I'm on the fence right now, but leaning towards departing tomorrow or Tuesday for a Wednesday+ chase period. I have taken note that local NWS office discussions and the SPC are not overly excited about next week. The one driving force is the presence of both workable RH and bulk shear though the period -- over very limited regions. Still have several model runs to make a decision.The GEFS looks pretty but I’m holding out on being too optimistic until the deterministic GFS comes more in line with the ensembles. The deterministic actually had better parameters on Friday and Saturday and has trended lower since. The agreement in the ensembles is encouraging but I I don’t know how much I buy it at this point.
LCLs look brutal on the forecast soundings and without stronger shear to compensate for it we may be getting excited over nothing. Nevertheless it’s May and something’s gotta give, even if for only a day or two.I'm on the fence right now, but leaning towards departing tomorrow or Tuesday for a Wednesday+ chase period. I have taken note that local NWS office discussions and the SPC are not overly excited about next week. The one driving force is the presence of both workable RH and bulk shear though the period -- over very limited regions. Still have several model runs to make a decision.
The LCL's are often outrageous in late May out west, but something always gives, like a 2k ft long tornado...lol. Higher DP's than forecast and the higher terrain of E. NM and Colorado is always an equalizer.LCLs look brutal on the forecast soundings and without stronger shear to compensate for it we may be getting excited over nothing. Nevertheless it’s May and something’s gotta give, even if for only a day or two.
Hopefully the high LCLs mean more photogenic storms and tornadoes and don’t act as a tornado killer.The LCL's are often outrageous in late May out west, but something always gives, like a 2k ft long tornado...lol. Higher DP's than forecast and the higher terrain of E. NM and Colorado is always an equalizer.
Even if May 22-25 is good, it'll be four of about six days this year. Oklahoma had a couple gems in April. Everybody who grew up in the Plains remembers it's more active 20-30 years ago. Hell Kansas used to get wedged in March, Hesston. Now a birdfart in May?
All I have to show so far from 2020 is almost getting hit at Midnight by the Chattanooga tornado. It was 2 miles to my northwest, but I never even looked. Nighttime, rain-wrapped, Dixie; and, I didn't believe it until it happened. Guess that's my 2020 tornado. Sad!
At any rate it seems a very late May early June pattern is already shaping up after the Tennessee Valley cut-off low stops grinding through the East. Modest flow looks off and on vs a constant out of the Southwest. LLJ is shown each night, which is one positive. Moisture is also shown better than progged a couple days ago. We'll see.
I believe it was Lance Bosart who presented a colloquium seminar at OU when I was a PhD student there. He talked about teleconnection patterns and highlighted that the Kamchatka-Okhotsk Sea area is one of Earth's synoptic scale "erogenous zones" - areas that when perturbed even slighly, tend to cause a Rossby wave train to form that spans the Pacific and North America, usually causing a string of big troughs to traverse the continent. What you're showing almost looks like that. But...that is largely a cold season phenomenon. So I'm not necessarily expecting something quite that dramatic. I do see a Pacific jet extension in the longer-range GFS, but the predictability on that is nil.This was discussed a week or two ago with reference to the MJO teleconnection and the 8-1-2 pattern. It appears the
Indian Ocean convection has gone hog wild. I’m not sure how long it takes to translate across the globe, but better late than never. Two day loop
A family of cyclones is always a good thing. I’m looking forward to the one up in the Bering Sea island chain, which should be a major player if a trough can carve out and make it to our latitude before shearing out.
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Thursday and Saturday appear pretty favorable.GEFS continues to be pretty bullish for Friday and Saturday. The deterministic continues to look pretty mediocre with moisture problems, high LCLs, capping issues, instability displacement, and overall lack of shear. I can wait until tomorrow morning before I have to make the call on whether or not to take Friday off, but right now I'm not real confident. It'll be interesting to see what it looks like once it's in range of the NAM.
My general rule of thumb is I don’t get too excited until the models start painting supercell composites of more than 7 over a decent area. Not saying lower numbers can’t get it done but there are reasons the numbers aren’t higher for the end of the weekThursday and Saturday appear pretty favorable.