General Weather Discussion - April 2017

[Bunty]

LOL, hype at MAX. Tulsa could get up to 5.6" of rain. Never mind the 10" of snow in the western panhandle: 10 Inches Of Snow, Hail, Flooding Rain, Tornado Threat For Oklahoma This Weekend

Mike Morgan doesn't see anywhere near as much rain for Tulsa. He shows the southeast getting the most rain. Total rain for all of April may surpass 7 inches for my location. Much of Oklahoma has been cleared of drought.



Photo shown taking a break between two storms as of 04:20 am, April 28. No severe storm warning had been called on the new approaching storm at that time.

[Brett]

Kudos to Damon Lane and David Payne for pulling an all-nighter. It's good to see chief meteorologists taking responsibility and informing the public about the nighttime severe storms.

[Pete]

Big tree down in my 'hood (near Penn Square)

[mkjeeves]

Power out at my house. The arch at the fairgrounds blew down. KOCO is reporting I-40 is shut down east of I-40 to clear power lines.

[LocoAko]

Sleep in peace. The weather looks nothing like the doom & gloom so far forecasted.

lol. What doom and gloom? The forecast went exactly as planned despite the complex nature of the setup -- and I think the swaths of central OKC without power and with downed wires and trees would disagree with your sarcasm.

[SoonerDave]

lol. What doom and gloom? The forecast went exactly as planned despite the complex nature of the setup -- and I think the swaths of central OKC without power and with downed wires and trees would disagree with your sarcasm.

Exactly as planned..??? Well.....Other than the fact it was forecast for Friday, not Saturday, I'd be inclined to agree with you.

This is just one of those cases where the NWS has to get the message out that their week-ahead outlooks with a 15% probability are just that - 15% probabilities - not absolutes. There's a responsibility to communicate, read, and comprehend on *both* sides of that equation.

[OKCisOK4me]

lol. What doom and gloom? The forecast went exactly as planned despite the complex nature of the setup -- and I think the swaths of central OKC without power and with downed wires and trees would disagree with your sarcasm.

I didn't even hear anything last night and I just woke up. I cracked my window so I could listen to the rain and that's all I've heard.

That's not sarcasm BTW. I think some of us are just immune to the drama that posters stir up in this thread. That's the "doom & gloom" I was referring to. So in essence, I was giving sound advice for someone to have a restful night.

Just like I did.

[LocoAko]

Exactly as planned..??? Well.....Other than the fact it was forecast for Friday, not Saturday, I'd be inclined to agree with you.

This is just one of those cases where the NWS has to get the message out that their week-ahead outlooks with a 15% probability are just that - 15% probabilities - not absolutes. There's a responsibility to communicate, read, and comprehend on *both* sides of that equation.

I don't disagree that communication is a huge issue and continues to be a challenge, especially in these non-traditional setups (people understand 4PM initiation west of OKC off a dryline a lot better, it seems), but I don't know what part of the forecast yesterday didn't pan out. Maybe if you last checked the forecast 5-8 days ago you'd have been surprised at the timeline, but as of yesterday and even Thursday the main threat was clearly overnight storms with flooding rains and more of a hail threat than a tornado threat. I watched Jonathon Condor (sp?) yesterday in the early afternoon and he emphasized there was only a low chance of storm formation during the daytime/early evening, and that the main threat was going to be a large system with multiple rounds of heavy rain/wind/hail pushing through overnight. Lots of places got wind, hail, and rain amounts of 2-4+ inches, which is exactly what the flood watch that'd been out for days had listed. I really don't mean to be combative, but as a meteorologist myself I'm at a loss as to how this forecast didn't go as planned since every resource I came across at least indicated this was an overnight threat -- and having sarcastic comments made left and right about the forecast is frustrating when a) they don't strike me as accurate and b) we're doing our best to prepare people for possible threats. What didn't pan out, in your opinion?

[LocoAko]

I didn't even hear anything last night and I just woke up. I cracked my window so I could listen to the rain and that's all I've heard.

That's not sarcasm BTW. I think some of us are just immune to the drama that posters stir up in this thread. That's the "doom & gloom" I was referring to. So in essence, I was giving sound advice for someone to have a restful night.

Just like I did.

That's fair. My impression was that you were mocking the forecasts more than the over-reacting to them. For posters like bchris who seem to have storm anxiety, I would have recommended the same. The tornado threat was low, and there are plenty of apps that can wake you up for other types of warnings if you're concerned. I'm actually surprised to hear you slept through it with the window open, though it depends on where in the metro you live. I woke up from the thunder in NW OKC shortly before it hit. IT wasn't all that bad at my house beyond small hail, very heavy rain, and near constant lightning/thunder, but at least in parts of central OKC it looks like the 70 mph winds verified. It was pretty noisy though -- you must be a deep sleeper! :P

[LocoAko]

Ex: Apparently the bleachers are OCU were blown into someone's home this morning.

https://twitter.com/jodimcwilliams/s...66203361988608

[Pete]

It seems the center part of the city -- or the near north / northwest side -- got the worst of it.

Trees down everywhere.

[Pete]

I sure hope they can clear all the trees and debris in time for tomorrow's marathon.

[LocoAko]

Don't know what thread this would be best in, but looks like Bingo City on NW 50th next to Supermercado Morelos also had a partial collapse.

https://twitter.com/CXL_OKC/status/858325461948129280

[Pete]

Right at 3" of total precip now at my house.

[sooner88]

That was one of the loudest storms I've ever heard, in midtown. 23rd - 36th looks like a war zone. Big trees were uprooted, fences blown down and stoplights destroyed all over. Haven't had power for 10+ hours.

[Bunty]

Right at 3" of total precip now at my house.

3.5" in Stillwater and still raining as of 4:30pm. It will be interesting to see if anything new comes in tonight from the west.

[Celebrator]

That was one of the loudest storms I've ever heard, in midtown. 23rd - 36th looks like a war zone. Big trees were uprooted, fences blown down and stoplights destroyed all over. Haven't had power for 10+ hours.

Like "change the character of the area forever" type damage?

[sooner88]

Like "change the character of the area forever" type damage?

No, not like tornado damage, but it was still relatively significant.

[turnpup]

That was one of the loudest storms I've ever heard, in midtown. 23rd - 36th looks like a war zone. Big trees were uprooted, fences blown down and stoplights destroyed all over. Haven't had power for 10+ hours.

We're just on the north edge of Midtown. Power went out at about 4:30 a.m. and just came back on at our house at about 6:30 p.m. There was a swath of pretty serious damage to trees and power lines along 12th Street from about Classen all the way to Broadway (maybe even beyond). The picture below was on 12th between Harvey and Hudson. I suspect that's the culprit behind our outage.

Pete, the crews have been working all day to clear the tree debris from the marathon paths. There was a very large Sycamore down in the road at 13th and Hudson most of the day, but it got scraped off the road a few hours ago. Things are starting to look OK for tomorrow morning. I made a point to sweep the debris out of the street along our house so the half-marathoners can get through unimpeded. St. Luke's had a crew clearing all the downed trees from their land as well.

[Pete]

^

Yes I was all around downtown tonight and I noticed they had cleared a ton of trees and debris.

I'll post some of the photos I took because there were several buildings damaged near Film Row.

[bchris02]

Is Cox out for anybody else?

My power came back on at about 6ish but my Internet is still out. I'm trying to decide whether I should call Cox or just wait.

[SoonerDave]

Not a lot of detail on this, but a bit of really optimistic news came across the Ch 9 weather this morning - their weekend met was talking about a bit of a pattern change upcoming and for the next several days - typically the peak of the severe weather season - there were no immediate indications of severe weather upcoming; possibly some really nice spring weather ahead. That was nice to hear. Hope it pans out!

[Easy180]

Not a lot of detail on this, but a bit of really optimistic news came across the Ch 9 weather this morning - their weekend met was talking about a bit of a pattern change upcoming and for the next several days - typically the peak of the severe weather season - there were no immediate indications of severe weather upcoming; possibly some really nice spring weather ahead. That was nice to hear. Hope it pans out!

Read a similar post on Facebook saying it should be relatively quiet until at least mid-May.

[Bunty]

Northeastern Oklahoma, like around Tahlequah, was where it got heaviest for rain in Oklahoma. Much of Missouri and Arkansas also received extreme downpours.


Boomer Lake in Stillwater shown over the spillway. Around 5" of rain had fallen in the area. While local creeks are staying within their banks, several stretches of streets were closed, due to high water. Light showers pepper much of the state, especially the northern half Sunday afternoon.

[John1744]

A friend at work came in from outside and told me it was hailing on him and I told him he was insane, I go outside and get bonked on the head with ice also, guess it's just that cold way up there? It's downright frigid with that wind.