CheeselandSkies

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.

1 hour ago, bjc0303 said:

I know calling things a wedgefest is a meme and all, but the 00z euro dropped and absolute dime on the plains at hour 240 last night lol

That...is delightful.

Yeah that totally came out of left field for us. Didn't even occur to me to chase.

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!

9 hours ago, bjc0303 said:

lol @ calling the season before May first....

 

You have no idea what May is going to bring. Just stop. 

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.

What I don't get is how is it even possible for it to be above normal in WI/MI/ME but below normal in Florida? Cold air comes from the north, warm air from the south.

51 minutes ago, andyhb said:

With a pitiful pattern it looks like heading towards May I might add. Upper flow over the CONUS dies with the unfavorable +dAAM/dt tendency.

A lot of bad in the CPC analogs too with 2006 and 1987 showing up at/near the top (easily two of the worst Mays for chasing).

Can I rage quit the atmosphere?

Woodward, OK tornado was in early April.

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I will laugh if southern Missouri ends up with more snow than us in mid-April.

6 hours ago, andyhb said:

2010s post-2012 are fun, eh?

This entire regime that we've been in for most of the last half decade has been very testing on my patience for following this stuff (and that says a lot). Fortunately there was 2016 to have success with chasing to keep the interest high, but aside from that, not a whole lot.

All of this bupkis on Twitter/etc. about calling the season now isn't helping either.

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?

I don't even remember it getting this cold in April 2014, the other recent example of a winter that wouldn't let go. Most of JFM was brutally cold but by April, temperatures were at least tolerable although still below normal. We sure as heck weren't seeing teens for lows and 30s for highs...and at least we built up a decent snowpack during that winter. Way too many stretches of bare tundra during this one.

39 minutes ago, Indystorm said:

Sunday's 12Z GFS much more sensible with the strength of the low pressure for this coming Friday.  Not the extremes we have been seeing and puts more of IL and IN in realistic play.

Verbatim that run is pretty meh. Thursday would be a decent day over the Plains if it wasn't totally capped, and it speeds the system up with the front coming across the MS at 12Z Friday instead of ~21Z. Might be some gusty morning thundershowers for us before another ripping, chilly northwest wind takes hold. By the time it gets to you closer to peak heating, the system is occluded with deep layer flow parallel to the cold front.

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.

If nothing else, the end of next week's system is at least a sign we might be turning the corner toward a less frigid and more convectively active pattern. The biting northwest wind today was not pleasant.

3 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

12z GFS bottoms out the surface low around 972 mb.  That is about as deep of a surface low as you can get at that latitude at this time of year.

Very narrow band of marginal surface CAPE along the front though...looks like moisture will be an issue. Dew not even up to 60. Lapse rate map is rather eyebrow-raising, though, at least at 18Z.

Quincy is not impressed. Neither is Jeff.

https://stormtrack.org/community/threads/2018-severe-wx-chase-season-discussion.29986/page-3

Can you hear it?

Yeah, things look to ramp up sooner than I'd anticipated given the pattern we've been stuck in. Even yesterday's action kind of came out of left field for me, although we never even sniffed the warm sector here in WI. A week prior I'd have told you no chance of any severe anywhere east of the Rockies through at least April 15.