SOLPEX IOP4 Is On

Teams are in route for what we hope will be a night of sampling lake effect after a day of sampling deep April powder.

Erik Steenburgh tests the April powder at Solitude

We're not really sure how this event is going to play out, in part because there has been so much cloud cover we're not sure what the lake temperature is (incredibly, there is no in situ lake temperature observation available in real time).  What we do know is that there is that the flow tonight should be shifting to northwesterly and the convection is quite action upstream over Nevada and Idaho.

Further, the upstream soundings, such as the one this morning from Boise, are near moist neutral with small dew-point depressions through the tropopause.

Source: NCAR/RAL

Thus, even though lake temperatures may be marginal, we're dealing with an atmosphere that is primed and ready to go, so we don't want to miss out if anything gets going.