It’s obvious everyone is starting to get restless for the 2020 season, so here’s a thread just for it!
State of the chase season 2020
- Thread starter Todd Lemery
- Start date
The weekend of January 10-12 was my missed opportunity for starting this chase season. I stayed in a cabin with my girlfriend and about 6 miles away, an tornado touched down. It was later determined as an EF-1. We slept right through it, LOL. In fact, when I woke up later that night, the storms had passed but I realized the power was out. Outside looked like some wind occurred haha but no major damage at least in our particular area.
I do try to avoid night time chasing, though. So many potential problems that could occur. Night time chasing and really fast storms.
I do try to avoid night time chasing, though. So many potential problems that could occur. Night time chasing and really fast storms.
A quick look at the GFS is currently showing early next week dews in the low 60’s in East Texas out ahead of a low. The shear profiles are looking favorable and if it comes together it might offer another early season taste of chasing. East Texas isn’t exactly great chasing terrain though.....
Hard to really make any calls this early right now, but I cant help but think our background state currently is about the best one could hope for. Lack of drought and high soil moisture content in the traditional plains chase states is always a good thing!
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CFS is suggesting something during the first week or so of March. Long way out, but it's fun to watch the ultra range models and test their accuracy.
Interesting tweet from Victor Gensini today saying this season could be interesting.
GFS is hinting at an extended period of a broad belt of vigorous 500mb SW flow east of the Rockies starting in about 5-7 days and continuing through the end of this morning's 12Z run. The kind of pattern that would be awesome in May (or at least have the potential to be awesome, last year was the ultimate example of "the devil's in the details" when it comes to severe local storms forecasting) but even so may yield some early season severe weather, most likely in the Dixie jungles.
Building on this, CIPS Extended Analog Threat Guidance is signalling troughing in western/central US for the next 1-2 weeks, keeping at least Dixie in the warm sector (surface temp anomaly maps below). There's even some severe weather occurring in some of the analogs in the 6-8 and 9-11 day period (percent of 1 severe report maps also below). While this may seem low, any signal for severe weather at this range this time of year is rare in the guidance, so it's worth keeping an eye on.
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March 1 is finally in sight on some of the long-range products. Unfortunately nothing of interest showing yet for the Plains/Midwest. The southern stream is shown hugging the coast through the end of the month. GFS puts a big wave through Dixie next weekend, but with no instability.
Several CIPS products are signalling a pattern favorable for storms across the Southeast in the current Day 6-8 time frame. Deterministic and ensemble model output shows a system traversing that area around that time as well. May warrant watching if you happen to live in the Southeast and/or enjoy fast storm motions in densely wooded areas.
Monday-Wednesday does look good for at least some lightning as far north as I-70 across the Plains and Midwest. Not much to speak of afterward.