Saturday, March 21, 2009

Chase Forecast: 3/21-3/23

Saturday, March 21st:

A couple of us Colorado chasers are heading out to the I-76 corridor today. Why? Well, we have a little instability to play with. Surface features are a bit ambiguous right now, but there is an area of low clouds in eastern Colorado currently in the process of mixing out. We'll have a bit of lee-side troughing today as well as a diffuse warm front stretching in from Kansas. There is some evidence of this from surface obs already. I've looked at a couple soundings from NE CO later today (NAM) and the moisture layer should be from SFC-725mb ... that's about 125mb thick, which is pretty nice. CAPE looks to be around 750J/kg and the inhibition will slowly fade with heating today. Hodographs are sufficient to get any substantial tower turning today, so the severe threat is there. We'll have to watch for surface features today along the Front Range. If we can get a circulation going along the lee trough, and the moisture is in proximity, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary to see a landspout.

Trust me, if anything severe happens, we will carry it like a trophy!

Sunday, March 22nd

Well, this was supposed to be "the day before the day." The models have all but washed it out, unfortunately. A couple days ago, there was 1500J/kg of CAPE in Nebraska. Although this morning's runs look better, the overall probabilities have declined. We may have a little dynamic forcing in the way of a shorwave riding around. The NAM is giving us a more favorable solution with some convective initiation in the late afternoon in Kansas. Shear is favorable for supercells, but meager moisture suggests the LP variety. If we only had some more CAPE and could get some significant updrafts, we could be up for a picturesque LP day. However, though the moist layer is fairly deep, the CAPE just doesn't support explosive towers. I'm still up for chasing this, however.

Later on in the day, the CAPE values in Nebraska climb up above 750J/kg which suggest some good lightning and some hail along the warm front.


Monday, March 23rd

The dynamics are certainly there for a severe weather outbreak. Timing and moisture are the big questions. Right now I'm leaning toward the chance of a cold core-esque setup in proximity to the surface low as I don't have confidence that things will fire further south. I'll have another look at this setup tonight.

Dann.

2 comments:

Verne Carlson said...

Both the NAM and the RUC fire a single little cell out in ne CO this afternoon. I'm keeping my eye on the surface features as well!

Dann Cianca said...

Wow, how 'bout the NAM and the RUC! Round of applause please!