chrisbray
EF4
Or at least bring on a change in the ridge west, trough east pattern. I need warmth!
Beginning Descent into Chase Season 2014
- Thread starter James Gustina
- Start date
Zack Hargrove
EF2
Would have been nice to see yesterday's system on the 18z GFS at 280-ish hours stay in play for another run or two, but alas, it was just another quick one run wonder.
EDIT: 12z GFS today with a glimmer of hope around 240-ish... trough flattens out pretty quickly after what would be a marginal day in KS/OK
EDIT: 12z GFS today with a glimmer of hope around 240-ish... trough flattens out pretty quickly after what would be a marginal day in KS/OK
Last edited by a moderator:
James Gustina
Supporter
Man, I skimmed right over that. Good catch. Definitely something to watch considering it's the first thing that has crossed out of fantasy-land.
Last edited by a moderator:
chrisbray
EF4
GFS today still showing something to keep an eye on. 12z run has a series of low pressure systems starting tuesday moving across the plains, with a decent looking system on saturday/sunday at the same time as southwest flow develops...the system then mvoes across the plains and the midwest by the end of the weekend.
One can hope!
Jon Strebler
EF1
18z GFS still showing some signs of life for the March 21-22 time frame. It's still a ways out there, but at least something to keep an eye on.
chrisbray
EF4
Heck, it's a moral victory to have consecutive runs showing the same thing at this point!
Zack Hargrove
EF2
Well, that's a shame... the 12z GFS and Euro basically just shoved their middle fingers up at us. The trough sure looks weird on the 12z GFS... very messy with the split flow. Much less moisture, further east in terrible terrain. The troughing trend that the Euro was showing around the same time frame is now completely gone. Hopefully this is a one run anomaly based on all of the previous trends/consistency. It will be interesting to see how the GFS resolves this trough once it gets to the pre-truncation time. The much higher resolution could either help the setup or completely kill it. So goes the roller coaster ride of the long range models when waiting for a seasonal pattern change.
This was in HPC's 12z model discussion:
"NAM/GFS INITIALIZATION ERRORS DO NOT SEEM TO DEGRADE THEIR SHORT RANGE FORECASTS."
I can't say for certain but that sounds like to me that there were initialization errors with the 12z American model runs, they just didn't seem to effect the short range solutions. These errors could be leading to the funky solution in the long range, however. This doesn't really explain the Euro's drastic change, though.
This was in HPC's 12z model discussion:
"NAM/GFS INITIALIZATION ERRORS DO NOT SEEM TO DEGRADE THEIR SHORT RANGE FORECASTS."
I can't say for certain but that sounds like to me that there were initialization errors with the 12z American model runs, they just didn't seem to effect the short range solutions. These errors could be leading to the funky solution in the long range, however. This doesn't really explain the Euro's drastic change, though.
Last edited by a moderator:
Marcus Diaz
EF5
Good, save it for May. Yeah let's gets some rain from now till May but keep the chasing chances down till May. That's what I'm hoping for.
Sean Ramsey
EF4
Hmmm gonna have to disagree with this. Need as many chances as possible between now and June, because waiting 9+ months (except maybe for a random October chase) for doing something we really enjoy is somewhat of a torture lol. And then when you think of the bigger picture, if you get lucky enough to get 10 good chases a year, that's 200 chases in 20 years making some of us (me) old and gray and wishing we could have chased more. We are chasers, we need to chase whenever possible
Marcus Diaz
EF5
I'm just saying that because I'm here making 110-130 hr paychecks. Any chasing and that might hurt me and put me behind until inevitably they hire another guy to work with me and take my load off. Plus as I've said, this year I want to chase more summertime days up north. It takes a lot for these early season setups to produce anything worth chasing.
Sean Ramsey
EF4
Totally understand. My situation is a bit different now adays since my kids are older, and I finally have my job set up to where I can chase wherever/whenever...so the more chases the better even if they are crappy setups. When the cold lingers into March like it has a tendency to do drives me crazy.
Marcus Diaz
EF5
Well obviously each year is different. I've had seasons where there's no setups at all until late April, then it explodes and I bag dozens of tornadoes. Then there's seasons where there's decent setups in early and mid March, but don't bag my first tornadoes until May. Then by chasing all those half ass setups early on, I miss out on days to chase up north. I guess my point is, unless its a nearly guarantee that there will be tornadoes, I'm not bothering until its May. Because by May you can have those days where one ingredient is lacking but the others are good enough to still make it happen. This early season (February-early April) crap has to be perfect to make it produce.
Damn Sean, our avatars are very identical. That's not a bad thing, though.
Damn Sean, our avatars are very identical. That's not a bad thing, though.
Brett Roberts
EF5
I agree that it's much tougher to see tornadoes in March and the first half of April, compared with the middle to latter part of the season. I also agree that the average quality of a given chase day is higher in the late season, by a good margin. With that said, I still like to get some structure and lightning opportunities in March and April, especially if they're nearby. I think for many of us who live in the Alley, chase season is an experience in itself, and shortening it into a small window takes some of the fun out. I know I felt that way last year; despite May 15-31 packing enough of a punch to constitute a decent season by itself, it wasn't quite enough to erase the depression of nothing happening for the first 2.5 months of meteorological spring.
The high-end setups can wait for several more weeks (at least), but some convective appetizers would go a long way in relieving SDS. Not to mention, they would at least be associated with much-needed rainfall, to the benefit of the prime season. There's honestly no upside to the current pattern, from my perspective.
Zack Hargrove
EF2
Agreed Brett... everything about next weekend and beyond has officially gone to the scrap heap. So much for a pattern change.
Sent from my LG-LS980 using Tapatalk
Sent from my LG-LS980 using Tapatalk
Andy Wehrle
EF5
I don't know, I'm still somewhat encouraged by the long-range GFS. While maybe no spectacular chase potential, I'm at least seeing a lasting trend away from the solid "winter" pattern we had from the start of January to the first week of March. Thinking back to what are widely remembered as some of the best chase seasons since I started paying attention (2004, 2008, 2010) all had a fairly quiet March into early April. 2011 was mildly active in March and then an April from hell, followed by another very active period in the latter half of May. 2006 and 2012 both featured significant March outbreaks and then went on to have what are generally considered lackluster chase seasons. The only recent year with a significant March outbreak that sustained some chaseable activity into late April and May that I recall is 2007.
That said, I am 100% with Brett's sentiment. Last year was just TOO quiet until mid-May, and featured little activity in my vicinity (Midwest) until the November outbreak. What really gets me stir-crazy is when most of the CONUS seems to get locked into the same general weather pattern for weeks or months on end, which seems to have happened a lot the last couple of years. The vast majority of the year 2012 was abnormally warm and dry, the first 2 1/2 months of spring 2013 were cold and stable, and most of the winter of 2013-14 was VERY cold. Ugh to all three!
That said, I am 100% with Brett's sentiment. Last year was just TOO quiet until mid-May, and featured little activity in my vicinity (Midwest) until the November outbreak. What really gets me stir-crazy is when most of the CONUS seems to get locked into the same general weather pattern for weeks or months on end, which seems to have happened a lot the last couple of years. The vast majority of the year 2012 was abnormally warm and dry, the first 2 1/2 months of spring 2013 were cold and stable, and most of the winter of 2013-14 was VERY cold. Ugh to all three!
Last edited by a moderator:
