Lilapsophile

I am still a little new to this myself, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong on anything. A quick and easy way to check for potential severe weather events is 0-3 km EHI. It is a combination of CAPE and favorable wind shear, which gives you a rough idea for when and where supercells might be possible. Many times you can have high CAPE but no storms, especially in the summer months. Even if high EHI shows up, you will still need good sources of lift, etc. to get storms. When I have time to analyze the models closer, this is the order I usually check them: Winds at 500 mb (longwave and shortwave troughs), 300 mb (anvil-level flow), and 850 mb (low-level jet). The main idea for these wind charts is that you want the direction and speed to change smoothly as you go up in the atmosphere. For example: southerly 850 mb winds, southwesterly 500 mb winds, and westerly 300 mb winds, with each height having stronger winds. Surface dew points and temperatures (moisture quality and dryline / frontal boundary locations) and accumulated QPF (morning convection and storm initiation). 0-6 km bulk shear: Values over 35 knots are favorable for rotating updrafts. Also, if the shear vectors are perpendicular to the dryline, storms will usually be more discrete. If the shear vectors are more parallel to the dryline, storms will usually be more linear. 0-3 km SRH: Values over 150 are favorable for supercells and tornadoes. SBCAPE: Instability; anything over 2000 is plenty favorable for severe storms and supercells. Hodographs: Check some hodographs for different places in the threat area. Look for things that might limit tornado potential like VBV (Veer-Back-Veer) profiles. Also look for capping in the sounding. Lastly, I check EHI and SigTor parameters. Once you start getting good at reading the various charts, you will already have a good idea at what these will look like. You can use today's 12z GFS forecasts for Monday afternoon as an example of things to look for since it shows a pretty favorable setup for severe weather and tornadoes across the southern and central plains.