Wow...what a storm. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this is a great example of something from nothing. I thought we'd get some snow for the rush hour, but what I'm really "blown" away by is the intensity of the wind. Several MesoWest sites in the West Desert have reported gusts of 60 mph or greater, and the National Weather Service reports a truck was blown over 25 miles east of Wendover.
I certainly would not have called for winds of this intensity based on the data in hand this morning. Further, the National Weather Service zone forecast for the Great Salt Lake Desert, issued at 1153 MST, called for South winds 15 to 25 mph, shifting to northwest 10 to 20 mph late in the afternoon. The forecast for tonight called for northwest winds 20 to 30 mph with gusts to around 45 mph. Windy, but not near gusts in excess of 60 mph.
Thus, although we anticipated something for nothing, the severity of the wind was underestimated. Clearly we have more work to do.
It looked to me like we had a rapidly moving cold front in the mid levels (around 500-700 mb), and the surface boundary had a hard time keeping up with it. I think that may explain both the lightning and strong wind gusts yesterday.
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