State of the Chase Season 2025

[William Monfredo]

Well I’m finally pulling the trigger.

"You don't always get what you go after, but you do get what you wouldn't have got if you hadn't gone after what you didn't get." - Blaze Foley.

 

[Warren Faidley]

Now that I'm "out here," I have no choice but to concentrate on the weather. I believe the local NWS offices have the best handle on *possibilities* over the next 10 days. The bottom line is few offices are trusting the models beyond Thursday. I don't recall the last time I can remember so much uncertainty in the extended. For example, DDC did not even write a "Long Term" discussion in the AM (5-12) outlook. The SPC has only outlooked areas that are not typically May chase regions, although I'm glad chasers in those areas might have opportunities. I keep getting the feeling everything is going to suddenly shift to a more *climatically* logical season, but not yet.

 

[Jason N]

I think its now a foregone conclusion that there will be chase days from the 15th to the 20th. Yes, they may be spread out in terms of geographic coverage away from the traditional locations from the 15th to 17th.. but one day in particular has persistently shown through multiple model runs and days, is the 18th. It has for some reason stuck to not only the area but timing with the longer wave and mid-level wind field orientations for the last 3-5 days, which is out on the far end of laughable trustworthiness, but I can only tell you what I've seen... There has also been a positive trend in the days past the 18th extending into the 20th across those climo hot spots as Warren mentioned.

 

[Sean Ramsey]

I'm with you guys. If the GFS supercell composite is to be believed there should be something to chase from the 14th onward through the end of May, although some days look more robust than others. Just having signs of a heartbeat in what is prime chase season is a good thing at this point. This season is moving quickly and we're close to a month left the traditional end of season. Seems to move quicker each year.

 

[Brett Roberts]

Medium-range guidance has been a nauseating roller coaster ride lately. But from the perspective of where the ride is this morning, the period from 5/18 - 5/20 may have a fairly high ceiling... with some of it potentially W of I-35 in the SP. My biggest fear currently is that the first wave ejecting across the Plains midweek ends up amplifying earlier and deeper over the Midwest than most current solutions depict, since that's been the recent tendency. If that happens, the tantalizing weekend trough could get bottled up longer back over CA/NV and dramatically tamp down the excitement for Sun-Tue... which, again, has been a seasonal tendency.

This amplified pattern with short wavelengths, combined with reduced radiosonde launches over the northern Plains and Rockies, is making it exceptionally hard to trust even high-level facets of the guidance beyond 4-5 days or so. I'm trying to throttle my expectations of medium-range NWP performance back about 15 years, to when we all knew not to put too much stock in even the synoptic pattern beyond D6-7. The 12z ECMWF just posting now shows a stretch of 5-6 days running all the way through next week with moderate to strong SW flow, daily respectable to strong LLJs, and rich moisture on the SP that's almost too good to be true... and indeed, I'd expect significant twists and turns over the next few days.

 

[Jason N]

oombined with reduced radiosonde launches over the northern Plains and Rockies,

I think that's a solid point and one that doesn't get a lot of play about upstream data influencing and effecting model output. A good friend of mine used to fly on Ms. Piggy when they were doing Pacific runs during the winter months, and I remember how the extra releases of soundings would be of some additional benefit over geographically data sparse regions leading to down range model benefits. it will be a good thing when radio-occultation data starts filling in those gaps I think, and maybe some of these wide swings in synoptic / long range guidance might smooth out