James Gustina
Supporter
I'm way out of practice on writing these so bear with me here. Even though it's just come inside the 144 hour mark as of this morning, this upcoming Friday looks like it might have some oomph behind it in terms of timing and location.
This morning's 12Z run of the GFS still shows somewhat favorable wind profiles ahead of the dryline across the Llano Estacado and down into the Rolling Plains in NW TX/SW OK. A neutral/slightly positively tilted trough is progged to eject out of the Four Corners region around 18Z by both the GFS and Euro, with a 90 knot jet max entering the High Plains. Lee cyclogenesis
While the trough position and timing seem fairly decent for the time of year, it looks like a cold front is set to sweep through the Plains Wednesday night/Thursday morning, which appears to be affecting the quality of the moisture fetch. The GFS has backed off of the low-60s it was spitting out in the previous few days and is painting mid-high 50s ahead of the dryline. That's not a death sentence for a High Plains setup, but considering how absolutely bone dry it is on top of it all, it's something to be mildly concerned about.
The overall shear profile may be another potential issue, with a noticeable weakness around 700 mb. However, the low-level shear has so far looked fantastic on every run and strong anvil level winds over 60 knots/lower dews should hopefully preclude a messy storm mode. The lower moisture content and the possibility of ongoing precipitation through Thursday night and into Friday morning onto the Llano seems to have been the reason for CAPE values plummeting over previous runs to ~1000 j/kg on a narrow corridor at the dryline. But, the volatility of the GFS' solutions and it still being 5 days out makes me think that nothing too meaningful can be gleaned from that until we get into the NAM's range.
Overall, there are a lot of details missing that won't be fully resolved until Wednesday at the earliest. I'll be interested to see what the associated precipitation event does to the target region.
This morning's 12Z run of the GFS still shows somewhat favorable wind profiles ahead of the dryline across the Llano Estacado and down into the Rolling Plains in NW TX/SW OK. A neutral/slightly positively tilted trough is progged to eject out of the Four Corners region around 18Z by both the GFS and Euro, with a 90 knot jet max entering the High Plains. Lee cyclogenesis
While the trough position and timing seem fairly decent for the time of year, it looks like a cold front is set to sweep through the Plains Wednesday night/Thursday morning, which appears to be affecting the quality of the moisture fetch. The GFS has backed off of the low-60s it was spitting out in the previous few days and is painting mid-high 50s ahead of the dryline. That's not a death sentence for a High Plains setup, but considering how absolutely bone dry it is on top of it all, it's something to be mildly concerned about.
The overall shear profile may be another potential issue, with a noticeable weakness around 700 mb. However, the low-level shear has so far looked fantastic on every run and strong anvil level winds over 60 knots/lower dews should hopefully preclude a messy storm mode. The lower moisture content and the possibility of ongoing precipitation through Thursday night and into Friday morning onto the Llano seems to have been the reason for CAPE values plummeting over previous runs to ~1000 j/kg on a narrow corridor at the dryline. But, the volatility of the GFS' solutions and it still being 5 days out makes me think that nothing too meaningful can be gleaned from that until we get into the NAM's range.
Overall, there are a lot of details missing that won't be fully resolved until Wednesday at the earliest. I'll be interested to see what the associated precipitation event does to the target region.