Is the Southern Plains season over?

[ChristianT]

Looking at all the models, It looks as if a summer pattern is starting to develop in terms of the jet location. Does that necessarily mean that the southern plains are done for the spring or can there still be storms without the jet being farther south? I know we can get those High CAPE low shear days, but what will come through to provide the other ingredients? Anybody see any possibilities of at least some low end dryline days in Texas and Oklahoma any time soon?

 

[Jeff Duda]

As long as you have moisture and instability and not too strong of a cap, anything is technically possible. Climatologically, the probabilities for tornadoes across the southern Plains decreases pretty dramatically starting in early June, although the probabilities stay reasonable until late June or early July. It is pretty uncommon to see a synoptically-favorable setup for supercells and tornadoes in the southern Plains after the first week or so of June, but it does happen on occasion.

The dryline will still be there most days, and it will help this year with all the rain and soil moisture for the moist sector to remain particularly moist and the cap not to be too strong, but the upper air pattern can still keep things down with the ridging. If flow becomes more zonal or even troughy as the GFS has been forecasting starting later this week, there could be some more active weather to the south. However, the jet will be focused across the northern Plains, so there still probably won't be much shear south of the KS-OK border latitude. You'll need a TON of CAPE to make up for the lack of shear.

There will likely be storms and perhaps even supercells and a few tornadoes during many of the June days across the central and southern Plains. The problem is predictability will be almost zilch, meaning you probably aren't going to get much lead time from the models. A given event is just not going to be apparent until it happens or maybe a few hours beforehand. If you don't live in the region, that makes it very hard to decide which day to go after. For best odds, select a staging location somewhere, say Dodge City, Goodland, or North Platte, and just live in a hotel for a week or two, watching the atmosphere within a few hours drive each day.

 

[Bob Schafer]

Yes. Friday, but other than Friday I think you're toast.