6/21/06 NOW: CO / KS / OK / TX / NE

[Mike Hollingshead]

MD now out for this region

Currently sweating my butt off in Beatrice NE. I can see a very healthy tower going up just nw of me. This portion of the boundary has stalled and is actually drifting back north. The flag here was ne and is now se to s in this location. Instability is getting up there and the cap is seemingly going bye bye. Hopefully something can pop on this boundary and drop south in the wsw 30 knot 500mb flow. Not expecting a lot but am very happy just seeing a deep fat updraft again.

 

[Tony Laubach]

SPC upped tornado probs to 5% in Central/Southern Colorado and Western/Southwestern Kansas; and while I don't really agree/disagree, I guess I would be curious what they're seeing which prompted the upgrade.

SFC obs are showing moisture values dropping into the 40s over the Eastern Plains of Colorado with upwards of 60 in Western Kansas. The front has moved through and northerly winds continue over the region. Storms are currently firing off the higher terrain, but are having issues maintaining as they move east (with the exception of the severe-warned cell northeast of Trinidad). Tonight's show will be later is appears as there is still a small cap in place with temps still not hot enough. Boundries in the region will prove to be the vital difference today for severe weather, I'm afraid, cause as a region, things are slow to get in place.

We shall see; imagine the severest potential will occur after 6pm out east once things have had a better chance to collect themselves...

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Initial tower just lost its head and it is interesting how far east the head is already. Flow up there must not be too terrible. There is already another fat plume taking the place of the first one. Winds were pretty calm here but are now picking up from the se.

Edit: A tower to the east appears to be flipping me the bird at the moment. That can't be good.

Eidt: Same tower has a large area of convection near it now and is giving the best shot at anviling so far. And now it is barely on radar. May drift east soon.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Dan, Robin, and I are sitting Ashland attjm, watching multicell clusters develop and move NNW to our west and southwest. Better moisture resides east of here, but winds are beginning to back. LCLs are very high owing to 30-40F dewpoint depressions... Oy, 2006.

 

[Sam Dienst]

Storm in Beaver Co. Oklahoma is currently tornado warned. Amarillo NWS says spotters are tracking a tornado near Turpin at 6:29pm.

I saw Jeff and gang were in Ashland KS a while back. Maybe they are on this storm.

 

[bbarjenbruch]

This storm NE of Concordia KS is bothering me. There are a couple of nice couplets, and have been some splits going on. The mesos look nice on radar and the cells are all healthy for sure, but they are all in such close contact with eachother. Even if I was to see something, I imagine the backlighting would be terrible... basically I'm just trying to talk myself into or out of driving down there from Lincoln (about an hour fifteen from my house). Pretty worried it's just going to turn into linear junk soon. Any thoughts?

 

[Tom Dulong]

Storm in Beaver Co. Oklahoma is currently tornado warned. Amarillo NWS says spotters are tracking a tornado near Turpin at 6:29pm.

I saw Jeff and gang were in Ashland KS a while back. Maybe they are on this storm.
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Storm in Beaver Cty, OK is backbuilding toward the southwest.

 

[bbarjenbruch]

Beautiful low level couplet on the CNK storm. Also taking more of a right turn now. Call me crazy, and I may be, but I would probably tor warn this storm soon. We'll see if it happens.

Also of note: Storms are looking to seperate a bit more from the mess they were earlier. Too bad I already decided not to go. Hard to get at it from the North.

No more than a minute later, cell is tor warned just east of CNK, and said to be moving at about 10 mph. Wow, I'm really kicking myself. I hope someone is on it.

 

[joel ewing]

I pulled surface obs a few hours ago for the northern tex. panhandle, and I must have been seeing things incorrectly when I thought I saw dews at around 30f. Can anybody verify this please?

 

[Jeff Snyder]

We're both in Woodward... We putzed around with the mess of convection near Meade... We ended up fooling around in eastern Beaver county, oblivious to the spotter-reported tornado to our west... We had 0 cell phone coverage (both voice and data), and the only weather radio stations I pulled in were from the DDC office.

And yes, Joel, I do think Tds in the western half of the panhandle were that low.

00z DDC sounding showed deep-layer shear stronger than forecast (and analyzed by RUC), with 45kts 0-6km shear. I think the major downer was, for the 100000th time this year, very high LCLs owing to marginal dewpoints. Dewpoints were much higher (>65F into the 70-71F range) 50-100 miles east of this convection, but the 2100m LCL height on the DDC sounding makes it no surprise that the storms were largely outflow dominant with decent cold pools. We did see one base and possible wallcloud to our northwest when we were in eastern Beaver county (probably in far southwestern Meade county -- just a guess), with a lot of CG activity. Overall, it was crap again.

 

[HAltschule]

Double Tornadic supercell merger taking place just north of Burlington, CO. A great area to view storms. This monster (and the even bigger monster it will become once the merger takes place) must have some incredible lightning, winds and huge hail with it. Enhanced tornadic potential about to occur....

 

[Brian Stertz]

That cell merger was incredible over N. Kit Carson County (Colorado)...it looked like some kind of square dance going on there...left mover northbound swings into a southbound right mover...left mover then spins around to the north side of the right mover and is absorbed. Pretty crazy High Plains supercell stuff. Looks like it finally triggered a t-warning to the northwest of Burlington.

 

[HAltschule]

The SUP near Burlington continues to have massive rotation as a whole. Really neat to see it and the hook it has. Also interesting is the SUP near Wray, CO that is moving northward. It has strong rotation on the northern side of the supercell and could be producing a tornado there as well.

What a great evening to be in the foothills!!! Whose there?

 

[Stan Rose]

That cell merger was incredible over N. Kit Carson County (Colorado)...it looked like some kind of square dance going on there...left mover northbound swings into a southbound right mover...left mover then spins around to the north side of the right mover and is absorbed. Pretty crazy High Plains supercell stuff. Looks like it finally triggered a t-warning to the northwest of Burlington.
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Yep, just as i predicted, i work while just out of my area the cells go beserk
What was really incredible was watching the mirror splits of those three cells on the old boundary, ending up with some really striking tvs signatures on each right-mover. I hope someone was out there getting some pics of those beasts!

 

[Mark Farnik]

I watched the Kit Carson Co. supercells with dismay from my farm. Even though they were about 90 miles to my southeast, I could see the impressive structures quite well and they were rather pretty near sunset. Oh if I could have chased them... So I thought the show was over for our area. Then about 11:00 p.m. a very strong outflow boundary roared through, coming off of a decaying cell near Limon. Behind the the initial passage of the boundary winds persisted from the southeast and continue to do so. Dew points have spiked at least a couple of degrees in the last forty five minutes, and a storm suddenly erupted about fifteen miles to my west about twenty minutes ago on the outflow boundary. It has now attained supercellular structure both on radar and visually (the storm is lit up like a Christmas tree). The core is approaching 60 dbz and it is slowly moving east towards my location. I'm suprised they don't have a SVR warning out on it yet, given its radar presentation. Other strong cells have developed northwest of Kimball and east of Cheyenne. Might be some nasty late night suprises in the form of large hail and downbursts from these cells.