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Alright… I’m not terribly impressed with the tornado potential on Friday. There are two distinct targets that stick out in my mind. One is the southwest corner of Kansas and the other is the area spc highlighted up where nebrask, colorado, and Kansas all meet up.

The northern target has CAPE AOA 2000 in places because it shows dewpoints of 60 degrees being advected in there. I don’t think that will happen. Even if it does I still think there are some other problems. The wind profile throughout the atmosphere is very weak until you reach 6km or so. I don’t know why it’s so weak, but forecast soundings and weather caster still showed 40kts of deep layer shear which is adequate for supercells. The forecast sounding also showed decent inflow level winds. I don’t see that happening either with CAPE that is over done. The positives are obviously the backing surface winds and even if you don’t hit 60 the air is going to be pretty juicy relatively speaking.
The bottom line in my opinion is the lack of strong kinematics and high LCL’s will preclude a serious tornado threat over the area on Friday. Unless something changes, which it very well may, I’d go 5% on my tornado probability map largely because of the directional shear and moderate CAPE.

Now for the southern target. LCL heights are even worse down here, but kinematics are better. I also like the idea that an isolated storm or two could come off the dryline and have the whole are to themselves vs. more convection up north interfering with each other. Surface winds don’t back like they do up north, but there is still 15kts or so out of the SE which I’ll take any day. 700mb straight out of the west also make for good directional shear even though you don’t have easterly surface winds like you do up north. The killer for this area is the moisture. Mid 50 dewpoints??? That dog just ain’t gonna hunt. It’s June for god’s sake. We need mid 60’s. I think we’ll get a couple good looking high based supercells and that’t it.

So in conclusion on Friday I would be surprised to see a tornado report up north because of the directional shear, but neither the northern or southern target excite me enough to get me to drive that distance especially when we have Saturday to get ready for.

SATURDAY

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Right now I like Wichita as my target. I haven't gotten in to forecasting hard for saturday because I was watching Friday, but now that I'm loosing interest in friday I am gaining interest in Saturday so I'm sure I'll be on it like stink on a monkey tomorrow. I like the strong cap and I don't. Usually the cap will break in a few places in a situation like this, but there have been a few times in the last several years where i saw moderate to strong CAPE with a big dryline like this where it didn't. I think it will break and we'll get a few storms. I like the dryline straight west of Wichita and maybe a hair south. My only problem with this setup is that again mid level winds could be a little better. The moisture gradient could be a little tighter too though, but hell it's right next to home and we haven't had anything to chase this year so what am I complaining about.