3 Year Anniversary of 3-28-07 outbreak!

[Lanny Dean]

Was going to post this thread yesterday but with the weather I did not have a chance.

March 28 is the 3 year anniversary of the deadly tornado outbreak that ravished parts of Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas.

There has been much talk on here as of late when refering to that day in comparing model output. As we all know there was a bit of questions as to the true 500mb flow and position, not to mention moisture return and depth.
I was working for KAKE-TV at the time as their in-house severe weather reporter and photographer. I remember forecasting this event 7-10 days out and obviously had the same concerns (posted above) as everyone else had. I think the thing that really interested me was the fact that while the flow was parallel to the boundry, we had an amazing very long and sharp dryline. If I remember correctly, the (true surface) dryline was resting from north of Binkleman Nebraska, south through western Kansas to the southern end of the Caprock. around 22/23z. With the "expected" 500mb flow and such a dryline I just could not see a "training event" as discussed by the boys in Norman on the 1630z outlook.

I left ICT with a target area of Leoti Kansas and intercepted the first supercell of the day not far from there. Ended up getting the tornadoes near Tribune and Sharon Springs and then moved north to just east of Goodland where I filmed the Edison "blue" tornado and then the Bird City wedge for a total of 6 tornadoes.

Just goes to show that anything can happen with ma' nature, and while our forecasts only get better and better, nothing is exact, especially model output.

 

[Skip Talbot]

I like to point to this day whenever people cite only the time of year as a negative for a setup. It doesn't seam too far fetched to get tornadoes in Texas in late March being much closer to the Gulf, but there were also wedges up in Nebraska, northwest Kansas, and Colorado that same day.

The trough from this day reminds me a little of the one that the models have been showing coming up this Friday:

March 28, 2007 500mb winds at 7pm:

March 28, 2007 850 mb winds at 7pm:

ECMWF 500mb winds forecast for this Friday evening at 7pm:

ECMWF 850 mb forecast for Friday evening at 7pm:

Similar looking orientations and intensities comparing northwest KS from March 28, 2007 to the forecast over central OK for Friday. The difference in area could be significant as the elevations are much higher where the March 28 outbreak occurred, however. A lot more variables are involved with this upcoming setup that are probably vastly different than March 28, but just looking at the speed and directional shear, this is a comparable setup to one that was a prolific tornado producer.

These shots Jerry Funfsinn and I got from the March 28 outbreak: