The first time I saw the original Tor:Con was when the 4 of us were chasing on our May/June trip, you know, the one where we saw the Campo, CO tornado. While we would have breakfast each morning, most hotels would have TWC on in the breakfast area. And each morning they would tout this new (to us, at least) concept that they had come up with: the Tor:Con or tornado condition. They would discuss the areas of the country where they figured there was a chance of tornadoes and ascribe it a number, from 1 to 10, of how serious the tornado threat (or "condition", apparently) would be that day.
And Justin went and gleeped this concept. And made it his own.
Lameicus! :P
As for the content of the post, I tend to agree on most fronts; however, I have to inject this piece of wisdom I gained this summer while chasing with CoD.
Justin said, "Again the directional shear will be great...and the speed shear won't be bad either!" Now both being good is a bonus, but I've become a big believer in directional shear, if the storm-relative hodograph is good. The case that makes me think of this was the tough chase in NE and CO. Ultimately, the decision was made to leave the KS storm complex because the hodograph, while very loopy, didn't have the upper flow component that we look for. It did, though, have flow from amazingly different directions at different heights, and only of moderate magnitude, but apparently it was enough to put out multiple tornadoes.
My thinking here is that the hodograph, if loopy enough, doesn't have to be as long as it otherwise would be.
Now that being said, I don't know if all of the above applies to Alberta. Jet stream + Alberta = bad. Maybe the upper flow is more important than the crossing jets like we see farther out onto the plains.
Anyhow, this jet looks impressive: 70 knots at 250? Nice. I agree with the (ugh) HobTor:Con. I think, as long as there's more than a little instability, supercells will happen and the chance of tornadoes is heightened.
And here i thought he was nerdy enough to think of that himself. haha :P That's kind of funny.
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