into a support for the Key Bridge, the outermost bridge spanning the Patapsco River, collapsing the span into the River. Two were rescued, though around 20 drivers and construction workers are through to be missing.

Today, this morning, while time is the most critical for whatever recovery can be done to save lives if possible, the weather was at least accommodating. There were clear skies and the Patapsco was calm, which will allow the waterway to be as clear as the waterway can get. It is a busy thoroughfare for maritime traffic and surrounded by a large city, so it is generally murky, and often quite chilly.

Even after the initial recovery is completed, it will be important to continue clearing the wreckage from the mouth of the Patapsco. Baltimore Harbor is one of the busiest on the Eastern Seaboard, and an important source of goods coming into and out of the United States. The longer the harbor is closed, the more likely it is to make a dent on the economy.

Unfortunately, the weather will not be cooperating in these efforts in the next couple of days. There are storms, both rain and snow, from the Great Lakes to the the Florida Panhandle, and this system is headed eastward. It won’t have much energy or much moisture for the coastal Plains, but it will rejuvenate upon reaching the ocean. Even before moisture falls, inflow will blow right through Chesapeake Bay up to Baltimore Harbor.

Rainfall will likely be most intense on Thursday morning, before a reconstituted system can pull off to sea. For the next couple of weeks, the mid-Atlantic looks to expect normal temperatures, but above normal moisture. The falling rain muddies up rivers, and will not help divers without the aid of sonar. Fortunately, for the long term recovery and replacement efforts, near normal conditions are expected around Baltimore, which means warming temperatures and average precipitation.

Hopefully, this can facilitate a rapid clean up and a return to normal for the city of Baltimore. Victoria-Weather extends condolences to those who have lost during this tragedy.

I wrote last week about the strange forecast coming up for the Twin Cities, where some forecast outlets were calling for a ton of snow, despite so many factors working against a huge accumulation. Well, the storm is nearly over (a recap on that through some updates on the site later) in Minnesota, but the system is still around, and bringing some severe weather concerns in the deep south.

The jet across the country is strong, a common scenario when encountering spring season storm threats, and it is helping the system in the Plains occlude fairly quickly, with an additional area of low pressure developing at the surface northwest of the Mississippi Delta. There is a copious amount of moisture down here, as always, but now also quite a bit of turning in the atmosphere, or vorticity.

The vorticity is compounded by the fact that the wind is changing directions. While the wind at 250mb, as above, is coming from the southwest, winds at different levels of the atmosphere are angled at different directions. This is called vertical shear, and is something that can help a storm build upwards quickly, and produce twisters at the surface. The area bracketed by the blue has the greatest shear, and will move east into Mississippi overnight, following the storms.

There are already some bands of storms, though none of it yet severe, moving through Louisiana, and it looks like if any storms develop, they will be embedded within a line with rain falling around it. This is a typical mode for “Dixie Alley” where storms make themselves nearly impossible to find, not only by occurring in a tree filled environment, often at night, but also by usually falling in the midst of especially rainy thunderstorm complexes.

The NWS is calling for a chance for especially large and dangerous tornadoes tonight, potentially in Jackson, Natchez or Meridien, and it is important to stay vigilant as the storms develop and move into the area. There are no basements, generally, in Mississippi, so ensure a spot in a storm shelter if storms loom.

Storms will likely continue deep into the night, but the low across the center of the country will be too stretched to allow for things to continue far into Alabama or Georgia tomorrow. Additionally, there will be a pause in the rough stretch of weather, allowing Delta residents a chance to breath and recover, if necessary. Let’s hope it isn’t.

A pair of systems are bringing a taste of winter to the Midwest tonight and with another round coming Sunday night. The feature that has really already occurred in the Upper Midwest is a classic Clipper feature coming right out of Canada. There was a solid 2-5″ in a stripe north of the Twin Cities, and forecasts were pretty consistent on it.

A larger feature moving in this weekend from the central Rockies promises to make for more interesting weather, starting Sunday afternoon and lasting through at least Monday. But how much snow will come out of this system? That’s the big question, and there isn’t really a solid answer, but I’ll do my best to get us there.

My friends started messaging me earlier this week, exclaiming that their weather apps were calling for nearly 2 feet of snow! That seemed ridiculous, and I looked at the various weather models that I use, and ultimately, I came to the conclusion that yes, the forecast of 2 feet of snow in Minnesota was ridiculous. At the time, the feature looked like, at most, a producer of 7-10″ of snow. It now projects as a stronger storm, but 2 feet still seems pretty absurd.

It’s not that there won’t be enough moisture. It’s spring now, and there aren’t any features in the Gulf blocking moisture, but all of the things one looks for in a system that sees snow totals stack up aren’t there in the Twin Cities. Despite the snow that fell overnight last night, there is no snow on the ground for most of the region, and the ground is quite warm.

Also warm: the atmosphere. This system is going to be rising from the south and pulling some warm air northward. This will change some of the precipitation to rain, and failing that, will reduce the moisture to snow ratio. Water crystallizes as it gets colder, so the amount of liquid water it takes to get to an inch of snow becomes less and less. The snow this weekend will fall in temperatures that will be flirting with, if not exceeding, freezing.

There will be a gradual ratio through Minnesota, and some bright bands of heavier and lesser snow owing to some local effects, but not everywhere will hit over 10″. Some places sure will surely avoid the heaviest precipitation and see less accumulation, and some areas will see heavy precipitation that falls more as rain than snow. Somewhere between, there will be a stripe that gets 12+ inches of fresh, wet snow.

Now, where will that area of heaviest snow be? Let’s see the NWS’s best guess:

Well, that narrows it down. These are the most likely totals, according the NWS forecast, but I also think we should expect the low end of these ranges, especially on the north and south parts of the forecast area.

A two day severe weather marathon stretched from Kansas to Ohio with tornadoes starting near Topeka, and becoming increasingly more destructive, ultimately leaving lives turned upside down across Indiana and northwest Ohio in particular.

The system came into being in an almost textbook manner. There was a stationary boundary in the PLains that needed only be given the energy of an upper level trough to get moving. That was when the severe storms started in Wednesday, with discrete super cells cropping up in northeastern Kansas. In addition to the tornadoes around Topeka, there was very large hail seen in the Kansas City suburbs.

The system got more organized as Wednesday turned to Thursday, and the warm sector we look for in a severe weather outbreak showed up in the southern Great Lakes. Severe weather developed all the way southwest to near Dallas, with strong winds and large hail reported in many locations. It will be the tornadoes found in northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio that will be remembered, though.

Storms rotate the most near the center of an area of low pressure, as a general rule of thumb. There is enough built in vorticity that any storm specific helicity is just added to the mix, and can both make tornadoes and very large hail likely. The low tracked through the Great Lakes, and ultimately, destructive tornadoes followed.

The two areas that were most directly impacted were Winchester, Indiana, where an estimated EF-3 tornado left a swath of destruction throughout the city, and in Logan County Ohio, north of Springfield, were three people were killed by a tornado.

This is the beginning of the severe weather season, lest we forget, and we have at least three more months of the particularly busy part of the year. Fortunately, we are coming off a quiet year for severe weather, and this part of the country is having a quiet spell to recover. Let’s hope this is as bad as it gets this year, but I fear it won’t be.

The conversation I keep hearing is people being reluctant to say we are at the end of winter, because in recent years, we have seen late March and April snows. It’s been a mild winter, and many Midwestern residents can’t accept that it might just be mild all the way through.

Well, through the middle of March, we have a trend for below normal temperatures, which could certainly make some people think it is a return of winter, but significant moisture isn’t going to come with that cool down, save, perhaps, for the Great Lakes.

The flow through the jet fueled strong storms in the southeast to end the week, but there is very weak flow into this streak. What does that mean? Well, it means the West Coast can finally dry out and warm up. Welcome to the warm winter we’ve all been having, West Coast!

The early part of severe weather season gets it’s typical kickoff in what some people call the “Dixie Alley” which is focused primarily around Mississippi. We aren’t anticipating a massive outbreak on Saturday, but storms are indeed expected the next few days, starting today in west Texas and ending Saturday in Georgia and South Carolina. That leaves tomorrow for, you guessed it, Mississippi.

Low pressure is getting organized today in West Texas, giving rise to our first round of potential severe weather. Storms should be isolated, supercellular storms this afternoon and evening. Not everyone will see storms, but those that do will be threatened by tornadoes and large hail, centered around an area bound by Abilene, Fort Worth and Waco, but possible north into western Oklahoma as well.

The system will evolve overnight and after today’s activity, with the main, original area of low pressure rocketing towards the Great Lakes, and a surface low re-emerging in the ArkLaTex region. The entire system will be more sheared than it will be today, which will mean a lower likelihood of large standalone supercells, however a line of smaller such cells which ultimately form into a line of strong thunderstorms is the likely mode storms tomorrow evening. The greatest threat for severe weather will start around Shreveport before continuing through the night past Jackson and ultimately towards Montgomery.

By the time that Saturday rolls around. we are likely only to be tracking a line of strong thunderstorms. The tornado threat will be limited, but gusty straight line winds and hail are going to be pushing through the Peach, Palmetto and northern Sunshine state before dark on Saturday.

Two points to make about all of this. First, model guidance isn’t all on the same page for severe weather on any of these days. There could certainly be some big storms, including tornadic storms especially today, but tomorrow could ultimately be a low end severe weather day. There is only a slight risk for severe weather, accounting for the uncertainty.

Second, the individual storms will be strongest probably today, in Texas, and in the early afternoon over Louisiana and Arkansas, but will have the greatest coverage in Mississippi and eventually Alabama. After they redevelop tomorrow night, there likely is no turning these storms off until they are offshore.

As is always the case, stay tuned to your local weather authorities, and keep an eye on the weather. I described a narrow corridor, but storms are certainly possible for several miles on either side of this axis.

We’re through the warmest meteorological summer in recorded history for a lot of the Great Lakes region and surrounding areas. Among the many challenges of historic weather is finding meteorologists with a willingness to stake their opinion on a forecast that hasn’t ever verified before. For this historic February to cap an historic winter, it was Accuweather that was able to brave the difficult forecasts, and was the forecaster of the month.

Outlet	Forecast Wins (year)
The Weather Channel	3.83
WeatherNation	1.5
Accuweather	1.16
Victoria-Weather	1.13
Clime	1
National Weather Service	0.83
Weatherbug	0.33

I know we’ve already had some rough weather, and I also realize we haven’t seen much winter, but we are now only a few days away from March, and by this point, it’s certainly not out of the question to start bracing ourselves for severe weather outbreaks. In fact, we could see one as soon as this afternoon.

Low pressure is going to tap into the historically warm temperatures in the middle of the country, with an assist from the still seasonably strong jet flowing through the middle of the country. This is a classic comma style severe weather profile. The line from the Cincinnati area to Cape Girardeau of Enhanced Risk will likely include hail and gusty winds, while the bubble in Chicago and Milwaukee looks like a prime spot for a few tornadoes. All parts of the severe weather zone, however, will be poised to receive some of those three categories of severe weather, including some super cells in the southeast as storms develop, and some hail producers in Chicagoland.

As noted above ,the jet is still very strong, especially in the middle of the country.

The jet is a proxy for the temperature gradient at the surface, so the trough, a strong one, moving in from the west is containing the impetus for the storms coming today. The jet will sink a little further south, allowing more seasonable air into the middle of the country, at least for a day or two.

After today’s outbreak, don’t be surprised if we wind up with more again soon, after temperatures climb through the eastern third of the country over the weekend. The jet will still be strong and wavy, which will allow for the fluctuation in temperature and the strong spring storms to bridge those gaps. It’s not unusual to see strong storms this time of year, (though today’s are maybe a bit further north than normal), and they are on their way.