Tough day for most of those who were out chasing today. The low-level shear was pretty poor most of the day, and the deep-layer shear wasn't all too impressive either (35-40kt range for the most part). Instability was strong, but I think the lack of stronger low-level shear resulted in disorganized storms with weak (if any) updraft rotation. Since rotation in a storm can contribute more to updraft strength (via vertical perturbation pressure gradients) than CAPE alone, the updrafts were never ever really able to take off (many folks reported rather disorganized, mushy updrafts at times). With the surface winds in OK/KS howling out of the SSW to SSE, speed shear wasn't terribly strong and thus a rather short hodograph (particularly 0-3km) resulted. I would have liked to have seen weaker surface winds to stretch out to the hodograph more and increase SR helicity, but that didn't really happen. Moisture depth didn't seem to be a problem, as the OUN/LMN/SGF/TOP soundings showed decent moisture depth.
I guess convergence was too strong for the relatively weak cap (or the cap was too weak for the convergence). If we had stronger low-level shear, we probably would have ended up with stronger rotation and resultant stronger updrafts. This could have allowed for storm-scale subsidence to occur on a consist basis and allow for more discrete activity.
I still think my favorite storm of the day (based on radar / velocity presentation) was the Lawton to Paul's Valley (OK) HP beast.