Mike,
A couple of things I didn't like about the 00z OUN sounding... Low-level instability was minimal, with very little positive buoyancy below 650-700 mb. This likely yielded weak vertical acceleration in the low-levels, which, incidentally, was where the majority of the vertical shear was located. Of course, we don't entirely know how representative the OUN sounding was compared to the environment in western Oklahoma, but it didn't seem as though (a) sfc temp and Td or (b) 850-700 mb temps were much different between western and central Oklahoma IIRC.
The second thing I didn't like about the 00z OUN sounding was the 1.5-3 km wind profile. Winds near 1 km were 50+ kts, but they weakened to 30-35 kts just above there. This, in turn, resulted in an odd hodograph.
The late morning convection seemed to initiate ahead of a vort max, but I don't think the early convection had much of a negative impact on the environment for supercells yesterday. As the morning shortwave trough moved eastward, we saw the initial convection weaken and dissipate. The late morning - early afternoon supercell near Clinton looked okay for a while, but it too looked a bit "cold" after we followed it northeast of CSM 10-15 miles, and radar obs hinted that it was devolving from supercell to multicell mode. There may have been some negative impact from the anvil blowoff from the convection S of CDS moving into western OK, but the T and Tds looked to be fine for any convection that tracked into western Oklahoma. Similar to Saturday, however, we tended to see convection develop in a NE-SW fashion, which likely resulted in destructive interactions and storm seeding problems (given SW flow aloft). There appeared to be persistent convergence near Wheeler, TX, yesterday, wherein a storm would developed near Wheeler and move off to the northeast to be followed be new storm developed back to its southwest. Again, with southwest flow aloft, anvil precipitation from the new convection to the southwest likely seeded the updraft and RFD regions of downstream convection. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure why we didn't see more discrete supercells, and it probably would have helped had to had initiation in a N-S fashion instead of NE-SW orientation. That said, even the discrete cell that moved near FDR yesterday afternoon didn't produce. We often think that 0-1km shear is the most important factor for tornadoes given a supercell mode and enough CAPE for maintain convection, but we had very strong 0-1km SRH Saturday and Sunday. Alas, from the SPC storm reports, there were more tornadoes in IA yesterday than in OK (2). Frankly, it's a waste of fantastic near-surface SRH in the warm sector.
By 00 - 01 UTC, it was evident that a tornadic outbreak was not going to happen. Surface obs revealed low theta-e air moving northward from the expanding shield of weak convection in southwestern Oklahoma, and cold outflow had undercut the storms in northwestern Oklahoma. Despite very favorable 0-1km SRH, low-level instability was likely quite minimal in any areas affected by outflow / cold pool activity. Given the history of the storms yesterday, the surface obs across the risk area, and radar imagery that showed widespread, weak showers and thunderstorms, I found it very suspect that the 01 UTC SWODY1 maintained the High Risk. Certainly 30% hatched implies a good deal of coverage of tornadic supercells... This seemed likely earlier in the day, but I just can't imagine many thought such a tornado event was going to occur by the time the sun set. Again, I never really comment on SPC forecasts, but I found the 01 UTC SWODY1 one to be very suspect. There were a couple of small areas which were unaffected by prior convection and/or outflow -- one in the far southeastern part of the TX PH (upper-70 temps with low-60 Tds) and one in southcentral OK and northcentral TX ahead of the convection that occurred just W of there. However, Tds dropped into the 58-60F range near I35 by evening, so I wasn't too impressed with the short-line segments near and east of I44 after dark either.
EDIT: A tornado outbreak in Oklahoma? It's much less likely than you think. We've seen a small handful of cyclic tornadic supercells in Oklahoma since Oct 2001 (5-9-03, 5-8-03 in far N OK, 5-24-08, 6-13-07, and perhaps a couple more), but it certainly seems like the prolific tornado events have disproportionately occurred in KS and NE. Granted, KS and NE are larger than OK, but I've had much more success north of OK than in OK and TX since I came down to OK in 2001.
