06/15/22 EVENT WI/MI/IA

[Todd Lemery]

I’m not going to spend much time with the things I like about this setup, because there’s a lot. Between the 3000 plus in cape, the nice curved hodos and winds cranking up at just the right time, I’m in. The big problem with this setup is it’s mainly in WI. Instead of targeting where the storms will peak, I’ll be targeting where you can actually see something and then letting the storms go when they head into walls of trees. This means a stretch between Eau Claire and Wausau for a bit and then West of Green Bay in the later afternoon.
The storms will be moving a hair under 40 knots which is manageable. My advice for anyone chasing WI tomorrow is give up on anything a few miles North of HWY 29. You could have the prettiest tornado ever 100 yards from you and you’d never see it.

 

[Dave C]

This event looks likely to be almost immediately linear to me with storm motions NE @ up to 50 knots, combined with too much CAPE for too little cap, PW of 2, hodographs that veer too little from storm motion with height, a pseudo diffuse dryline almost parallel to storm motion, a front draped almost parallel, etc. All that together spells rapid line out to me. To be fair, I have never chased the region and could definitely be missing something...

I would personally sit this one out even if it was closer to home and better terrain, as I have had bad luck seeing much in similar setups.

CAMs are trending toward lots of early convection never ending and severe storms firing right into the mess and lining out and staying that way. If I was going to try it, I would stay in far northern Iowa. Unfortunately the best shear profiles will be later in the event in the trees. Potent, but completely unchasable setup for my style of chasing. Doesn't help that I'd need to sell my car to afford the gas to drive my car to Wisconsin and back.

 

[Jesse Risley]

The fly in the ointment here is how all of this early day convection is going to pan out in terms of the environment this afternoon. The HRRR has been consistent in developing several discrete cells ahead of the prefrontal forcing, largely across Northeast Iowa into Southeast Minnesota, before everything rapidly evolves into a line.

Forecast Skew-T/Log-P parameters indicate ample directional shear, CAPE and LCL profiles for tornadic supercells early in the event if the environment can recover. Negative or mitigating factors include meager speed shear and somewhat more parallel shear profiles aloft, along with laps rates in the mid levels that are closer to being more milquetoast. Some CAMs are hinting at almost an immediate evolution into a linear mode with little, if any, discrete development.

There is ample chasing terrain across Northeast Iowa, far southeast Minnesota and parts of Western Wisconsin as noted previously. The best play here is to monitor the evolution of this morning convection, keep an eye on any prefrontal forcing and monitor for the development of what could be some sort of a meso-low that some models were cluing in on that could enhance 0-1 km directional shear for the storms to take advantage of for a more ambient tornadic environment.

Anvil-level shear profiles and PWAT values would seem to indicate that, yes, HP storms will eventually be the rule, especially downstream further into Wisconsin. As always, how this evolves is dependent on several factors yet to be determined, including what happens with all of this morning convection behind the main area west of I-35 as of this writing. This is definitely a day to focus on the position of surface features, boundaries, clearing and so forth as the day goes on and use CAMs as a secondary guidance because there are already some substantial differences between some of the short-term CAMs.