JamesCaruso
Staff member
Am I crazy to say that the setup in central TX today reminds me of El Reno day? Mid-70s dew points, low LCLs, high CAPE and shear, very focused initiation near the triple-point with the lack of large-scale ascent promising an isolated storm without competition/interference.… Yeah the surface winds aren’t great, but neither were they on El Reno day (maybe a little lighter today). I could easily see there being some mesoscale enhancement of surface winds that is not being well-resolved on the models, and/or storm-relative inflow enhancement from ESE/SE storm motion. Regardless, we could definitely use a stronger LLJ than is forecast.
I‘m not suggesting we’re going to have a 2-mile-wide EF3, I’m just saying that it feels like that “type” of high-instability day with a focused mesoscale setup and one big intense supercell…
At this point I would target the Colorado City / Sweetwater area just west of Abilene, just north of the dryline bulge, adjusting as needed based on dryline position, in particular the evolution of the dryline bulge. Since it’s early, I’d probably for now preliminarily define a broader area from Colorado City to just west of Abilene down to Carlsbad which is just NW of San Angelo. Not the greatest chase country in terms of terrain and roads, particularly as storms move east/southeast.
Incidentally, the GFS showed this at least as early as last Wednesday, when I posted in the 2023 Chase Season thread that GFS was showing a dry punch near ABI for today.
I‘m not suggesting we’re going to have a 2-mile-wide EF3, I’m just saying that it feels like that “type” of high-instability day with a focused mesoscale setup and one big intense supercell…
At this point I would target the Colorado City / Sweetwater area just west of Abilene, just north of the dryline bulge, adjusting as needed based on dryline position, in particular the evolution of the dryline bulge. Since it’s early, I’d probably for now preliminarily define a broader area from Colorado City to just west of Abilene down to Carlsbad which is just NW of San Angelo. Not the greatest chase country in terms of terrain and roads, particularly as storms move east/southeast.
Incidentally, the GFS showed this at least as early as last Wednesday, when I posted in the 2023 Chase Season thread that GFS was showing a dry punch near ABI for today.