Upcoming 2016 Storm Chasing Season

[James Gustina]

Looking like a few brave souls might get on the board tomorrow if it doesn't turn into a close-to-dark QLCS mesovortex situation across the Tennessee and Ohio valleys before we go back into our regularly programmed high-amplitude garbage pattern.

 

[Jonathan Beeson]

Looking at the CFS, which did a very good job with this past week's event, it's looking like we'll be entering a considerably better pattern as we head into March. Guidance is showing signs that we could see two severe setups at the start of the month, one around March 1st and a second and more significant one around March 10th, with the pattern generally looking more favorable as the month progresses.

 

[Colman Mulkern]

I really hope that CFS pans out for March. If we get a decent setup in mid-March, I'll definitely be up for chasing. Plenty of time to get ready for it, too.

 

[Andy Berrington]

We're definitely going to want to see a shift in the PNA towards negative come spring for a more active season. It has almost solely been positive since winter began.

 

[James Gustina]

Starting to look like we're falling into that standard pattern of west coast ridging/east coast troughing with a Hudson Bay Low bringing intrusive arctic fronts nearly every 3 days or so. Might not get off to an early start further west of the 97th meridian before March rolls around at this rate.

 

[James Gustina]

Well after seeing a few signals for a weak shortwave to push through towards the end of the period, it appears both long-range models are sliding back towards the subtropical jet absorbing each lead impulse that makes its way out of California. Looking like we won't have any meaningful moisture return this month.

 

[Jeff Duda]

It seems the planetary scale pattern over North America has decoupled from the continuing strong El Nino for whatever reason. The pattern over the last several weeks has resembled a typical ENSO-neutral winter pattern for the US, and I see really no strong signal in the medium range models of that changing in the next 1-2 weeks. ENSO discussions from CPC don't really offer any explanation as to why this is happening, although I have noticed the SST anomalies in the far eastern tropical Pacific have significantly decreased (in the Nino 1+2 region), whereas they remain strong in the central tropical Pacific. Perhaps there is some related cause and effect, but I really have no idea.

Getting extremely boring here in Oklahoma with only one seemingly random burst of storms back on the first of the month. Other than that, it has remained very dry and warm, with near daily grass fires making the news. I suspect that will continue for several weeks.

 

[James Gustina]

It almost had the look of what you'd see with a standard weak La Nina earlier in the month. I thought we might be finished with unmodified polar air intrusions but it looks like we might be getting slapped with another sharp dropoff next week before climbing back out into the 50s. I'm hoping that we don't take too long to shift into gear once we hit the middle of March. These cloudless days on end are becoming extraordinarily boring and we could use a few days of rain over the Plains before April rolls around.

 

[Adam Lucio]

After zonal flow to finish this week, guidance seems to revert back to west coast ridging again. Been pretty boring around the midwest too, but at least it hasnt been overly wintry.

Overall it appears things are off to a normal start though, with the gulf coast region (most recently FL) being active with severe storms. You'd expect that in an average year, but it does look like we'll be on hold for a bit with no early season warm up rounds in more desirable chasing areas. My gut still tells me that transition years tend to be more active, its just a matter of when will it get going.

 

[Mike Marz]

As much as I want to chase ASAP, I don't mind it too much if things hold off a bit. It is always really tempting to burn vacation time on early season setups, but then come June I am just kicking myself...

 

[samuel stone]

I don't mind waiting a bit. I would just hope that we don't go too long without rain/with hot dry windy weather over the EML source areas. Pretty sure we wont have another cap-less year the way things are looking, thats good.

Granted new mexico and northern mexico had a very wet fall and early winter but it doesn't take too many weeks of hot dry weather to purge the top soil of any moisture out there. Less soil moisture = lower specific heat + less energy used for evaporation = hotter soils

 

[Mike Marz]

Pretty sure we wont have another cap-less year the way things are looking, thats good.

Yes! That's very good. I would love some chases this year where we aren't trying to get rid of early day garbage and low clouds...

 

[Michael Gavan]

Since I don't get a lot of longer-distance chase opportunities outside of spring, it's actually quite nice to have an early season weekend or two to shake the rust off and try out new gear. I try to do a couple every march/april. And busting or getting bird farts sucks less because you know the good months are yet to come.

 

[James Gustina]

Kind of an interesting tangent off of what @samuel stone said, the EML that presented itself over the southern Great Plains ahead of that wonky dryline on Saturday was something else. It was extraordinarily pronounced compared to last year.

 

[James Gustina]

Just something interesting to watch even though it's still a week away, a compact shortwave has been progged by the GFS to move through the southern Plains at some point next week with actual moisture return ahead of a pretty sharp dryline. Obviously it's only recently came out of the woodwork, but should it hold we'll be drawing a pretty solid EML.