State of the Chase Season: 2016 Edition

[Kevin Walters]

The party's never over in here, always leave a light on

So you're saying there's a chance???
Seriously, it looks bleak, that kind of ridging in early June is usually a bad sign. Half of June will be gone before there's even a sliver of hope...not good.

 

[Andy Berrington]

And naturally, central US ridging looks to crash the party.

 

[Zack Hargrove]

The 12z GFS still has me mildly interested in Montana/North Dakota... but while there is decent shear/instability on the GFS, there definitely is not on the ECMWF.

 

[Quincy Vagell]

I wouldn't be surprised if mid-June holds some promise across the northern High Plains. Not the most classic chase territory (Montana/western Dakotas), but even with ridging over the central U.S., trough ejections from the west should at least give the region a glancing blow. As some have mentioned, the threat zone will likely be displaced into the Canadian prairies at times as well.

There are always the northwest flow events that sneak into the Upper Midwest/Great Lakes region, although the chase territory may not be the best. Saturday has shown a signal for a while now in the Michigan/Ohio vicinity...

In the shorter term, despite some model progs (namely GFS), neutral or slightly rising heights will likely mitigate any substantial threats for the latter portion of this week.

1998 has been showing up in the analogs (not as much recently, but still sporadically dotting the GEFS/CPC analogs) and that was a fairly robust June. I would be willing to bet that the second half of the month is more active than the first.

Since I had a fair amount of time off from chasing in May and I'm taking the first third of June off, I will be out for a couple of weeks around mid-June regardless. At least the coming weeks look better than the past week, which has essentially been a complete dud.

 

[Jeremy Bower]

My chasecation is June 12th to the 17th and any prospects are severely in question. 12Z GFS does show some days in that time period with moderate instability and shear along the E Montana/W North Dakota border and then into the Canadian prairies. I wasn't able to chase during that fantastic week that every chaser and their brother seemingly scored on so I'll see what I see. I had some mild success even with a ridge in place two years ago in North Dakota on the 4th of July weekend so I'll give it a go.

 

[Jeff House]

Outside shot at some Front Range to even Central Plains local setups Sunday through Tuesday next week. Unfortunately it is associated with a small system meandering out of the Desert Southwest, not in the main flow. Good news is I do not see much teardrop slop at this time. Do not expect anything in the 4-8 Day Outlooks; probably Marginal to Slight inside Day 3. In other words it could be a target pickers market, if it even comes together.

Meanwhile Montana, North Dakota, and the Canadian Prairies see several days with southwest flow aloft. 3-4 of the next 10 days it looks like the LLJ responds in parts of those areas. As long as troughs come into the Pacific Northwest and at least nibble at the Northern Plains, chase season rolls on. It just gets subtle in June, but chasable targets come up.

 

[Manuel Salgado]

Too lazy to start up a thread for today, but we did end up NW of Rapid City last night on this "chasecation" without a single chase yet so we're gonna try to chase in the roadless and dataless areas of central Montana today. With fast moving storms, will not be ideal by any means but happy to have this one chaseable day on this trip so far.

 

[Jeff Duda]

Seeing some run-to-run consistency in the GFS, as well as model-to-model consistency between cores and within the ensembles of a shortwave breaking away from the main jet/trough in the western US mid-next-week. Just over half of the 06Z GEFS members had the trough, and it also appears in the ECMWF ensemble mean. The signal is also present in the Canadian ensemble. 12Z deterministic GFS suggests a dryline pushign as far east as C/E OK and E KS Tuesday evening. Pretty high moisture content (seasonable) and not unbreakable h7 temps. But of course, this is GFS physics we're talking about, so there is some really thin moisture depth and a touch of veer-back in some forecast soundings. Wouldn't be 2016 otherwise.

 

[Ethan Schisler]

Next Tuesday afternoon/evening has my attention across portions of Nebraska and perhaps into (lie)owa. Perhaps this is the change I've been looking for eh? We will see. Still quite a few days out. I'm somewhat skeptical given the setup though. The low seems to be of the cut-off variety, which I'm not really a fan of. Doesn't look quite cut-off yet on Tuesday, but its working towards it. Beggers can't be choosers though. I'll hope and pray it improves

 

[TJ Schulte]

Here in the Great Lakes this year definitely gets an F. I know this is an IMBY post but I personally have not been under a single severe yet this year. That's almost unbelievable living in west Ohio

 

[JamesCaruso]

As I posted previously, I returned home on 5/28, after "week one" of my chase vacation, because it looked like there would be no significant activity during the next 7-10 days. I was hoping to return for a second week at a later date but the opportunity has just not presented itself. My son is 13 and his last day of school was this past Fri, 6/10. I was hoping for a chance to bring him out to the Plains, which surprisingly my wife approved of! ;-) Normally I wouldn't have the chance to do that, going during peak season when he is still in school, but having deferred my "week two" I had a rare opportunity to take him this year. But no dice with this pattern. Monday 6/13 looks pretty good in CO and DEN is a convenient spot to fly into from Philadelphia with no connections, but just not worth it for a one-day event...


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[Brett Nickeson]

Is it too early to call this the worst June ever? Remarkably bad. Looks like I might not even get a single chase in this month which would be a first.

 

[JeremyS]

Is it too early to call this the worst June ever? Remarkably bad. Looks like I might not even get a single chase in this month which would be a first.

It's gotta be close if nothing changes over the last 2 weeks, and right now it doesn't look promising. I've chased 3x, but that was more out of desperation than anything. Went all the way to Montana on the 11th and then chased in Minnesota on the 12th. Chased again in western Minnesota on the 14th where I did manage to see a couple of very brief tornadoes. It was depressing to see posts about yesterday being the anniversary of Pilger a couple of years ago and how great that week was for tornadoes.

 

[Brett Roberts]

Is it too early to call this the worst June ever? Remarkably bad. Looks like I might not even get a single chase in this month which would be a first.

Only trouble is that several recent years are stiff competition, especially 2012 and 2013. Even 2015 comes close, if you take out CO activity. For "real" setups in the heart of the Plains, June has been downright depressing lately. The last big, obvious synoptic day was probably 20 June 2011. The Pilger-Coleridge-Alpena sequence in 2014 was incredible, but not particularly predictable for anyone who needed to make tough decisions in advance about whether to chase it.

It's especially disheartening that June 2015 and 2016 were no-shows, since soil moisture and evapotranspiration were primed to help any reasonably good shortwaves produce tornadoes.

 

[James Gustina]

It's starting to look like this will be the second season where I don't get one chase in June (2013 being the only other, I think?). It's looking like the Central High Plains are going to get completely bypassed due to this hell ridge currently squatting over Colorado and Kansas. If we even see an impulse below 45N this month I'd be somewhat surprised. I can't complain too much given some of the great tornadoes this season has spat out, but unless the Northern Plains really come alive in July, which is a possibility, we may be riding on the hope of autumn producing a last hurrah,