Lightning shots and impending severe weather chase

Here is a couple lightning shots from last night where a isolated supercell developed well east of Lawton. Didn't really get any good shots but this was a time for me to really play around with my new camera. Which I learned a lot and learned what did and didn't work at night. I'll have a full analysis about tomorrow's severe weather setup later this evening. For now if you're interested in seeing here is a couple pictures from last night

Quiet week as an active pattern is looming ahead

Sitting here enjoying a nice afternoon of watching the Masters and finally looking at some mid to long range models. This last week and half has been pretty active in severe weather and just in general with the weather down here. So I'll give you a brief analysis on what I see for the next 2-3 weeks for the Texoma Area. Currently right now we have a nice size trough across the eastern United States bringing much below normal temperatures. Temperatures in Lawton are forecasted to be some 10 degrees below our normal high today and tomorrow. Eventually the trough will pull north and east as a big high pressure moves south into the southeast. Which brings up a good thing to forecast by is if you see a big high pressure in the Carolinas you typically see a major warm up in the center part of the nation. This will be no exception as parts of the Plains that saw snow just a day or two ago will be in the 70s by mid week. These southerly winds will bring warmer and more moist air north into the Southern Plains. By mid week a trough will also start to deepen across the Western States. The will tighten the Jet and send a piece of energy across the Texoma area by Thursday and Friday. This will likely produce a chance of severe weather depending on strength of the shortwave. This looks to only be the start of the overall trend as a broad trough develops over the Northwest and maybe a little bit of blocking remaining over the Northeast. However overall the pattern will likely become a Spring like pattern with a southwest flow over the Plains and into the East. This will allow plenty of warm and moist air to really get established across the southern part of the nation. As this pattern will not be producing the occasional strong cold fronts that we have been seing that pushes well into the Gulf of Mexico clearing out the higher dew points. Severe weather will likely be almost a everyday occurrence by the last 10 days of April across the Plains. Texoma will be no exception as a nice 850mb pattern sets up allowing some nice dry line storms let alone some stronger 500mb shortwaves in the mix. So I expect after this week or so of down time it will really start to pick up by the end of the month. Here is a Picture of the latest predicted high temperatures for Wednesday afternoon.

April 7th Chase report

I'm just going to post the pictures tonight from my chase today as I'm very tired. It ended up as a bust in my eyes and against my forecast. However it is better than being in cold snowy weather or blue skies. I'll have more on the entire chase in the next couple of days. April 7th

Tornadic storms likely across parts of Southwest Oklahoma

SPC just issued a md for Lawton and surrounding counties for which a tornado watch will be issued shortly and the new outlook will be a moderate risk. Right now I like the area from Lawton to Hobart to Chickasa. I will watch things develop over the next 30mins and go from there. It looks like a very interesting afternoon and evening.

Regional Tornado outbreak looking more likely tomorrow

Central and parts of western Oklahoma will see discrete supercells develop by 5pm tomorrow with a couple of them likely producing tornadoes. Things are really coming together like I mentioned a couple days ago as this is a more classic set up for severe weather. Right now there will be an area along the dry line of greater than 3000 joules of CAPE , 60-70kt 0-6km shear and EHI values >3 after 6pm. So any storms that can develop will likely be severe with very large hail up to 4 inches in diameter and tornadoes. Looking at the soundings this morning and hodographs there could be a couple strong tornadoes up to EF3 range. At this time the low level shear, amount of CAPE and length of the hodograph doesn't support violent tornadoes ( EF4 or EF5). My intial 24-36hr target area looks to be just northeast of Lawton about 45miles in northern Grady county. I'll more on this later this evening as the 0z models will give up a better look at tomorrow.

All eyes on the next storm or should I say storms

Good Friday morning everyone as I'm trying to get going this morning after a long and pretty much uneventful severe weather event yesterday. I was in the studio all day and into the evening doing backup duty and listening to the scanner for the chief. The big story yesterday with the storms that did fire up was large hail. The largest hail was reported to be 4 inches in diameter and we had alot of other reports of baseball and tennis ball size hail. Overall it wasn't looking like a tornadic threat that morning and it didn't become one. There were no reports of tornadoes in Oklahoma or Texas however my target area once again was pretty spot on. If you wanna see all the storm reports click on this link SPC REPORTS

Now off to the upcoming chances of severe weather which seem to be this coming Monday the 7th and again Wednesday or Thursday. I'll talk about the Monday chance of severe weather since its the closest. This looks to be finely our first classic severe weather event across Oklahoma and in my eyes our first tornadic risk. A strong piece of energy in a bigger trough development across the northern Rockies will race southeast and dig into the Central Plains. In response an area of low pressure will form late Sunday across the lee side of the Rockies in southeast Colorado. This will start to bring back plenty of Gulf of Mexico moisture back northward into Texas, Oklahoma and even Kansas. 850 winds will also back as the low pressure strengthens as it pulls east and northeast across southern Kansas. This provide good convergence along the dry line as it progresses east Monday afternoon. Winds aloft will be turning with height and also will have ample speed shear as it looks now especially across Oklahoma and Kansas. Currently the models have dewpoints in the Oklahoma area in the upper 50s to low 60s range with about 60-70kts of shear. This will obviously be fine tuned over the weekend and I will update throughout with the latest model info. The great thing about this is Monday is my day off so I will be chasing for sure!! =) Now I'm hoping and I'm sure others that this doesn't crap out like this last one did. However just like I said in the beginning this a more classic setup so its less likely.

Season weather likely this Thursday

latest SPC outlook for Day 1
Edit-9:40am 4/2 latest trends and my thinking is that north central Texas will have the greatest risk of damaging tornadoes. Target location would be from Wichita Falls to Bowie To Ardmore south to Dallas then back west to Abilene. Much more later......

Edit- 11:15am 4/3 Looking at the latest RUC the trend has come back giving a little hope of severe weather and maybe a isolated tornado across the Texoma area. Given that the best environment is still not going to be in the Texoma area there will likely be two different areas for tornadic storms. One across north Central Texas south of Wichita Falls to just east of Abilene along the dry line that will likely fire up till late afternoon and tornadic threat will likely be from 7pm-midnight. The second area will be along the warm front from Ardmore,OK to Fort Smith, Arkansas this afternoon and evening. I'm working the mid shift and my chief had dental surgery this morning so he will be limited in his talking abilities till at least mid afternoon. So I'll not be able to chase this afternoon and evening as it looks now. However if I was I still like my target area from a couple days ago. I would be ready and watching for things to fire up by 3pm in Bowie. I'll have another update after the 18z Ruc comes out........