Quincy

To echo @Chinook, forecast hodographs look rather lengthy, thanks to the substantial shear mentioned above. If storms don’t get too clustered, you could see at least a couple long-track, intense supercells. Severe hail would be the most likely hazard. Low-level SRH is forecast to modestly improve after 00z, but I’m not sure the tornado threat will be fully realized. This is thanks to storms tending to merge and grow upscale, but a tornado or two could form. Other supercells seem probable across the Colorado Front Range and possibly northeastern New Mexico as well. Tuesday could be a rather active day across the region…

It’s nice to see rain and storms across the southern High Plains. Hopefully the pattern continues so we can keep chipping away at the drought.

Chased down in he Permian Basin today, because June decided to start off with another crashing cold front. Going to take a break from chasing for a while. The pattern looks below average anyway.

Several semi-discrete supercells formed from the Texas panhandle into northern/western Oklahoma and southern Kansas on Tuesday. I had pretty low expectations going into the day, so I’d say the storms outperformed, despite being HP beasts.

Started the day in Sioux City and made the decision to go south. It was a race against the clock, but I opted to target eastern Kansas. I chased (or attempted to) a couple of semi-discrete supercells in the Flint Hills, but with trees and lack of roads, I bailed south for isolated cells closer to the Oklahoma border. Those storms started to fade rather quickly, but I was able to get a couple of photos of the southernmost cell, before calling the chase off.

Well, shear/instability are there. The parameter space in Minnesota is high-end with some anomalous values, but that doesn’t mean the setup was going to produce a bunch of discrete supercells. I suspect we see some QLCS tornado reports. Kansas is still iffy, but maybe they squeak out a tornado or two around sunset. Even there, storm modes have been mixed.

Not really a big surprise. Also doubts down in Kansas, but the event is still young.

Late morning weather map:

Higher-end wind profiles for sure…

Here’s your giant hail:

Challenging storm chasing today and tomorrow, despite higher than average tornado probabilities. Today looks to be a close call with convective initiation prior to sunset in Nebraska. Do you drift west and hope for storms coming off the High Plains? Wander north into eastern South Dakota and hope storms can mature, despite weaknesses in the wind fields? Or hang in northeastern Nebraska until time runs out? Definitely reminds me of 6/17/14 in terms of timing. I don’t think storms became established until after 00z. First tornado reports were shortly after 01z. Tomorrow appears to have three plays: 1. Chase the SPC/parameter space bullseye near the MN/Dakotas border. Race east across MN with tornadic supercells likely, but storm motions will be fast and storms may ultimately form an MCS. 2. Play farther south, near the NE/IA border. Storm motion will be more W to E. Question will be how many sustained cells will persist into Iowa? IA has a bad rap for storm chasing. Seems to bust most of the time, but goes bonkers once in a while. 3. Kansas. The not-so-classic Kansas chase setup. Does a storm or two become established? Could play up near I-70 or even go for a Hail Mary down by the Oklahoma border. Good luck to all chasers!

An interesting setup tomorrow with several nuances that make for a difficult forecast. I doubt we will have high confidence on details until at least mid to late morning. The synoptic setup shares some DISTANT similarities to the 6/16 - 6/17/2014 sequence. I am not calling for the same evolution, but I do recall the Pilger day and similar surface features. The difference here is that we're a few weeks earlier in the season and the moisture field may be somewhat fragmented, resulting in more capping and delayed initiation. Interestingly enough, 6/17/2014 was a late initiation day in the same general area (northeastern Nebraska), with storms not firing until only a couple of hours before sunset. Anyway, I attempted to roughly illustrate the current mean HREF surface map features, effective 21z/4 PM Sunday. The area to watch is likely the triple point, somewhere in central/south-central Nebraska. I wouldn't say it's a true front, but it appears as if a surface trough will drape south from an area of low pressure over eastern North Dakota, toward a low near the Kansas/Nebraska border. A dryline will probably intersect the low at an effective triple point. Low-level moisture fields appear to be fragmented, as a moisture gradient may exist, displaced slightly to the east, over Iowa. There, strong capping will likely preclude convective initiation prior to loss of daytime heating. Storms could fire along the trough (both across eastern Nebraska and farther west toward the High Plains), but it seems as if the best shot an initiation, perhaps only 1-3 hours prior to sunset, would be near the triple point. We could see early day storms also bring a hail risk to the Upper Midwest and might there be some warm front action across Minnesota/Wisconsin as well? Maybe even attempts at convective initiation along the trough over the eastern Dakotas? Definitely an odd, complex setup. Some models struggle to convect prior to 00z. If initiation is too soon, there may not be adequate boundary layer moisture recovery across Nebraska. The sweet spot seems to be somewhere over the eastern half of Nebraska, around 6-9 PM, assuming that the cap is breached and storms can form near/ahead of the triple point. If storms were to fire on the northwest side of the trough/low, they will be displaced from better moisture/wind fields in the lower levels.

@MNstormsready to add to the wealth?

Large hail = 1” or larger in diameter Very large hail = 2” or larger Giant hail = 4” or larger

Chased western South Dakota today. Convergence on the north side of the Black Hills helped a high based supercell form, but storms very quickly became outflow dominant and clustered. Had a neat sunset, at least. Convective initiation may be more widespread tomorrow with stronger forcing and somewhat better moisture. Still, most CAMs snow linear segments and bowing structures, despite seemingly (supercell) favorable wind profiles. It seems like another day to hang around the Black Hills, OR head south and hope for something to stay somewhat more discrete and tap into better moisture down in Nebraska.

Looks like Sunday-Monday have noteworthy severe potential, somewhere between the Central Plains and Upper Midwest. We could see the threat linger into Tuesday, before troughing ejects toward the Ohio Valley. Just in time to close out May.

Meanwhile here in Oklahoma City our temperature during daylight hours didn’t get above 56F today. Pretty absurd. Average low is 61F. (We did have a midnight high of 59, to get technical)

Did not see the tornado, but was able to photograph the supercell from the south, long after the tornado dissipated. Lots of dust.

An upper level trough, slowly moving across the Central U.S., should bring a threat of severe thunderstorms across the Southern Plains through tomorrow. The Texas Gulf Coast and parts of Arkansas/Louisiana could be affected on Wednesday, before the pattern becomes unfavorable for severe thunderstorm activity for a couple of days. A more traditionally favored severe pattern should then setup for the weekend, through the final days of May. Ensemble guidance is in good agreement with broad troughing across the West and some ridging across the eastern half of the U.S.. While some limitations will likely prevent this stretch from being higher-end on a broad scale, isolated to scattered severe thunderstorms seem probable between about May 28-31. From a storm chasing perspective, sometimes broad troughing is preferred as you get later into spring, as storm motion can be a bit slower and mesoscale features dictate the precise placements of threats.

I don’t know about that, re: SPC. Their outlooks are probabilistic. Although the parameter space was high, the model guidance was not showing a tornado outbreak. Since there was one lone tornadic supercell, well within their 5% outlook area, I’d say they did a fine job. It’s easy to criticize in hindsight. The problem with these setups is a lot of times, nothing happens. Sometimes you get one intense storm and even more rarely, maybe you get an “unexpected” outbreak. I was watching that storm a short time before it produced a tornado and yeah, it looked like it was rapidly organizing (increased lightning production, better radar presentation, etc.) but if you jump too quickly and always call for the worst outcome, you’re going to desensitize. The storm also looked like elevated junk when it first came ashore, but once it started ingesting surface-based instability and interacted with terrain, then it rapidly intensified Were the watches and warnings perfect? No. They rarely are.

Glad I didn’t second guess my decision to chase up north the past few days. Just not sure if there’s going to be anything worth chasing tomorrow.

Despite the somewhat veered 10m wind ob, there was a sickle shaped low-level hodograph (232 m2/s2 0-1km SRH) with 29 knots of 0-1km shear. Easily supportive, as you mentioned.

Couldn’t quite catch back to to the tornado that hit Gaylord. I was in Mancelona when the supercell was wrapping up and becoming rooted near the surface. Traffic, curvy roads and deep woods proved detrimental. Hope everyone is okay, that was an impressive radar signature, especially for so far north.

Parameter space is pretty high end looking across Michigan tomorrow, but residual capping and no obvious forcing mechanism ahead of the cold front suggest any threat is conditional, at best. A few CAMs hint at storm development in northern Lower Michigan, but I think that’s pretty lousy terrain for storm chasing.

Current storms look to be just north of the warm front. Large hodographs, but better low level thermodynamics are close to the IA/MN border.