Something from Nothing

As anticipated, we now have a heathy cold front racing across the West Desert.

The temperature fall at DPG17 (near I-80 mp 30) and the North Salt Flats mesonet site (just south of I80) was quite abrupt and nearly 15F at the latter.

The peak post-frontal wind gust at North Salt Flats was 50 mph, not too shabby, but still a bit lower than I thought we'd get for peak gusts.  We'll see if we get more intensification.

One might question if this is a front at all given the possibility it is simply convective outflow.  Such outflow likely contributes to a stronger front, but simulations we've done of previous events suggests we can still get a strong scale collapse even if without sub-cloud evaporation.  Thus, I'll stick my neck out and continue to call it a front.

FYI that we will be out tonight launching soundings for a potential lake-effect event.  There's a brief (~6-h) window where conditions are favorable and if something pops up we don't want to miss it.