Increasing Tornado Threat for June 29th, 2010

Well...the 12z NAM/GFS models are still showing an area near the border city of Lloydminster that is forecast to be absolutely primed for tornadic supercells tomorrow late afternoon into the early evening. Great deep layer shear (55kts) tied with high 0-1km SRH's (200 m2/s2) look to lie along a warm front lifting NE from the Elbow/Foothills region of Alberta. At first it looked like a cold front was going to trigger the storms...but now it looks like a surface low will develop and be the main culprit in igniting storms in the threat area.

I'd label the Lloydminster and Coronation regions as great candidates for tornado producing storms tomorrow if again these models pan out. I'd say Moderate Risk for tomorrow based on the latest model data.

Dave says moisture may not make it...I beg to differ since dewpoints are already up in Western SK...the southeasterly low level jet increases this evening into tomorrow allowing for more moisture to be pumped into the region. Let the moisture train roll in!

Take note people...it's gonna happen!

It was windy; it must have been a tornado

The title is perhaps a bit on the glib side, but I hear of it all the time: wind damage occurs somewhere and inevitably we hear "a tornado went through here".

People associate wind damage with tornadoes, not straight-line winds. And this is where education needs to be increased.

A perfect example of this is the other night's storm in Steinbach, where a couple of reports of tornadoes were received, and yet there was no sighting of such a phenomenon, and nor were there pictures of it. This isn't to say that there wasn't a tornado, but based on RADAR and the reports received (wind and rain happening simultaneously, and yes I know that can signift a rain-wrapped tornado but it's not too likely), I won't be convinced until I see pictures.

Just for the record.

And also for the record, imagery shows that a tornado was on the ground to the west of Steinbach, although it was significantly before the time the storm hit Steinbach. I have still seen no evidence of a tornado in Steinbach.

AB/SK Border Tornado Threat for Tuesday June 29th...First 'real' event for the Prairies

Well models are starting to agree on the idea that a significant weather event will take place Tuesday late afternoon/early evening along the Alberta/Saskatchewan border...more specifically...the Lloydminster area.

Surface to H50 wind directions are looking really good along with the speeds (Bulk Shear ~55kts). Moisture looks great with a southeasterly H85 jet advecting in 12-15 degree dewpoints at that height. At the surface it looks like dewpoints in the 15-20 degree range shouldn't be hard to reach either as moisture is advected in from the southeast. We also can't forget the effects of evapotranspiration which is in full swing at this time of the year.

CAPE values look pro AOA 3000 j/kg if you believe the 00z NAM...anyways...I can go on about the positioning of the thermal ridges at specific heights and where they're forecast to lie...but to keep things short and sweet I'll end with saying that the trigger looks to lie around the edge of the ridge as upper level cooling comes in from the West along some sort of coolish front lifting NE from the Elbow region of Alberta earlier in the day.

Here is a sounding/hodo for the YLL area Tuesday evening..impressive!





The tornado threat is actually quite high with this set-up along with the threat of large hail and strong winds. Storms will likely fire North of Lloyd where capping is removed first and then develop further South into the more unstable air.

Storms look to persist through the evening/overnight as they truck eastward as a giant squall line with damaging winds.

Model consistency is improving showing the Lloyd area...but the previous run showed Elrose, SK as the hot spot...so that's not that far off in terms of highlighting a threat area for Tuesday...but I'd put money on the fact that there'll be tornado warnings issued on Tuesday if this 00z run verifies!

Ridge riders tonight?

It's coming to the season where once in a while we can get overnight thunderstorms. Not necessarily severe, and not necessarily exciting but a yearly occurrence nonetheless. They sometimes get called ridge riders because they tend to occur on the edge of the cap, usually overtop the 500 mb ridge.



I look at both the GEM-REG and NAM output and both hint at thunderstorms overnight or tomorrow morning. So will they happen?

Well, moisture is kind of there: not great but good. Dewpoints in the mid teens.

As a result of that, instability will be there. Again, not great but good.

Lift? Well, there seems to be a diffuse front draped near the international border.

Shear? Actually, not too bad. 30 knots west at 500 mb and 10 knots east at the surface.

So what is missing? Well, the LLJ is nothing if not unimpressive. I'm talking 10 knots here, and it is forecast to increase to 20 knots. Woo.

And with the unstable air parcels originating in a southerly flow instead of an easterly one, I think the deep bulk shear will be on the order of 25 to 30 knots.

So what do I think will happen tonight? Scattered organized multicells with pea-sized hail and rainfalls up to 25 mm. Nothing huge.

What do you think?

Reporting severe weather to EC

On the Canadian prairie provinces, to report severe weather:

1. Call toll-free 1-800-239-0484; you will most likely be prompted to leave a message
   
2. Email storm@ec.gc.ca, including if you have pictures to share
   

The information EC will need is your location (closest town and how far/what direction you are away from it, what province you're in), the time and what you're seeing and how long it's been going on. If you have pictures to send in an email, please try to shrink them down for easy retrieval, and if EC would like the full-resolution version they will ask.

What to report? Please note that reporting sub-severe weather is helpful as well.

• Hail of any size
  
• Rainfall amounts in excess of 25 mm or any rainfall causing flooding
  
• Wind gusts in excess of 70 km/h or wind gusts causing damage
  
• Funnel clouds
  
• Tornadoes
  

In the winter, please report

• Snowfall amounts in excess of 5 cm
  
• Freezing rain
  
• Wind in excess of 60 km/h
  
• Low visibilities due to blowing snow, fog or anything else
  

Environment Canada will gladly take your report.

3 Year Anniversary of Canada's First F5 Tornado in Elie, Manitoba

********Update at 4:30pm CDT*************
Well after reading the comments it appears that a tornado warning was issued for Elie after a funnel cloud was reported from a thunderstorm near Elie. What are the odds that on the same day there'd be a tornado warning with a confirmed funnel over a town that was nailed by a major league tornado 3 years ago today? Crazy stuff!!!

Here is the warning...

816
WFCN11 CWWG 222010
TORNADO WARNING
ISSUED BY ENVIRONMENT CANADA
AT 3:10 PM CDT TUESDAY 22 JUNE 2010.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
TORNADO WARNING FOR:
=NEW= R.M. OF CARTIER INCLUDING ELIE ST. EUSTACHE AND SPRINGSTEIN.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
==DISCUSSION==
AT 3 PM WEATHER SPOTTERS INDICATED A FUNNEL CLOUD EMERGING OUT OF A
THUNDERSTORM NEAR ELIE. THIS STORM HAS THE POTENTIAL TO PRODUCE A
TORNADO AT ANY TIME AS WELL AS LARGE HAIL. THE CELL IS MOVING TO
THE EAST AT 40 KM/H.

THIS IS A WARNING THAT SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS WITH TORNADOES ARE
IMMINENT OR OCCURRING IN THESE REGIONS. MONITOR WEATHER CONDITIONS.
TAKE IMMEDIATE SAFETY PRECAUTIONS.

NOTE..A SUMMARY OF ALL WARNINGS AND WATCHES FOR SOUTHERN MANITOBA IS
AVAILABLE IN THE WWCN11 CWWG BULLETIN ISSUED IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING
THIS BULLETIN.

Here is a radar reflectivity/velocity image from the time it was issued!






------Written this morning------
It has been 3 years since Canada had its first F5 tornado. To this day, it's still the best tornado I've ever seen in terms of structure (Dave) and how easy it was to chase. It was the most photogenic tornado Dave and I have ever seen and I'm sure it'll always hold the number one spot.

Here are some links/videos to remind you of that day!

News Article

News Article 2 (More Science Related)

Tornado Photos

Damage Photos

Billings, Montana Tornado Video from Yesterday

Well the city of Billings was hit with an EF2 tornado yesterday and the tornado was quite intense. It was slow moving and packed quite the punch. It reportedly sat over the same area for nearly 15 minutes before moving off and dissipating. The damage caused by this tornado was mainly confined to the Metra Park Arena which hosts many of Billings' concerts and major events.

The last time Billings, Montana saw a tornado was in 1958...Amazing!!!

More tornadic weather is expected for the area again today as well as into Southern Saskatchewan...this has been quite the year for tornadoes in the USA...and hopefully the wide open fields of the Prairies in the weeks to come!



Oh and yesterday was a bust...looked more like a 'see text' to me.

The long range pattern doesn't change that much and moisture continues to be pumped northward into the Northern Plains/Southern Canada. As dew points climb and heat and instability increase...we can expect more and more Mesoscale Convective Systems to develop in the late evening and overnight over the next few days...any supercells that do form in this moist regime along any remnant MCS boundary will likely be low contrast HP monsters with ground scraping wall clouds...terrible from a chaser's perspective...we need a wiper blade (cold front) to flush out the moisture so it can build back slowly and give us mid-teen dewpoints and not low-mid twenty dews...

I thought I'd never say this...but the moisture is too high! The only way to offset this is to give us mid-upper 30 temperatures so we can raise those cloud bases.

Storm Chasers Bashed! A Must Read Article

Well it's official...storm chasing has been given a bad name.

Click here for the article!

Days 6, 7 and 8 recaps and forecast for today, day 9

Day 6 was supposed to be a good day. And it was. In south Dakota. D'oh!

We headed for SW Nebraska, as planned. Things were looking good: all the ingredients were in place and initiation was imminent.

Storms went up right where we figured and we were excited, at least until dewpoints started dropping.

Uh oh.

It turns out the moisture wasn't quite as deep as we had thought and thus mixed out. We had dewpoints near 20 that dropped to 15. Crap. So we ended up with a couple of supercells that never really had any chance at producing anything more than large hail.

North of the Black Hills in SD was a tornadofest. Slow-moving storm producing a bunch of tornadoes. Bleh. (This, along with the next day, was a main reason for my writing about the psychology of storm chasing.) We had had that sort of area as a secondary target but we seemed to get blinded to the downfalls of our forecast. Well, that and like I mentioned before, not knowing how deep the moisture was. A sounding from Dodge City, KS would have helped tremendously, but they're in the midst of changing their sounding systems. Seriously, who changes something like that smack dab in the middle of their severe weather season?



The next day, day 7, was the big day in IA, MN and ND. We shot to Sioux Falls, SD for lunch and to dig into the data. We recognized the northern target as awesome and realistically unreachable, so blew it off. There was a pretty good convergence line going NNW-SSE west of the twin cities, a pseudo warm front, so we headed for the intersection of the left exit of the jet (per WV) and that front. We figured tornadofest day 2 would be on tap.

Well, storms went up a bit north of the target and we figured they would slowly go southward along the line. They did go, but the ones in our area didn't go well. They struggled, whether it was with the cap or against shear or I don't know what. But they struggled. One storm then decided to get a lot meatier and we chased it for about 2 hours along scenic Minnesota roads lined with trees. At one point the rotation in the wall cloud was so rapid that Paul and I were both convinced it would produce. One stuck van later (we got it out in about 5 minutes) the storm started to lose its oomph. So we abandoned it and headed south to storms that we heard had produced prolifically in northern Iowa and southern Minnesota. We got there just in time for a major RFD surge and that was the end of that. Well, except near sunset where shelf clouds and rainbows played with the sunset and we got colours that were impossible to photograph and that I believe I will never see in nature again.

I have no regrets about this day because I still don't know why storms in far southern Minnesota ended up producing and ours didn't. Just no clue.

Yesterday (day 8) was another day with high hopes and we hit initiation along a combination outflow boundary/warm front in southwest Iowa. A morning MCS (that later smoked Chicago) was going through Ames with strong winds. Later in the day, we were right there at initiation. But the storms just kept on gusting out. The side bonus to this non-tornadic day, though, was the pure awesomeness and number of shelf clouds. We got at least 5 wicked ones, starting at about 9 AM.

Today is another day kind of like yesterday. There was an overnight MCS in northern Kansas and its outflow and a warm front near the area will be the play. Midlevel flow looks good and so we're initially targeting York, NE. Keep your fingers crossed!

The psychology of storm chasing

I suppose an entire Masters thesis could be written on this subject, but here are a few quick thoughts of mine about the subject.

There are many reasons that go into deciding on a chase target and deciding which storm to attack and whether to abandon a storm if it's not looking well.

First off, you have the most obvious thing: ingredients. I would like to say that ingredients always make up the main reason for chasing where one does, but that would be somewhat disingenuous.

A corollary to that is that the model output is always there, always being looked at. Different models have different parameterizations, initial and boundary conditions. And remember: the models are always wrong.

Second, you have to consider the region of interest, whether the road network will allow for chasing. Storm speed has to be taken into account as well as the road network.

Yahoos have become a problem in recent years, with everyone and their dog chasing, moreso in the southern plains. They can sometimes make the roadways dangerous, pulling over at inopportune times and walking out onto the road without even looking.

Ego, sadly, plays a part. You make a forecast and you want to be right. All the time. Admitting your forecast didn't work out is something that is very difficult to do. I have learned over the years that I will make bad forecasts. I have to get up, brush myself off and get on with it. Some days are more difficult than others.

Envy is a secondary part of ego. With the advent of all the different storm chasing websites, anyone can see who's chasing and who's been catching this or that. So sometimes it's inevitable that you see what others are catching and you beat yourself up because you didn't, no matter what the reason.

Fatigue is more understandable. If you've been going and going, you just may not feel like doing that extra 4 hours' drive to get to a more certain but more distant target.

Expectations get me a lot. Every storm chasing day you start with what you think is going to happen and if that doesn't, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Never good.

Tornado Threat for Today (June 17th, 2010)

Well today is looking more and more promising for tornadic supercells to develop very soon.

Tornado watches are already out for much of North Dakota and it looks like another one will be issued for points South into South Dakota and Minnesota.

Dave and I have been going back and forth about the more favorable area for tornadoes today. I agree with him...there will probably be tornadoes in both areas...but I think more reports will come from North Dakota. Dave is also right about storm motions...the tornadic storms in North Dakota will be moving at 20-30 knots...and the ones in South Dakota/S. Minnesota will be moving a bit slower.

But...the road networks are so good in North Dakota that keeping up with the storm and even staying ahead of it shouldn't really be an issue at all. I mean we are not dealing with May 10th storm motions here.

I like the North, he likes the South...he's chasing the Southern Threat...and I wish him luck today...but if I was chasing I would chase in East Central North Dakota towards Canada.

Here is a 19z prog tephi/hodograph for an area North of Fargo, ND.

Hodo-Loopicus?







Oh...and S. Manitoba is not out of the woods for tornadoes yet...clearing is starting to occur in Central North Dakota and will likely make its way into the border region in a few hours...if this clearing does come in...I expect surface based storms with tornado threats to develop around 5-6pm near the border moving NNE.

Here is a 12:45pm Satellite Image...here comes the clearing!

Hobson's target for Thursday...Read up Dave :)

Hi Dave,

In short...somewhere just SE of Fargo, North Dakota (Fergus Falls, MN) looks amazicus for tornadic supercells on Thursday if you believe the 12z NAM run. You know the drill...Moisture, Instability, Shear, and a Trigger will reside around that area come Thursday afternoon. Capping looks to NOT be an issue with the cooling coming in...Vorticity looks amazing too...but anyways the forcing along the sharp surface trough should get things going nicely for you. Make sure you take lots of pictures.


Good luck...

Day 5: travel; day 6: forecast; day 7: forecast

Today's analyses showed the moisture pretty much confined to the southwest of Texas. Flow looks really weak there so we decided to go for a travel day for capturing the storms tomorrow.

A significant wave is crashing onto the west coast today:



And it'll cause good (bad) weather for tomorrow and Thursday.

We're aiming toward southwestern Nebraska. The moisture is making a return there and there are already dewpoints in the upper teens (C) in Kansas, a few hours' advection away. Instability is therefore forecast to be plentiful, peaking around 3000 J/kg or higher. Lift should be okay, with storms initiating off the higher terrain to the west. As they move eastward with the increasing midlevel flow (shear), they should encounter the better moisture.

Minuses? Let's see. 700 mb temperatures are forecast to be pretty high, so capping is an issue.

Other than that, I see no reason not to go there. Storms could be fairly late, but hopefully before dark.

Thursday is going to have tornadoes. It's just a matter of where. It'll be either Iowa or the North Dakota/Manitoba border. Or maybe both. The problem I have with most of North Dakota is the midlevel flow. It's forecast to be pretty ridiculous. Up to 70 knots. And these kinds of systems tend not to back the winds all that well. Lines then. Except north of an effective warm front, which looks to be close to the international border. Any storms that move along that boundary should a) move more slowly and b) produce a tornado or two. But the location isn't certain. Iowa will be pretty good, too: not as much midlevel flow but pretty god low-level shear and much more slowly-moving storms. So we will likely end up targeting that area.

Of course, this being model land we could change our minds. But that's where we sit for now.

Day 4: bust-ish

Too much instability. Not enough cap. Too much lift. Not westerly enough winds at midlevels.

Man, getting these severe thunderstorm thingies, especially the picturesque rotating kind, is a difficult and delicate balance to achieve.

We didn't get it today. Today we got a storm forming south of the boundary (good), near the better midlevel winds (very good), showing a wall cloudy-type inflow thing (very very good), and then gusting out an outflow about as quickly as we could drive.

The red dust being kicked up in the outflow was pretty awesome, though.

Pictures are forthcoming this evening; I just have to put them on my laptop.

Tomorrow I think we're going to have an abbreviated chase day, maybe in SE CO, then off to probably NE for Wednesday, and possibly ND, possibly IA for Thursday.

Day 4: now

So today is, as Miyagi-san would say, same but different. Or maybe that was Daniel-san who said it.

Regardless, the winds at 500 mb are more westerly. The instability is still crazy, and that makes me a happy chaser.

We'll be stopping at Rudy's for BBQ in Lubbock. Paul tells me that this is among the best brisket around. Being a brisket aficionado, I don't take such pronouncements lightly.

What, did you think these chase trips are just about the storms? :P

Day 3: same outflow, same story

The same outflow boundary/frontal zone was a bit farther south for day 2 but more or less in the same region.

And the same kind of things happened: we were in place for initiation near Pampa, TX (best chicken strips I've ever had at Cooder's Dixie Cafe!) and the storms looked good. On this day, they didn't form north of the boundary so much as ride along it--good for us. (The 500 mb winds were a little more westerly.)

So 3 storms initiated. Because of positioning and road options we decided to target the middle storm of the 3. Well, it briefly looked good, with tight rotation and dropping a wall cloud. (I might have pictures later.)

Then the storm got all outflow surge-y. And the north storm got tornado warned with reports. It looked really good on RADAR and it was only a half hour away so we went for it.

And of course, just as we got to it, it went all outflow-y. Actually the entire line of storms did. Poo.

So we went back southwest and caught some really beautiful storms-in-the-distance shots and went back to the hotel.

Another good day, and the future brings more hope. Today we will be in the Lubbock-Wichita Falls area chasing the same boundary before it finally goes away, and then a couple of intriguing days are on tap for the balance of the week.

Regardless, this is a great trip.

Day 2: surging outflow

The morning analysis showed a triple point setup with the dryline intersecting the outflow from last night's storms somewhere west of Amarillo.

Thing is, the convergence was so strong along the boundary and the capping so weak north of it that the storms started going up shortly after noon. They were all outflow-dominant and all ended up very quickly on the north side of the boundary.

One storm in particular looked good on RADAR but because it was north of the boundary it had very little tornado chance. Acting on a hunch, I made a bet with Paul that that storm would get tornado warned.

I won myself a Coke.

We went for dinner in Amarillo and then went outside to see storms off to our southwest. We decided to try for some lightning shots so set off to Hereford. The storm decided to get really spinny and hooky, and it got tornado warned. We went up close to see what it looked like, illuminated by the lightning. It was pretty outflowy, supported by the outflow winds in it, and so we came back to Amarillo.

The hotel, which we had booked about 8 hours earlier, didn't have our rooms ready. 8 hours. Are you kidding me?

Tomorrow looks like today except with a more westerly component to the 500 mb winds. Wish us luck!

Day 1 picture

I promised a pic of the LP supercell and here it is.

Day 1: ups and downs

We started off the morning sitting in Des Moines, IA, with an initial target of the western border between Nebraska and Kansas.

Long story short, we ended up in Trenton, NE, watching towers go up north of us, watching storms on RADAR in Colorado and watching a tower rocket up southeast of us.

The storms got mushy to the north and there was some disagreement about the southeast option, so we ended up driving to Colorado to see storms die and one re-form. We finally got an LP supercell in eastern Colorado. Pictures will come later.

On a side note, I have forgotten my cell phone charger at home, so it's dead. I can't get texts and I certainly can't get any calls.

Day 2 looks like Dalhart, TX. Wish us luck! And Justin, thanks. :)

Justin's advice to Dave over the next few days...

Dave...

NW Kansas looks good tomorrow (Friday)...the flow at 500mb is a bit messy...but that should resolve itself in the next couple of model runs. Tomorrow's little impulse on WV looks to be rounding the base of the trough late today/early tomorrow. Aside from that everything else looks good. I'd target somewhere West and North of Hays, Kansas....looks like a potential dryline/warm front play...capping may be an issue meaning storms will fire later...but you should be able squeeze enough daylight out to see something good. Given the time of year and upcoming solstice should allow for good storm visibility till at least 9:30pm if under the anvil.

Saturday looks like a wiper-blade play...your guess is as good as mine in terms of a target area...but right now I'd say Beaver to Buffalo, Oklahoma...that's right I said Beaver! Greatest shear profiles will reside around there and the cold wedge of doom will definitely trigger something.

Sunday looks good again in South Central Kansas if the return flow can set up after the Cold fropa from Saturday....target area? Somewhere near Wichita... Beyond that...who knows!!!

Anyhoots...it's unfortunate that you can't chase today...I'd be somewhere near Sidney, Nebraska today waiting for the mothership around 6pm!

chasse d'orage de bonne chance!

Where to go, when to leave?

We're looking at things and wondering whether to leave today for a chase tomorrow in western KS or whether to leave tomorrow for a chase tomorrow in eastern NE.

My vote is for Kansas--leaving today. The instability looks pretty similar in both locations; however, the shear looks good in KS and not good at all in NE.

There are some logistical reasons that we would have to hold off on going, but I hope they can be worked out.

Big risk and big reward is on tap. Let's see if we take the risk.

Dave's going chasing with CoD

So I leave in the morning for a chase with CoD. We're planning on leaving Thursday to be in place for a Friday chase. The pattern looks good to catch some good storms, especially on the first couple of days of the chase. Here's hoping!

I plan on blogging about the chase here, when I can. But other links that will help you keep up with us are here:

Our GPS location
Our Twitter account (I will likely be tweeting)
Paul's blog

Keep up!

My Baca Co. and Cimarron Co. Memorial Day Tornado Video

Well here is my video of the tornadoes that occurred in SE Colorado and NW Oklahoma on May 31st, 2010. It was a beautiful storm...enjoy!

Review of model forecasts vs. where storms were most severe

While I have a bit of time, I will wrap up talking about the futility of where storms will be, based on (especially extended) model output. I will write a date, the locations in the various forecasts and the actual location in parentheses. This should be fun.

May 29: Brandon, MB; Minot, ND; Dickinson, ND; Scottsbluff, NE; Ogallala, NE; Glendive, MT; Chamberlain, SD; Ogallala, NE (Mission, SD)

May 30: Wall, SD; Omaha, NE; Limon, CO; Salina, KS; nowhere; Lusk, WY (Enid, OK)

May 31: Beatrice, NE; Topeka, KS; nowhere; Oklahoma City, OK; Broadus, MT; Garden City, KS; Brush, CO (Campo, CO) (note that this day, a beautiful tornado day, had a few forecasts saying "nowhere")

June 1: Hebron, NE; Lusk, WY; Yuma, CO; Lusk, WY; NE/KS; Ogallala, NE (Omaha, NE)

Wow, what sucky forecasts. Is there any wonder I don't trust forecast models very much? Yes I know I use them, and they're usually pretty good in the 24 hour range, but aside from that--no way!

June 1, 2010: big day expected, crap day ensued

Wow, that was so unbelievably anticlimactic. After a) yesterday's unexpected awesomeness and b) today's expected awesome-er-ness, the actual happening for the day was really a let-down.

We started the morning in Dodge City, Kansas (KDDC, my fave, as DDC are my initials) and bombed northwest to be in place for initiation. We stopped for an awesome lunch at Hog Wild Pit BBQ in Salina and took off north. We saw anvils way ahead of us, anvils from a morning MCS that was going on over southern South Dakota and northern Nebraska. ACC dotted the sky and as we got into Nebraska a fairly juicy field of cumulus clouds greeted us. Good omens all.

As many know, I'm an ingredients-based forecaster. I love just breaking forecasting severe thunderstorms down into forecasting the component ingredients: moisture, instability, shear and trigger. Well, the 4 were well-satisfied. For moisture, we had surface dewpoints in the low 2os Celsius. Instability was plentiful, with widespread 3000+ J/kg of MLCAPE over most of Nebraska. Wind shear was good, with 40 knots or more of deep-layer shear over the area. Low-level shear was not bad and forecast to improve with the onset of the nocturnal low-level jet. Further, low-level shear was to be maximized along the outflow boundary.

So what was the problem?

In short, I don't know, and all of us in the vehicle are trying to figure it out.

I think it was or could have been a couple of things. First off, an early- to mid-morning MCS also hit southern Nebraska. This could have overturned the atmosphere, making it much more stable than the models led us to believe. Second off, the low-level jet may have been a bit too late to counteract the outflow dominance of the storms that kept going from the northern Nebraska MCS. Third, the timing of the upper wave and therefore the major lift appears to have been a bit earlier than we would have preferred, as it meant the formation of a surface low near Lincoln, NE and veered winds (and therefore less low-level directional shear) made for less convergence at peak time.

All in all, for all the hype:





We got a bow echo-ish thing. It had a bookend vortex tornadic supercell on its north end, near Omaha. But otherwise ... nothing worth looking at. Even the shelf cloud of the storm was only okay.

So Dee and I have night shifts tomorrow night, so we stopped at Jazz in Omaha for dinner (very good Louisiana food) and are now heading to Brookings, SD with our tails between our legs from today.

Don't get me wrong: this trip was a total success, and we said yesterday that anything we saw today would be gravy.

But still, that gravy was pretty insipid.

June 1st, 2010: Big Day Expected

We are currently driving to York, Nebraska to wait for initiation. Tornado chances look great for us and everyone chasing today although the set up is a bit worrisome in terms of the area that may be affected and the size of the hail that might fall. The SPC has upgraded to a moderate risk and will likely issue a PDS (Particularly Dangerous Situation) Watch later this afternoon due to the possibility of monster hail and strong tornadoes

I'm going to try and stream live today via justin.tv since we will likely be in a great reception area. I've embedded the stream to this blog...hopefully it works out.

Watch live video from Winnipeg, Manitoba Storm Chasers on Justin.tv