Today's Risk in NE and Today's Sounding

[Michael Wilkinson]

This is the 1200z North Platte sounding, definitely within the slight risk area.

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/soundings/18051012_OBSzz

From what I've learned about soundings, there seems to be a huge cap. The convective temperature looks to be a lot higher than the current temperature. There appears to be no CAPE. The LFC looks very high. The EL looks very low. There seems to be little wind shear above 650mb, and not much below that. The winds aren't veering smoothly as you go up in the atmosphere.

I would say nothing about this sounding indicates storms today. I know they're right, and I'm wrong.

What should I be able to see on this sounding that I'm missing? I can't figure out how to differentiate between this sounding and any random one that indicates no storms possible.

 

[Michael Wilkinson]

 

[JeremyS]

View attachment 16881

The biggest issue is you're looking at a sounding from 6am this morning. Most soundings are going to look like this at 6 in the morning
You need to be looking at forecast sounding for later this afternoon and evening to get a good idea of what the setup could be like.
Here's the forecast sounding from the GFS for this evening for around North Platte.

 

[Brad Dormer]

That sounding was from 6am this morning, temperatures are up to 75 now with dewpoint of 54 in North Platte, surface based CAPE of 1000 as well based on surface observations, the longer the storms wait to fire, the better as they will have more juice to work with as the heating of the day continues.

 

[Michael Wilkinson]

Thank you Jeremy and Brad. The later forecast sounding and now current conditions look much different. I'm wondering if I'm hurting myself by looking at the morning soundings at all.

 

[Randy Jennings]

Morning observed soundings can be helpful, esp when you look at different ones. Living in Dallas, I look at the morning soundings along the Texas coast to see what the dews look like (sometimes they make it to me in the afternoon and sometimes they don't), and I look at soundings of the higher elevations to my west to see what the mixed layer might look like later in my area (what is at the surface out west in the am sometimes moves east over lower elevations and becomes the mixed layer). You can also tell how strong the cap got over night. Often observed soundings in the morning will not help you tell something will happen , but can help you rule out things (ie if models show lots of moisture moving north, but observed soundings show the source moisture is not there).

 

[Devin Pitts]

Morning soundings are immensely useful when forecasting severe potential later in the day. A good recent example of this for me personally was 5/1/18 last week in Kansas. Before I looked at the 12z soundings that morning, my biggest concern was moisture and how deep it was going to be based on how things went the day prior in the panhandle with capping and dews mixing out too quickly. Looking at the OUN 12z sounding from that day I was able to determine that moisture was quite deep, and well on its way north into Kansas based on 850mb wind direction, which made me much more comfortable with that days setup. Additionally, the 12z AMA sounding was quite dry with a large capping inversion which made me more skeptical than I was the night before of the southern target along the dryline near the KS/OK border.

Looking at this information ultimately helped me to decide to stay further north into Kansas and resulted in me being on the storm that produced the Tescott/Bennington EF3 instead of heading south to the storms that died because of the capping.

 

[Jeff House]

Also check out 00Z soundings after the chase. They are not out in time for chasing, but they are great for verifying the forecast soundings. Plus 00Z are actual measurements. Check them where there was action for a good example of what to look for in a forecast sounding. Happy soundings!

 

[Michael Wilkinson]

Thank you all. Everything you shared is helping me to learn practical ways to use soundings.