I very much agree with CT DEEP's assessment that what we saw in CT is from other systems in the Southern Plains. Those particles lofted into the atmosphere are (depending on the exact size) very ideal as cloud condensation nuclei, which are particles that water vapor condenses to and form larger water droplets. These droplets then fall to the ground in larger storms, which we've seen a few times now. Given we've had a few predominant low-level SW flow regimes prior to this report, I'm even more convinced it's dust from the Plains.

The HYSPLIT modeling ARL offers allows you to run archived parcel trajectories and dispersion, I'm half-tempted to run one to see where all that smoke ended up.

I'll keep this next statement as apolitical as possible: multiple facets leading up to and during the response to this disaster should show all of us how corrupt entire agencies and the broader U.S. government have become, regardless of which party has control.

Look at how this train wasn't classified as carrying very hazardous materials, the arresting of local journalists covering the event, the complete silence by multiple federal agencies for nearly a week (eerily similar to the Soviet Union during Chernobyl), a failure to share critical information in a timely manner, covering for a private company clearly in the wrong (eerily similar to Japan covering TEPCO during Fukushima-Daiichi), I can keep going.

I've had similar issues with the dissemination of critical information about this controlled burn from the beginning, the town hall in East Palestine last night was revealing and shows folks there are even more frustrated about this.

Let's focus on the HYSPLIT modeling I've shown and another pair of images released by NOAA ARL (Air Resources Laboratory) referenced in another post below. The moment this burn was ignited, ARL was supporting the local NWS forecast office and other government agencies by running a high-resolution HYSPLIT WRF nest over that burn. Essentially, as new info about the burn and weather analysis data came in, they were running new plume dispersion forecasts, likely at least 4 times a day but probably once an hour. None of these frequently updated data were readily visible to the public to my knowledge, which is totally unacceptable.

Nope, though he taught one of my meteorology classes at my college!

I've waited all my life for this moment lol

Nope, a town in Middlesex County!

You know your CT TV stations haha! Nope, but that was the station I grew up watching!

Nope, the only clue I'll give is I hail from Connecticut!

Does anything trump CloudMan?

One critical question I still have is how these particles may bond to both ice crystals, water droplets, and supercooled droplets deeper in the atmosphere. Are they small enough to act as cloud condensation nuclei? Did they bond to the aforementioned hydrometers and precipitate out wherever the plume density was highest and rain/snow occurred?

Good question: this is the first I've seen of ARL running particle cross section analysis right at the start of the controlled fire before the mean wind shifted. So at the initial burst, they're modeling (using I suspect a different model than the one I used to calculate the forward trajectory) the most likely dispersion integrating estimated particle release per hour. That's also starting a full 12 hours earlier than mine, right as the trough is moving through, more on that below.

What this shows is particles initially contained in the lowest 3,000 ft of the atmosphere that advect NE, then N as they're mixed higher into the atmosphere (shades of blue). This likely is along the first upper-level trough to pivot through here last week, though these particles being an issue here seems almost non-existent given what we know about the lifespan of vinyl chloride gas & how high up these particles were mixed. Then as the winds became more predominately WNW (second image), the plume orients ESE, with concentrations contained in a smaller area than I think some feared would be otherwise.

One of my hottest takes is that the slew of "fact checkers" we saw emerge around/after 2020 remain one of the largest, exploitative scams ever committed on the American public.

Based on the fact sheet I dug up about this gas from the EPA, my suspicion is we're fine here given how far away we are, the half life of the gas is fairly short both in water and soil: https://semspub.epa.gov/work/05/437069.pdf

I can confirm I am not Al Kaprielian

Fair haha, though I can assure everyone I hold a degree in atmospheric sciences and am employed as a meteorologist. I didn't suffer through multiple years of calculus for nothing. People can take two seconds to inspect weather balloon launches & other factoids about vinyl chloride gas to easily verify everything I've written as accurate, I don't know how much easier to make it.

I just compacted concepts of atmospheric dispersion, chemistry & thermodynamics through the application of forward parcel trajectories into a single reply. I sure hope that folks here recognize my assessment isn't idiotic 🤔. I'd literally show my degree if it didn't give away who I actually am, smh

Nope lol, though we both went to the same college

There are a few cloud nerds living in the Granite State

Hi, meteorologist here. The short answer is likely no

The vinyl chloride burn has occurred under a number of days with a very stout subsidence inversion in play nearby. This means the atmosphere is not well mixed at night, but features a mixed layer as high as 2 km (~6600 ft) during the day with a layer average wind direction from the WNW. The picture above shows the burn plume trapped underneath very stable mid-level air with little horizontal movement, a clear sign of a robust subsidence inversion. The reports of multiple livestock & fish perishing over a shorter radius also confirms the presence of a subsidence inversion preventing these toxins from fanning out deeper into the atmosphere.

I've run an ensemble forward trajectory analysis (https://imgur.com/gallery/0rFlz1Z) starting at the location & approximate time of the fire, which follows the movement of air parcels up 1 km above ground (~3300 ft), a mean of each day's mixed layer during this burn. For you math/science nerds, this is the Lagranagian view of the parcel/fluid through time.

Notice that the mean mixed-layer wind direction (WNW) does carry whatever gas & aerosols are being emitted from this fire into the Carolinas before loitering over the western Atlantic. Given vinyl chloride gas is heavier than the surrounding air, it's likely remained in the lowest 1 km close to the incident location, signaling this is probably not a far-reaching event.

No, though I know for a fact he lurks here often so he'll probably chime in on your assessment about being awful. We're all pretty tight in the weather community and if there's one thing Eric isn't, it's a wacky conspiracy theorist.

It's the number of people who have already died coming into the winter outdoors, particularly out of state folks hiking in the White Mountains

I'm curious: how many square feet are you heating with the pellet stove, do you have some sort of circulation system near it that more effectively distributes heat around the house, and is your house better insulated to begin with?

My parents ditched their pellet stove over a decade ago because it could not effectively heat portions of the house and relied on oil-fired

Providing accurate and understandable weather forecasts absolutely saves lives, it's irrefutable. I mean, look at how many people were killed in the Blizzard of 1978 to Hurricane Ian in 2022.

I agree with you that all SAR should be suspended in this.

Unless you have a difficult time driving in gusty winds, you should be fine. Make sure you've got plenty of gas and bring a winter kit with you should the car battery die in the cold. That should include water, food that's easy to digest but provides a decent calorie load, and plenty of warm clothing