Chinook

Hello, Newman.

Excellent sunset photo

I need to turn on my thunder magnet.

Since there's basically nothing happening across the country, here's the skew-T for my area today, without the severe weather indices. The cooling of the cold front made the 925mb-850mb temp to 3 degrees C this morning. There wasn't an inversion in mid-day, but rather a strong heating from the surface to 850mb, with then a nearly zero lapse rate above that. That's quite a chunk of dry cooler air from 850mb-700mb. It was breezy. Yesterday, Toledo had 80/38, notably, lower dew points than NE Colorado yesterday. That's hard to do.

And, I might add, I still don't know why the HRRR has about zero smoke density in our area, when it should be a moderate value.

For me, the haze is obvious on the satellite image. I see a white-ish sky, but not a red sun tonight. There's only a been a hint of the slight yellow tint of the sunlight that happens when you get heavy forest fire smoke.

I mentioned this in the Mountain West discussion: British Columbia had temperatures on 5/14 and 5/15 I don't think I've seen in May at any time.

This has got to be forest fire smoke. It's a red sun tonight. The HRRR says the vertically integrated smoke is zero, but that's wrong.

Somebody is getting a heat wave. The Great White North

Today: down to a temperature of 63 with a dew point of 39 here. I sometimes forget that the more dry air, like I was used to feeling out in Fort Collins, does exist as we get closer and closer to summer. The 500mb pattern is a complete mess

Some info from the NWS at Boulder

CoCoRAHS spotters measured as low as 1.05 to and as high as 3.65" within a couple of miles in the San Antonio vicinity

I guess this continues the sort-of trend of wet Mays, going back several years. I probably just remember this trend because most of the months in my recent personal memories of Colorado haven't been rainy at all.

This is massive debris

Tornadoes in Nebraska

The only time Fort Collins got close to 5" was the flood of 2013. Fort Collins had 5" in a week, Horsetooth Mountain had about 9".

That's crazy

Cole-Goldsby Oklahoma tornado debris signature

this was the Newcastle area tornado

I believe this was a confirmed brief tornado in the rain at Tuttle/Bridge Creek. It did not necessarily look like it was at a hook echo/RFD at all. Maybe you could use your imagination to see a hook echo in there.

confirmed tornado 14 miles SW of Akron

Denver storm reports as of 22:23z

new tornado warning/severe warning for a storm(s) heading down the mountains toward Denver

Illinois had all the fun. You know, the Midwest should really share. All I've ever seen since March is non-thunder. Non-thunder. Cold rain and non-thunder. I heard some thunder at 4:00 AM on 5/7. That's it. I was asleep.

The convection-allowing models have several solutions of supercells and/or clusters of cells forming in Iowa, eastern Nebraska, and western Illinois tomorrow. The conditions near the warm front will promote higher wind shear, lift, and chance of tornadoes. Severe thunderstorms may get going in southern Illinois also. It looks like a higher wind area at 700mb will be a main factor in increased storm relative helicity.