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.