Tuesday, May 11

I think SPC is going to go with a moderate risk for a relatively small area. Looking at the information, including the satellite imagery and upper analyses, as well as the moisture in place, severe storms look to be on tap for southwest Oklahoma and adjacent parts of Texas. The only thing is that it'll be a more conditional threat, conditional only on whether storms go.

So here goes. First the satellite imagery and 500 mb chart.





100 knots at Oakland, CA. That even looks real, especially when you add in the water vapour image.

Now for the surface.



Moisture's there, all right. And a tight moisture gradient, to boot. Solenoidal circulations along the dryline (especially anywhere it surges) are really good for convective initiation.

So how about a couple of maps from the NAM? First the SBCAPE forecast.



That looks pretty interesting, especially the gradient. That indicates a dryline to me. How about a prog sounding from within the juicy air?



The CAPE is great, and the shear OK; this to me looks more like a sounding for HP supercells, which will primarily give some medium-large hail (let's say 3 inches) and a lot of rain; a tornado cannot be ruled out, although I don't know about the potential being there for long-track, damaging tornadoes.

If I were a chaser, I would be a bit more excited about Tuesday than Monday, primarily because of smaller geographical coverage of storms as well as the slower motion of the storms. I would park myself in Frederick OK (where the prog sounding is from) and see how things evolved throughout the daytime.

This doesn't look like a huge outbreak kind of day, but any storms that do go in that environment look to be serious supercells, more chaseable and probably more picturesque. I think Tuesday is going to be a "sleeper" day in terms of chasing. Only time will tell.