Gorky

Nice rotation on the cell SE if Abilene showing on Andy Gabrielson's cam.. http://www.severestudios.com/livechase

18z is still very nice and quite similar to the 6z and 12z runs... Still plenty of time for it to change though as we've already seen

Nice surprise storm just passed north of town here. Frequent lightning but I've been drinking so no chance to go anywhere to take photos.. Thought we were gonna miss out but this thing erupted from nowhere as it hit the North York Moors. Hope the cells to the SW also pep up a bit as more chance of some window lightning if they track over the town!

I remember last year speaking with Pat about the outlook when I landed (may 7th) and the models were not that great. They showed a lower end risk for the 10th over AR, MO and eastern OK with turbo storm speeds which would not have been chaseable at all. Things changed big time and we ended up with tornadic supercells and wedges West of I35 that day (although storm speed was still an issue!) The same happened with the High risk on May 19th and previous days awesome moderate risk. They both only ramped up on the models in a couple of days prior to the event. You then have the slight risks which overperform. Bowdle was a slight risk day with a good chance of a cap bust and followed up from a very similar setup but underwhelming event the day before. May 26th and the campo day were both 2% tor days which spawned amazing storms which the netweather guys were on and nobody saw those coming. That's the reason I'd never get too dejected about the models. Even without great upper support, there's chances for isolated severe to go tornadic and the models are far from perfect, so you'll often get the odd surprise creep in, even into the 3-4 day outlooks. It's all part of the fun of chasing

This morning still has an event on the 3rd though, but rather than upslope NM, it's showing a decent threat from the Dakota's possibly as far south as Kansas Whilst it still flips every update for now (it's T312 for the 3rd!), at least it's a few runs that show the ridging is not going to be the permanent deathridgy type to contradict some of the earlier models

For what it's worth, the 18z isn't so bad. It has chase opportunities in the Dallas area on the 30th and rather than a death ridge, the ridge is just transient before the next reload with possible upslope plays on the 3rd in the TX panhandle or NM. I'd only get worried once you are in the 4-5 day period myself as the models are still changing somewhat each run. Nothing on the 18z look special but there would be plenty of opportunities towards the later parts of the forecast foe chasing still... who knows what lies past T384 too.. could be an outbreak of epic proportions at T420 we can't see

Gotta love a chase where the most significant tornado of the day passes within 5 miles of your target I'm sure if I'd actually been there though, I'd probably have left Litchfield towards the Bowling Green cell and ended up missing both somehow or other

Very strong radar sig on the storm by the MO/IL border. Confirmed tornado per the last warning update.

Forecast surface winds are backed slightly in IL along the warm front as per last nights GFS. Some insane cape values SW into MO (6500+) but the warm front play is still my choice. Will start in Lichfield S of Springfield and NE of St Louis, I'll make do with just 3500j/kg of juice to play with

Yep... well that and 20 min construction road block I ran into. 13 hours on the road and miss it by half an hour and 20 miles....Doh! Wasn't fun to drive around sat on that welt for the next two weeks As for tomorrow. Not really liking the event as much as others I don't think. The NAM doesn't really impress me showing the wind fields are pretty veered or even unidirectional in places across most of the risk with only the warm front showing any reasonable shear. The GFS however backs the winds into SE MO/SW IL right around the triple point with a reasonably curved hodograph around St Louis, decent instability and LCLs which are more than doable for tornadoes, so I would probably play this area. Hopefully, the GFS is more reliable and pans out for my virtual target although I'd prefer a nice structure day rather than another outbreak given the week they are having!

The Louisiana bridge crossing is also guarded by huge vicious bees as I found out in 2009 ouch....

Had to go to bed early Friday night as I was away all weekend at the BTCC race event at Donington. Just catching up with the events now as I had no Internet access since Friday night and it's pretty sombering. At the time I'd gone to bed there were no reports of fatalities and I hoped that somehow everyone had been incredibly lucky... The scope of the event doesn't surprise though. It was certianly a potent system but the changes on Friday models with the strengthening of the secondary low really changed things for Saturday and Sunday.

Holy crap! Reed was right there in Clinton.. Sickening footage.. Look at the motion... In HD, you can see a couple of cars thrown across the highway at incredible speeds at about 50 seconds in. Hopefully they were empty and lofted from a nearby car park.....

3/4 mile wide tornado crossing into Alabama from near Scooba, MS. Looks like it may have grazed the North side of the town.

This was the beast which tore through Clinton, MS earlier. :o Another very strong signature near De Kalb, ms at the moment

http://www.newson6.com/category/184619/severe-weather-embedded-live-stream-kotv2?redirected=true Nice stream from Tulsa News with 2 choppers in the air

The 6z GFS is essentially the exact oppposite of the 0z model on Day 16. Massive trough out west, ample moisture being pumped into the plains and temps into the 30's in texas at midnight! Exactly the model you'd like to see for the day you land with probably outbreaks as the trough ejects into the plains. Just goes to show how random the models are at this range.

On the plus side, if that trough was a day or two later reaching the plains, it'd be the best possible pattern Given the GFS tends to be a bit fast ejecting troughs, even 3 or 4 days out, at 16 days, you are probably golden with that chart! (not entirely serious here)

I'd be tending towards the northern part of the target area. Winds are nicely backed in S KS but their is only a narrow axis of instability with 60 dews only just nosing into the state. Reminds me somewhat of May 10th last year which had the same issues in the northern end of the risk area but performed well in the end with a few tornadoes up into KS and the Medford beast close to the border in NC OK. Everything here is shifted East into slightly unfavourable terrain though. I'm reasonable confident that we'll see a fair few tornadoes tomorrow as it stands now but I may need to readjust that once I see more models tonight

Seemed like a somewhat underwhelming day compared to the 9th with most tornadoes reported not particularly chaseable. Tomah was a great starting point for the southern tornadic cell, and I hope I'd have been close with the northern one near Eau Claire. I noted a really nice signature on a cell down near DFW this morning which wasn't Tor warned until a little later, and would not be surprised to see a report south of the metro area too. Don't think Stuart and the others who landed yesterday to start their trip stayed up for the storms unfortunately, though I imagine they'd have been woken as they rumbled through!

I'm going to be on that highway East of Eau Clair heading towards Abbotford as mentioned earlier. Will watch the 2 cells just s of Eau Claire pass by, but it the cell on it's own just south near Winona which I will try to intercept - unlesss the eau claire cells become quickly tornadic As I type... the Eau Claire cell goes Tor Warned...

Terrain would be near impossible with the storm speeds in the best areas I think. I may be tempted to chase around Eua Clair, East towards Abbotsford purely as its the best terrain in the target area which should see storms before dark, and decent road options are a must with the storm motion forecast. There's a lot of farmland with some gridded roads and it is reasonably flat. Much of the rest of Wisconsin is hilly and quite wooded. This would mean missing out on earlier storms firing further west in the hope that cells stay discrete and arrive in this target area around 23z.

The night reminds me eerily of May 4th 2007. Large Wedge reported with this storm. Apparently clipped Timmers car and forced them into a ditch. He isn't even chasing in the Dominator at the moment as it is getting a refit and he seems stuck. Radar Grab:

Reed TimmerReed Timmer: Meteorologist and Extreme Storm Chaser Two large tornadoes on ground. Now looks well over a mile wide. Close range.

MAssive bowl wall cloud now forming around the narrow cone tornado... Looks like ti may be in the process of wedging out...