guest
Now that I am done with my prelim exam (occurred during and right before the Harper County tornadoes), I am ready to prevent severe weather occurring by driving into the plains. As such, the first day I am considering messing up is this Sunday. I'll be the first to jump in this forum. Currently, the zonal pattern is setting up, which looks to contain a robust disturbance in the runs for Sunday. In response, a somewhat disorganized sfc low sets up somewhere in the tri-state region, allowing moisture return of decent magnitude to advect northward. (It will be interesting to see if this prediction is accurate). Along with the upper level features, a warm front should set up W-E across NE, or somewhere around there. The exact location of these surface features is highly dependent on small-scale features which are hard to resolve in the operational models, making Sunday somewhat unpredictable compared to other events. Concerns might be the weaker midlevel flow and the models' tendency to produce a lot of precip early in the period over the region of interest. Nonetheless, very healthy helicity, given strong 850 mb flow, should exist along the front and to some degree, points to the south. The dry line is somewhat diffuse as the low is still developing by 00Z, but still uncertain even this late in the game. Instability is fair enough, and approaches 2000 J/kg of mixed layer CAPE. Deep layer shear is sufficient for supercells. Will there be too much forcing? Will there be MCS domination? Or will there be a few good supercells? Ones along the front certainly would contain a tornado potential. At this point, I think this is a good forum just from a forecasting challenge.
Chris
Chris
In the meantime, rest rest and sleep! Back in Denver just in time to forecast the next trip!
