Valentines day storms?

It feels like I spend a lot of time here debunking weather dooming and hype. It’s gotten really bad lately. A growing problem is that anybody can take model graphics and with modern graphics processing programs (especially “helped” by AI) make impressive, scary, even official looking graphics like this that get plastered all over social media:

Another issue is while it may be bad for a few, generally these systems are not bad for everybody. That’s often hard to tell from one-off, single model run, graphics with highly stretched color maps. For at least a week the scaryweather community has been pumping up the potential for Valentines Day Mayhem. As everyone should know by now, I rarely comment on anything more than five days out, and almost never over 7 days, because that is about the limit of our ability to reliably forecast hazardous weather at the level of confidence it is actionable.

We’re now within that window, with Valentines Day itself only four days away (and you have taken care of the cards/gifts/flowers, right? RIGHT???). So is the threat condition “meh”, or “ZOMG!”? Let’s take a look.

Well, we’re starting to transition in to meteorological spring. That means warm moist air is starting to move northward and collide with dry(er) cold air, and any time you have contrasting air masses, you get the potential for severe weather.

Let’s look at the GFS forecast radar reflectivity, along with Helicity. Helicity is a measure of how much “spin” there is in the atmosphere, and is a nice index for severe weather potential. Looking at the Storm Relative Helicity parameter, you start to pay attention when it gets over 250, when it goes over 450 there is increased potential for strong tornadoes. Here’s the map for 7pm EST on the evening of the 14th:

Why is the map so blocky? Because I don’t process the data to make it look better than it really is. Those blocks are the size of the underlying model data, a key aspect to understand when looking at model outputs. I want to be reminded, even subconsciously, that this isn’t live data, it’s …

So there is severe potential over Louisiana and Arkansas, over night pushing into Tennessee, North Alabama, and North Georgia. By Sunday Evening, the front will be weaker, pushing in to Central Georgia and the sacred precincts of the Frogmore Metroplex (Coastal Georgia and the SC Lowcountry) with rain and maybe some “normal” thunderstorms:

Bottom Line: next weekend in the south central states is definitely a “yeah, maybe some storms, and tornado season looks to be getting started so make sure your weather radio has fresh batteries/is charged/where is it?” sorted out. In the Metroplex, probably just rain but a good chance to prep for spring storm season. Here is some advice that I gave last year, copypastaed for your convenience …

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First, there is no substitute for a weather radio. You should have one in your home and office/work place. Period. They aren’t expensive, some are portable and have features like a flashlight and even hand crank so you can recharge them. Here is a link to a NYT review of several models. I’ve had good luck with the Midland radios, I have two of the WSR-120 small desktop units (which plug in, but have batteries and you can take them with you if you need to, I’ve taken ours on the road before), but for portable I typically use my H/T (a Kenwood TH-D74) that has a weather radio band.

What about sirens? I did a rant about sirens last year. They are designed to warn people outside, and even there you have to be very careful because conditions like wind and rain can limit where you hear them. Absolutely don’t rely on hearing them inside buildings. Another issue is that NWS isn’t responsible for sirens – that’s your local emergency management, so there is a delay. Generally it is short, but there have been times when they have been a couple of minutes late or even failed to go off. Locally (Chatham County) they don’t have an “all clear” signal!

If you are responsible for outdoor activities like youth leagues or after school events, get one of the portable weather radios. Note that some counties (Chatham in Georgia is one) only sound sirens for tornadoes, so you need to have some other way of knowing when a severe thunderstorm is approaching. You might also want to consider one of the portable lightning detectors. These can give you warning when there is cloud-to-ground lightning approaching, often well before warnings are issued, and in cases where its a storm that does not reach warning limits but still poses a danger for those out in the open.

People are always asking about apps: I don’t use them or recommend them. I have several concerns. To start with, tornado warnings often have very little lead time, sometimes only minutes. The internet and cell phone networks often have latencies (delays) of several minutes, and there have been times where the apps and cell phone warnings I’ve tested went off after the warning had expired! The other thing is that apps almost always have privacy and security issues. For routine weather as well as details on hazards, simply bookmark your local National Weather Service office page. That’s where all the data comes from anyway, so skip the hype and go to the source.

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