State of the chase season 2020

[Randy Jennings]

Too soon to start a 2021 thread, but there is now a La Nina watch and there has been some studies that suggest an increase in southern plains tornadoes and hail storms in La Nina Springs.

July 2020 ENSO update: La Niña Watch!

The chance of La Niña developing by the fall and lasting through winter is 50-55%, and NOAA has issued a La Niña Watch.

www.climate.gov

El Niño and La Niña affect spring tornadoes and hailstorms

Scienitsts find connection between El Niño and fewer spring tornadoes in the south-central United States.

www.climate.gov

 

[Matt Zumbrunn]

 

[Dean Baron]

I think it's safe to say Canada has taken first place in photogenic tornadoes this year. Still a couple weeks left for some stuff to happen in the northern plains but that is far from a guarantee.

 

[Matt Zumbrunn]

 

[JamesCaruso]

^ Not sure why they say “chances not that good,” probability is 48% which is not that much worse than a coin flip. True it’s more likely than not there will be a tornado before year-end, but there is still a significant chance there won’t be.

 

[Ethan Schisler]

There have been some decent outbreaks in October/November in that part of Kansas in previous years (Nov 27 2005 cold core comes to mind) and then October 6 2016 as well. There was a big outbreak back in 2001 as well in October. So I don't think its out of the cards that we could still see some tornado activity in the ICT area before 2020 ends. Its not ideal and doesn't do much to improve our perspection on this chase season, but hey its something to look forward to.

 

[Mark Blue]

You took the words right out of my mouth Ethan. We still have the second season before we write 2020 off but I'm also not too confident that it'll change. Climatological persistence has a way of negating what us chasers want in the form of patterns that aren't conducive to severe weather. Fingers crossed at this point!

 

[Jeff Duda]

In a year like this, a landfalling tropical cyclone will take care of any of those dichotomous worries...not that it will make a difference to any Midwest/Plains chaser.

 

[Marc R. O'Leary]

I'd just like some rain that lasts more than 20 seconds at this point.

 

[Drew Terril]

You took the words right out of my mouth Ethan. We still have the second season before we write 2020 off but I'm also not too confident that it'll change. Climatological persistence has a way of negating what us chasers want in the form of patterns that aren't conducive to severe weather. Fingers crossed at this point!

This has been my hope. I generally do well in second season as it is, so I'm hesitant to give up at any point through the end of the year. One thing that I'm hopefully will help is the amount of rain that we've had this summer. I don't remember the last time we were mowing weekly this late in the summer in Oklahoma, usually the grass is nearly dead by now. So there should at least be moisture to work with as we get further towards second season.

 

[Jeff House]

Well the NAM shows a mini-sup fest in West Tenn. It's Friday at 57 hours, so maybe LOL, but surely too early to call the season over.

Other models have similar favorable wind fields, and cells turning slightly right of the mean low level flow. Clearing for a quasi-dry area and instability is the question Friday.

 

[Brett Roberts]

As we slide into the beginning of the so-called second season, an abysmal pattern dominated by deep eastern North America troughing looks to take hold starting next week, right on cue.

Through all the discussion of worst years on record this spring, there were a lot of comparisons to 2006, and people frequently mentioned that the fall was relatively active that year to help compensate. By this point, we'd already seen a well forecast regional outbreak in SD and MN on August 24:

There were at least couple more respectable Plains tornado days on September 16 and 21, plus the KS cold core event in late November.

Regardless, it looks likely that we'll miss out on any easily-forecast tornado events during the late August/early September period that can sometimes feature high CAPE and slow moving storms more in the vein of June setups. The march toward "worst year since 1988" for Plains setups that can be foreseen and chased without biting on every 2% chance is very much on track, in my opinion.

 

[Randy Jennings]

Heatmap of 2020 TOR watches diff vs climo.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1301711590719451142

 

[Jeff House]

South-Central Kansas is close to a record low tornado activity. Guess covid year is a good one to use on such a severe wx anomaly.

Separately the Dixie Alley above anomaly is not really welcome. Tornadoes here seem to impact people so much more.

Next trough is really squirrelly. I had high hopes for something in the Midwest; but, looks like a poor evolution. Still have time to improve.

There's always Dixie recurving TCs. Hate to wish for hurricanes, but hey we don't control it. Remnant low needs to be moving east like Harvey or Laura. Anything still going northwest I pass.

 

[Todd Lemery]

Heatmap of 2020 TOR watches diff vs climo.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1301711590719451142

I haven’t seen this map before. It does confirm what we all knew was going on in Kansas this year. Nothing. It’s surprising to me that SD and Minnesota are running below average too. It seemed like it had been a pretty busy place this year.
Looking farther out past this weekend, I’m really not seeing anything coming down the pipe that’s getting my hopes up. GFS is showing this moisture getting cleared out of the plains until the middle of the month. Ugh