It continues to look as if the fall tornado season in the plains is getting ready to start with two distinct opportunities in the plains in the coming days. The long range models have done a very solid job on picking this up a long ways out. I originally commented on it back on September 30th with my last blog post and I had been watching it for several days before that, so it’s good to see the GFS doing a decent job again. The first opportunity will be tomorrow across SW, central and SE Oklahoma. The second opportunity will be on Tuesday across a large portion of Kansas and Oklahoma.
I’m in a big hurry at the moment. I got a new car a few weeks ago so I have a tight schedule today between running errands and getting my equipment set up in the new car. I’ll probably post some pictures on here of it once my equipment is setup if you’re interested. Then I have plans to meet friends out tonight to watch games and do a little drinking. Need to keep it low key though since tomorrow morning I need to hit the road at a decent time for SW Oklahoma. I’ll keep the forecast brief for now, but later tonight I’ll try to get a little more posted.
It looks like for tomorrow the easy target for max tornado potential is the triple point. There are some concerns about CINH and coverage of surface based storms. The triple point has the best chance of going and shear should be quite strong downstream of there along and south of the warm front where surface winds will be backing strongly. There should be a good window for semi-discrete cells coming off the triple point before a line begins to fill in later in the evening. Given the impressive shear profiles and decent thermodynamics, I would say a strong tornado is possible. It’s not a real good tornado setup, but for fall it’s pretty solid. There’s some differences in the exact location of the triple point with the various models, but I’m thinking somewhere between Altus and Childress is where the triple point will likely develop sometime during the late afternoon, early evening tomorrow and that is where I’ll be.
Tuesday may be an even more potent setup for tornadoes, but there’s some timing issues with the trough coming in a little later than I’d like to see. Still a ways out though. With tornadoes, the devil is in the details and it’s still a bit tough to resolve those this far out. The moisture quality looks to be quite good for this time of year and shear profiles will be very favorable for tornado supercells. CINH and coverage of storms off the decline seems to be the big question mark at this point. If we get numerous discrete supercells coming off the decline, then it could be a big day. We’ll see. I haven’t looked at it in much detail yet since my focus is on tomorrow’s setup, but with storm motions normal to the boundary and a neutral tilt to the trough, anything we can get off the dryline will likely remain discrete for a while.
Alright, gotta run so that’s all for now. I’ll try to forecast later tonight though after I get home and post a few more details then. Plan is to be on the road by 10am tomorrow heading for far SW Oklahoma.
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