Hoosier

I of course was looking out my big picture window the whole time, lol. The basement is right there though so I could've gotten down there extremely fast if necessary.

The disturbance tomorrow looks dangerously close to being cold enough to support some snowflakes around here. The boundary layer is pretty torched, but freezing levels/wet bulb zero heights are borderline supportive. Not expecting flakes here, but if the precip can come down hard enough, I guess it's not entirely out of the question. May be one of those days where you could see snow if you're looking out the window of one of the tall skyscrapers in Chicago.

Was under a tornado warning last night in association with that line of storms. Watched an area of rotation upstream on radar that was heading my general direction. Ultimately I don't think it produced anything around here. Had some pretty gusty winds but I've seen worse.

Line quickly approaching here with severe and tornado warnings along it. Doesn't really seem to be weakening.

Seems pretty clear that the damaging wind/QLCS tornado threat will be on a downtrend sometime later tonight... just not sure if it will be before or after it moves through here. The LLJ will be intensifying to around 50-60 kts later and we should remain relatively well-mixed in the low-levels through the evening with a somewhat modest amount of nocturnal cooling, so I'm going to hold with my previous stance of being cautiously optimistic about the severe threat around here.

Yeah, unfortunately hearing reports of fatalities there.

Tornado in Rockton, IL (outside of Rockford)

I don't wanna see no blue.

New SPC outlook has a Moderate Risk today.

I left out 1986 since the peak of strong didn't occur until well into 1987, but summer 1986 was -3.4 in Chicago. So same trend as what happened in your area with summer 1986 being cooler than summer 1987.

You guys have inspired me, so I checked the temperature stats for Chicago for the meteorological summers leading into strong Nino events. Of course this is assuming that this upcoming Nino event will peak at a strong intensity, which looks very likely but not guaranteed yet. All temperature anomalies are relative to the 1991-2020 normals. 1957 JJA: +0.4 1965 JJA: -2.6 1972 JJA: -2.0 1982 JJA: -5.0 1987 JJA: +0.4 1991 JJA: +0.4 1997 JJA: -2.9 2015 JJA: -2.8 2023 JJA: +0.3 So, we see that 5 summers were cooler than average and 4 were technically a little warmer than average, but essentially average for all intents and purposes -- and interestingly clustered around +0.3 to +0.4. Although it's a small sample size of 9 years, there are no torch summers. Based on this and the various seasonal models, my guess would be for an average-ish summer around Chicago. Can't rule out a cooler than average one, but I'd be leery about going too far in that direction given increased UHI around ORD (even compared to 10-20 years ago) and also with some of the tendencies that we have seen with warmth in the CONUS so far this year. A blistering hot summer looks pretty unlikely, but weather has a way of humbling so I wouldn't say it can't happen.

Although the better severe threat tomorrow will be farther west, I'm cautiously optimistic about some severe chances around here especially IF we can get the line to come in by around 3z. Any delay beyond that point will result in a further decrease in instability and a lower threat. Low level wind fields look quite strong though.

Slight risk was expanded a bit east for tomorrow.

Yeah, it's not uncommon to have a fakeout spell of cold/snow in the Midwest in Fall during strong Ninos. It happened in October 1997 and we also saw it in 2015, although it was later that time. If it's a high end Nino, I could live with a 1972-73 or 2015-16 type outcome. These are not ideal winters by any stretch, but they are better than most strong Nino winters, at least around here.

Even the CFS weeklies, which often go out of their way to find a torch, don't look too warm later this month and into early May.