First off, let's look at the latest water vapour picture. This one shows a good solid jet moving eastward, its centre somewhere around southern Nevada or northwest Arizona. It's moving along at a good clip, but it's still slow enough that it'll allow the airmass near the surface to cook for a while.
And the visible image over the Texas panhandle is showing boundary layer cumuli forming.
Moisture is a little bit lacking, though. Dewpoints aren't great, mainly in the mid 50s to low 60s.
Essentially it looks like storms will form after the passage of the upper short-wave ridge (looks to be around 3 or 4 PM) and with the shear there will be supercells. Tornadic supercells are a bit more in question because of a) the lack of moisture and b) the only okay low-level shear. The other thing that's bugging me is that there's no obvious forcing mechanism, at least right now. Maybe the dryline will sharpen up; maybe a mesoscale convergence line will set up. I dunno.
Still, though, today is a very chase-worthy day. My current point would be Amarillo, TX. Sit there, have some BBQ and wait for things to go so that I can reposition--any direction is easy to get to from there.
We chased the beauty in Texas panhandle today (Dumas/Stinnett supercell) and observed 2 brief tornadoes with it. Storm structure at times was phenomenal. We eventually left the storm for development near Dalhart which looked like a beast from a far and it was. Seen 2 brief nighttime tornadoes with that. Pretty scary sitting in Stratford with the sirens blaring trying to get a visual from lightning. All in all an awesome day and were looking forward to tomorrow.
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