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........

March 30th Chase Log

Wow, what an amazing day and it helped me a little bit remember why I was so happy to move out here. This will be edited over the next couple of days as I will have more time to give a complete description of the days chase. For now I will leave a couple of photos for you as we didn't get a tornado as there was not a tornado reported anywhere till well after dark. However there were some nasty supercells with some well defined mesos and wall clouds. My buddy and I positioned ourselves perfectly as the spot I picked out two days prior happened to be the perfect spot. We stayed out of the hail for the most part got hit by some pea size hail but we did get to see a beautiful meso/mothership. Overall It was a blast and I'm looking forward to chasing to the east today. I'll have a full chase log and analysis over the next couple of days. For the time being here is a link to my pictures from the chase MARCH 30th

Severe Weather Still looking Possible

Currently most of southwest Oklahoma is in stratus clouds and fog however looking at the latest visible satellite there is some good clearing to the southwest. This clearing now looks like it will be over southwest Oklahoma by 1pm. This will likely help temperatures get into the upper 70s to low 80s across the area. Latest RUC shows a dryline bulge after 4pm across western Oklahoma with a triple point just north of that. Precip according to the RUC also develops after 5pm across that area with over 2500 joules of CAPE. Now what I'm worried about besides the time of initiation is the amount of upper level support and backing of the surface winds. Right now there seems to be a impulse over western New Mexico which could be the trigger this afternoon. However per the 12z NAM and latest RUC the 850mb winds and 500mb don't really start turning and increasing till after 0z (7pm). So even if storms can fire will they have enough low level and upper level support to be tornadic. All models continue to show increasing instability and upper level winds after dark across the area. So storms can get going ahead of the dry line then they will likely be severe well into the evening. My plan right now is to wait and see what the early afternoon conditions are. My target location for the past two days has been the Hobart area. Right now it is looking quite favorable spot however the trend has pushed things a little west and maybe a little south. I'll have a update right before I head out roughly around 3pm this afternoon.

Potential tornadic outbreak possible Sunday Evening and Monday

Good Saturday morning, Looking at the morning models it is looking like a outbreak of severe weather is likely Sunday evening into Monday evening. For the Texoma area there will be one maybe two different time chances of severe weather. The first time frame will be after 5pm Sunday afternoon lasting well into the evening hours. The second time frame will be after 1pm to around 6pm. The morning models show very little precip breaking out in Oklahoma during the afternoon or evening Sunday. The cap looks to be strong and the upper level energy lacking a little. So with weak convergence during the daylight hours and lift at the mid levels thunderstorms could not develop until overnight. One thing that isn't questionable is that the parameters for a major tornadic event across western Oklahoma and southern Kansas look high. If any storms do break the cap and can develop they will likely be tornadic and some could produce very long liver and strong tornadoes. I will post more on this later with some graphic once I get a chance to look over more information. Expect alot of blogs over the next couple of days.

Severe Weather still just rumors....

Since March 2nd our weather pattern for the most part has been pretty cool and quiet in terms of severe weather. We did see some severe weather in the way of hail storms and flash flooding on March 17th. Looking at the week and weeks beyond the pattern doesn't look favorable for a big severe weather outbreak. However we're getting into late March and the conditions are becoming more favorable in terms of warmth and moisture. This week we do have a slight risk of severe weather across mainly eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas and southern Missouri on Thursday afternoon. There might be another chance of severe weather again on Sunday. The overall pattern isn't the most favorable for large storm systems and severe weather. Looking ahead to the first two weeks of April the pattern will likely slowly change so the that instead of a northwest flow across the plains that a trough will form over the west and a weaker trough into the northeast. This will allow storm systems to develop along the lee side of the Rockies. Also allow plenty of Gulf of Mexico moisture to return for any of the disturbances interact with. So for the near term nothing to exciting expected but will have to watch things as will see at least some instability and warm temperatures over the next week.