Douglas and Main Readers
For the Douglas and Main readers, who are local residents, I wanted to clarify my forecast so I don’t scare the hell out of anyone.
On Saturday there is going to be a very strong cap in place, which works like a lid on boiling water and supresses storm development. In reality it is a layer of warm dry air that lies just above the boundary layer, which is the air mass at the surface.
The cap is a good thing and a bad thing for storm chasers. If you want big storms you need a cap to allow that energy to build up through the day and when it breaks you get explosive storms, but if the cap doesn’t break, you get blue skies. The cap is very hard to judge, but it looks like the cap with hold out on Saturday across most of Kansas, which will preclude a significant tornado threat. The conditions are there, but you got to have a storm first.
In the longer range it does appear that we are going to be staying in a fairly active pattern, especially in mid June, so tornado season isn’t over yet.
