Warm front plays: trickiness all around

So Justin asked me to expand a bit on why warm front plays can be tricky. Whew, have you got a day?

Really, there are a few difficult things about chasing this kind of setup. First off, the major problem I have with them is that often the upper winds are aligned such that any storm that forms will not interact with the front for long. There are of course many exceptions to this, and when an exception happens your storm can be a prolific tornado and giant hail producer.

But setups like tomorrow's make me a little leery. See, the 500 mb winds, while good and strong, are forecast to be from the south-southwest--maybe around 220 or so. With a warm front draped more west-east or even northwest-southeast, the storms could end up either forming on the front and then moving into an area with stable surface air (and therefore becoming elevated) or, worse, not even tapping surface air parcels at all.

Second, often with warm front setups you get a lot of low cloud obscuring your ability to see things like towers going up. Sure, you could have all the information in the world with mobile internet and such, but nothing beats seeing a tower going up and being able to tell where that one is the one.

Third, if you do get setups like this, sometimes you will get a zillion storms going up on the front and then you have to choose which one will go nuts. Good luck.

And fourth, the inevitable chaser convergence.

Regardless, if I had a chance I would of course go out chasing tomorrow. The actual evolution of things, including convective debris, can't be known until the morning of.

(PS to Justin: "golden ticket to the main event"? Have you been watching a little TV recently? :P)