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  • After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

Dynamics or Instability?

If it's a matter of choosing between one of two unbalanced setups, I'd rather have high instability. I think most of us have experienced the frustration of high shear, low instability rat races. High instability, low shear days have a tendency to surprise, however - and even if you have a hard time getting a storm to spin up on one of these days, severe weather is practically a given with a highly explosive updraft (assuming you have at least a little bit of shear).
 
Ignoring every other variable, I'd probably take strong kinematics/weak CAPE over weak kinematics/strong CAPE... especially if the former implies synoptic-scale lift.

I like my hodographs long and loopy. :lol:
 
Definitely the high CAPE days.

As was mentioned, I can count many high CAPE (5000+) days with only 15-20 knots of 0-6km shear......but favorable *storm relative* shear/winds (read some of Rich Thompson's case studies on this).

I too am solidly in this camp. And Rich Thompson sums the argument nicely with his now-famous observation "Big CAPE kicks Big @ss". :D
 
I believe over here in the SW we've had a few small tornadoes with moderate CAPE and low shear. So I'll have to go with the CAPE. I look at every thing though to try and make my decision.
 
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