What's your weather currently?

[Roadgeekteen]

Upper 40s and cloudy

[Bruce]

High winds, bits of rain, floods in some places, power outages in others. Just a nasty day.

https://twitter.com/TranBC/status/1460391772304064517

Edit: I-5 also remains closed near Bellingham because of some slides

https://twitter.com/wsdot_north/status/1460417983931555841

[Roadgeekteen]

40s and partly cloudy

[kkt]

I-5 from Seattle to Bellingham on Monday was interesting all right.

Very heavy rain the whole way.  Poor visibility due to the heavy rain, spray thrown up from standing water on the road.  A couple of patches of standing water requiring an alert driver to keep control.  Usual, ummm, not very bright people not bothering to put on their headlights, so they are only a slightly darker shade of grey than the sky and the road.


We were very lucky as far as I-5 in the Chuckanut Mountain area just south of Bellingham.  We got through after the trees that fell over the road in the morning were cleared - the freshly cut fallen trees were obvious.  On the way back, there was a new landslide over the northbound lanes, taking several more large trees with it and completely closing northbound.  But southbound we just had one patch of muddy water over the roadway that I drove at low speed.

Lots of flooding obvious from the highway - mostly agricultural land, with only fenceposts sticking their tops above the water.  Very high water in the rivers.

Can I say thank you here?
To all the designers and builders of roads, for making standing water on the highways an occassional rather than constant problem.
To the state patrol and responders for clearing the same road of fallen trees several times in one busy day, and for responding to accidents all along the highway.

[Bruce]

A major success story: Mount Vernon's higher downtown wall was able to withstand a near-record surge on the Skagit River.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/so-far-so-good-mount-vernon-avoids-major-flooding-as-skagit-river-crests-at-near-record-high/

Not so successful: Abbotsford has major evacuations ordered because one of their pump stations is about to fail and turn part of the city back into its original form: a lake.

https://fvcurrent.com/article/breaking-catastrophic-damage-predicted-in-abbotsford/

[kkt]

News and Google Maps reports I-5 is reopened south of Bellingham in both directions.

[Roadgeekteen]

40s and partly cloudy

[Roadgeekteen]

60s and sunny

[JayhawkCO]

I woke up this morning and it was 21 outside.  Looks like a high of 54.  Yesterday, driving around in the foothills above Boulder, a good amount of snow was sticking up there.

[CoreySamson]

Fairly mild weather pattern here over the past two weeks. The next couple weeks will be a "temperature rollercoaster" according to Houston meteorologists, however. Tomorrow figures to be almost perfect, with a high of 67 and a low in the upper 40s.

[snowc]

temps in the 50s under sunny skies. another cold front comes in on monday, dropping temps to 45! 

[JayhawkCO]

temps in the 50s under sunny skies. another cold front comes in on monday, dropping temps to 45! 

I wish that was a cold front here.

[Roadgeekteen]

40s and cloudy

[webny99]

We had some hail this morning! But it's cleared up by this evening.

[snowc]

We had some hail this morning! But it's cleared up by this evening.

im confused. hail in CNY and SPC says <5% hail

[CoreySamson]

We had some hail this morning! But it's cleared up by this evening.

im confused. hail in CNY and SPC says <5% hail

Just because hail isn't projected in the forecast doesn't mean it can't happen. Anyways, given the temperature where webny99 is at, I'd suspect the hail is just larger-than-usual sleet.

[snowc]

We had some hail this morning! But it's cleared up by this evening.

im confused. hail in CNY and SPC says <5% hail

Just because hail isn't projected in the forecast doesn't mean it can't happen. Anyways, given the temperature where webny99 is at, I'd suspect the hail is just larger-than-usual sleet.

ohhh ok 

[webny99]

We had some hail this morning! But it's cleared up by this evening.

im confused. hail in CNY and SPC says <5% hail

Just because hail isn't projected in the forecast doesn't mean it can't happen. Anyways, given the temperature where webny99 is at, I'd suspect the hail is just larger-than-usual sleet.

Yes, I guess you could call it that. More like large ice pellets than the big hail that can fall during thunderstorms.

[US 89]

So... a few things...

1) The SPC map is supposed to outline general areas where severe weather is possible. That doesn't mean severe storms won't happen outside these areas. I've lost count of the number of severe thunderstorm warnings I've been in where there was no SPC outlooked severe area.

2) That map is a forecast of the potential for severe hail, which is greater than 1 inch diameter. That is very rare this time of year that far north as you don't get enough instability/big enough storms to have strong enough updrafts for hail that big. The map says nothing about the potential for small hail, which is significantly more common and would be what happened in NY this morning.

3) Looking at atmospheric soundings and radar from earlier today, I suspect what webny saw was actually graupel. Graupel forms in convective showers at colder temperatures, which is exactly what it looks like the Rochester area saw this morning. For sleet/ice pellets, you want precip to fall through a warm layer where it melts into rain, and then through a cold layer where it refreezes into an ice pellet. Temperatures today in Buffalo (the nearest weather balloon launch site, which is pretty close to Rochester) showed a consistent decrease in temperature with height at low levels. That's not good for sleet but it does suggest some instability, which is good if you want to have the shallow cold-season showers that commonly generate graupel.

[webny99]

So... a few things...
...

3) Looking at atmospheric soundings and radar from earlier today, I suspect what webny saw was actually graupel. Graupel forms in convective showers at colder temperatures, which is exactly what it looks like the Rochester area saw this morning. For sleet/ice pellets, you want precip to fall through a warm layer where it melts into rain, and then through a cold layer where it refreezes into an ice pellet. Temperatures today in Buffalo (the nearest weather balloon launch site, which is pretty close to Rochester) showed a consistent decrease in temperature with height at low levels. That's not good for sleet but it does suggest some instability, which is good if you want to have the shallow cold-season showers that commonly generate graupel.

Thanks for weighing in here, since I'm not much not good with the technical stuff when it comes to weather. Case in point, I had never heard the term graupel before today, but I think you're right that that's what it was. It came quickly all in one wave and it was definitely bigger than sleet, so people were calling it hail, probably for lack of a better term, but it's good to know there is an actual term for it! 

[Roadgeekteen]

40s and partly cloudy

[Roadgeekteen]

50s and partly cloudy

[Roadgeekteen]

50s and raining

[snowc]

50s and raining

same here 

[Roadgeekteen]

39 and sunny