05.12.10

Chase #6

Posted in Severe Weather Forecast at 11:36 am by Rebekah

I’m in a hurry to get ready, so this will have to be short.

Thermodynamics are fairly similar to the last couple of days, with CAPE values in Oklahoma over 3000 J/kg, ahead of the dryline along the Texas Panhandle/Oklahoma border.  Dewpoints are already in the upper 60s in Oklahoma.

Surface low in the Texas Panhandle today with a warm front extending northeastward through central into northeastern Kansas.  A cold front extends south of the low back into southern New Mexico, but that will eventually start to catch up with the dryline tonight.

Shortwave trough over the Four Corners region will assist in providing some lift for storms today, although CINH may prove too high in some areas (e.g., GFS shows high CINH over much of Oklahoma, with the exception of a narrow band in west central Oklahoma ahead of the dryline…while the RUC shows not much CINH everywhere but southeast Oklahoma).

Wind shear may be a bit of a problem, with the highest values of helicity in northeastern Oklahoma into southeastern Kansas, but surface winds are not as backed to the southeast as I would like.  If the low-level jet kicks in this evening, we may have more rotating storms.

Suffice it to say that this setup leaves much to be desired in the way of supercells, and it looks as if a broken line may form (I hope to catch the southern end of it, at any rate), but there looks to be a ridge setting in next week and who knows when the next best chase day (especially in the Oklahoma area) will be, so I’m going for it.

Initial target (leaving in the next hour): Enid, Oklahoma.

Permalink