Update on today

Today does look pretty good. As I type this the SPC has just issued their first tornado watch of the day, and I expect it's not even close to the last one.

Although there's a higher chance for tornado coverage in the hilly and/or swampy south, my target today would still be along the warm front/dry slot near the Nebraska/Kansas border. The moisture is pretty good and, per RAOBs, pretty deep. In the dry slot the winds have not veered, which is a very good sign.

My concern yesterday about there being morning rumblings turned out to be baseless, and this just adds to my excitement about this afternoon. I actually suspect that, because of this, the SPC might upgrade to a moderate risk for KS/NE for their 11:30 AM update. Time will tell.

Moisture - check. Surface dews are solidly into the upper 50s and low 60s and 850 mb analysis shows a moisture axis poking northwestward from the Gulf to central Nebraska.

Instability - check. Mid-level lapse rates are pretty impressive to the southwest of the target area--just perfectly juxtaposed to advect over the region of interest this afternoon.

Lift - warm front. Convergence all over the place. 'Nuff said.

Shear - pretty impressive. Dodge city, KS shows 60 knots at 500 mb. There's the deep shear. Backing winds along the warm front--there's the low-level shear.

As always now I must play devil's advocate with myself. What limiting or mitigating factors can I think of to downplay this event?

Well, the orientation of the wind fields is such that a storm would have to take a hard right turn for it to stay surface-based.

There seems to be little cap right now; storms could go too early to tap all the available potential instability.

For right now, Justin has virtually gone a bit south. Fair enough. I still like Falls City, NE as a start location. It's pretty easy to get to lots of places for initiation. Besides, I think that storms will get better and better as the day goes on--and picking the first storm that goes up could be a mistake. I'd wait and watch the RADAR until one storm begins to be an obvious beast, as there could be many potential beasts out there.

CoD is right now just west of Des Moines, IA and heading west. The thought process of theirs is pretty much the same as ours. Except they actually get to be out there today.