Saturday, April 25, 2009

Chase Mode is in progress across Western Oklahoma

Very unstable atmosphere currently across all of Southern Plains as a cold front surges south and a dryline sets up to the west. Looking at the current surface analysis along with visible satellite. Things look like a go for widespread severe weather and a regional tornado outbreak across Western Oklahoma.

The morning models show a very favorable environment for rotating supercells capable of very large hail, damaging winds and strong tornadoes. Storm relative helicity prior to sunset runs at a pretty high rate 300 j/kg especially with over 3000 joules of surface base CAPE. Then what is a little scary is the ramp up to nearly 550 j/kg. This nearing the parameters capable of producing strong long tracked tornadoes with a mature supercell.

Models continue to differ on exact location of cold front surging south. Right now thinking the chase target near Sayre/Elk city looks to be a good starting spot. So plan on heading that direction here in the next hour or so.

I'll have another update later while I'm on the road. Unfortunately this looks like a possible day of if there will be a tornado but how many and if they will hit anything.

Here is the latest SPC Outlook and the second map is the tornado threat with a large 15% area.

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