CheeselandSkies

Yeah. Honestly, after hitting rock bottom over the weekend, things are looking up a bit for the coming weekend into the following week. Should be at least a few opportunities. Saturday in particular has my eye now that the GFS actually forms a surface low.

Mulling over some NAM forecast soundings for Friday over KS/NE (obviously still at the very end of its range so take it for what it's worth). The biggest weakness I see is of course the modest deep layer shear. However low level directional shear and mid-level lapse rates look quite good. Still not sure if I'll bite on it, but based off that Euro run Friday-Saturday would be the only play of my vacation window. If only that 500mb shortwave with the small pockets of 45-50kt southwesterlies could be a little faster (on the GFS, too). It seems to want to lag the warm sector until the cap is filling in after dark, however that could imply a small window of time shortly after 0z when everything lines up. As we saw on the 1st, sometimes that's all it takes.

Sad when New York is getting better action than the Plains/Midwest in mid-May.

CFS still really wants to bring a small area of 50kt SW flow to parts of KS/NE next Saturday. GFS also has it but has been very consistent with an ugly crashing cold front surface pattern and no SLP really able to wrap up. So we go from February in April, to July in early-mid May, back to April in mid-late May? Seems legit.

Meanwhile south of Wichita... Probably won't be anything long-lasting or too photogenic, but the storm's reflectivity presentation looks lovely.

I hear that. Of course, I said the same thing for the days of Dodge City and Chapman that one week in 2016. I was laser-focused on that Thursday and...yeah. The problem for me is that those days, by themselves, looking as they did even 2 days out wouldn't be enough to get me from WI to western KS, even if I had been off that week.

They had that in there yesterday, too (same forecaster IIRC). GFS continues to look at least moderately interesting over NC/NE KS for next Saturday, so I'm surprised they didn't at least throw in a "predictability too low" for that. Yeah there is some 700-500mb VBV in here but decent turning below 700mb and very strong instability.

Next weekend actually doesn't look entirely awful on the GFS, this morning's 12Z run had a 2-day play from KS to the Midwest on Saturday-Sunday. The surface pattern doesn't look stellar but at least there's 500mb flow above 30kt overlapping some instability.

Ah, but therein lies the problem for those of us who just don't have the luxury to chase all of them.

Even reading between the lines of Kerr's last few Day 4-8 convective outlooks, you can detect some degree of "WTF atmosphere, it's May?!" Friday: Yesterday: Today:

GFS at around hour 156 doesn't look too terrible, if that shortwave in KS were a tad faster or the one in Iowa a tad slower. Still, it is frustrating not to see a broad belt of AOA 40kt SW flow overspreading that massive reservoir of instability.

That...is delightful.

Looks like my dart at the calender (May 18-27) might work out. Hard not to sweat each run of the CFS and GFS, even though at 9+ days out most of my vacation is still in model fantasyland. At least the trends are encouraging.

I take it you are Jeff House on Stormtrack?

CFS took a little bit of a dump on the chase prospects for my vacation that I booked on Monday for May 18-27 after several straight runs of it showed at least one trough moving across the central CONUS during that timeframe (what I based my decision on). Still should be at least one opportunity, whether it's good enough to draw me out remains to be seen.

FWIW (which hasn't been a whole lot of late*), SPC saw fit to introduce a risk area for Days 6 and 7 (Tuesday-Wednesday). The former extends into Iowa. *Wording for Day 7 event hints at a more ominous look for the Plains, which coming from someone other than Broyles carries a little more weight in my mind.

Well lookie there, spring at last!

I would love to be proven wrong, but it's hard to be optimistic looking at the models now and having to clear my car off before I can go to work for the second time this week on April 19th.

*Sigh.* Already steeling myself for another wasted spring. What does it take to get an active severe pattern this decade (after the extremes of April 2011, of course)? La Nina, El Nino, anomalous warmth, anomalous cold, nothing works. Need to see a year where events like June 16th-18th, 2014, April 9th, 2015 and May 24th-25th, 2016 are part of a sustained pattern and not just diamonds in the rough...and this isn't going to be it.

Can I rage quit the atmosphere?

I recall 2012 being the worst severe season of the lot. The "season" was essentially March 2nd and April 14th. I remember being totally stoked for all that March and early April heat this far north to lead to some epic severe weather outbreaks (think mid-March 1990) when those powerhouse early season systems plowed into an airmass that they didn't have to modify from Arctic conditions at the 11th hour, but aside from those two days (one well southeast and one well west of here), such systems never came. It hardly even stormed around here, and then we baked. Wisconsin recorded a measly four tornadoes for the entire year, and Illinois was well below average as well. I'm still convinced April 2011 broke something in the atmosphere's ability to produce a proper tornado season. Even the ensuing May was weird, dead for the first three weeks followed by three more days of extreme violence, then quiet again. 2013 had the back half of May and the fall outbreak in IL/IN and that's about it. 2014, until now as bad as I thought it could get in terms of a winter hangover, had April 27-28 and June 16-18, not much of note apart from that. The few setups in May were tempered by lingering cold air. 2015 had a certain event three years ago to the day that I still can't think about too carefully without wanting to put a gun to my head. Early-mid May were fairly active, but what looked like it would be the biggest day (May 16th) couldn't hit its ceiling due to lingering junk convection and cool outflow over all but a small portion of what would have been a Plains-wide risk area. There was one regional opportunity in late June which I chased and was looking right at where a tornado was, but it was rain-wrapped UNlike that certain April event. Then it had the anomalous December outbreaks related to the Super Nino. 2016 had the active February in Dixie and the East. Mid-March had one opportunity in the upper Midwest region, when I got my only glimpse of an actual tornado, but it was just that, a glimpse in the lightning flashes of a large cone funnel hanging down to the tree line after dark. May produced three potential career highlight chase days on the 9th and 24-25 but with little activity otherwise. My vacation started on the 30th. Ouch, and June turned out to be one of the quietest on record until the 22nd, the same day as the previous year when another opportunity presented itself in the same area of north-central Illinois. I got on a tornadic supercell but once again any tornadoes were buried in murk. Last year was pure garbage in terms of quality chase days, except for that one in FREAKIN' FEBRUARY! I couldn't chase because of a prior commitment, which I made because it was FREAKIN' FEBRUARY and the northern target didn't really look like anything until the day of.

How the heck does the 12Z GFS wipe the Gulf bone dry next Monday (week from tomorrow) and then have upper 60s to the Red River by Wednesday evening?

TORR with the storm southeast of Shreveport based on a CC drop co-located with the couplet at about 2352Z, although the couplet actually looked stronger for a few frames before that. Circulation looks to be getting rained into by the cluster enveloping it from the west now.

It would be helpful for non-mets if posts like this with multiple teleconnection acronyms could include a quick summation of what that means for sensible weather in this sub and the rest of the CONUS. This one does (increased severe potential), but I find that's not always the case. I know what MJO stands for, but haven't the foggiest about what it means for it to be into the IO or what the AAM crashing almost -3 sigma means.

I despise eastern trough dominated springs, which seem to be the rule rather than the exception. Although, I remember April 2011 as being raw, gray and convectively uneventful as we were stuck on the cool side of most of the systems after the April 10th one (which, maddeningly, produced most of its tornadoes NORTH of southern Wisconsin). Even had snow showers on the 18th. I just realized something, going back and rereading the April 9th, 2011 Day 2 outlooksvalid for April 10th. It always seemed to me like that event underperformed its potential based on the wording of those Day 2 outlooks, even though by Wisconsin standards it was fairly significant (16 tornadoes, 1 EF3 and 3 EF2), the wording -particularly in the initial one- made it sound like it would be April 27 for the upper Midwest (2 1/2 weeks before anyone knew what "April 27" meant). Now I know why that is...IT WAS BROYLES!!!