Gorky

Personally I'd prefer the types of patterns with the Jet stream well north before a trip out. Get the quiet period out of the way, and with a northern jet stream, you don't tend to get the gulf scoured of moisture so frequently. Moisture tends to pool across the plains and everything is primed for the first trough to ejected into the plains. Meanwhile, severe is often still possible in the northern plains, and over the Great Lakes/OV with NWerly flow events. I know I'd be more worried if things were really active right now before flying out as we'd probably be missing the best of the action! Dave - Here's the netweather GFS US run http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=usacharts;sess= Cheers

You can be quite close if the car in front is kicking up some spray, to the point that the rainbow is mere metres in front of you... but yeah. you're never gonna catch it Here's a vid cap from one of my EXTREME RAINBOW CHASES over in the states /end Reed Timmer mode/

Have one colleague who's decided to work from home due to snow up on the higher parts of the moors. It was even a touch sleety in Scarborough this morning walking to work. Not a nice walk in though it certainly woke me up

Out of interest, what's your plans for today? I noticed you made it up all the way to Hays yesterday. I presume it's a trip back down to NW OK today, or are you going to play a lower threat area into KS to keep flexible for saturday? These are the sort of decisions I hate when storm chasing you always have to worry when the outlook itself looks like a tornado :o

Weirdly, they could maintain the 60% tomorrow and drop to a moderate risk if the current 60% is entirely for hail threat 60% Tornado chance is very rare. Only happened once on April 7th 2006 if I remember rightly. Last years super outbreak only mustered a 45% (although a 90% would easily have verified around huntsville!!!). Given the expected widespread nature of the outbreak tomorrow, I'm expecting larger risk area at lower probabilities, maybe pushing 45% if a focusing mechanism for initiation is obvious early on in the day.

I don't ever recall seeing a day 2 High risk issued in the morning. They are rare enough in the afternoon of Day 2! A little surprised they have so much confidence given they don't seem overly confident about today still and a lot about tomorrow will depend on what happens this evening, but it's obviously pretty clear there is going to be widespread storms at least after dark. By 0z, the NAM precip chart is still only showing a small blip north of Wichita on the Dryline (although this is superimposed of a small area of backing winds) with discrete cells firing towards dusk down in OK. Given a few boundaries from this evenings predicted storms which won't be modelled, I'd expect initiation to be less of an issue during daylight hours as the models make out, however.

I'm liking the look of NW Ks here... Colby/Goodland area. Seems like a higher chance of storms, better helicity, though more meager moisture. The more isolated storms down south may be a nicer chase target, presuming they pop though

Eastern Nebraska and much of Iowa should be under the gun too. Seems like a potent warm front setup in addition storms firing off the dryline.

It certainly does have all the hallmarks of a big event. The day 3 moderate has historically been somewhat of a curse on events... although that was well and truly broken with the day 3 moderate issued on April 25th last year. I remember the 3 day moderate back in 2009 which ended up being a mainly wind event though (with Kirksville being the only notable tornado) and that looked pretty good 3 days out. Given there are a number of large communities right in the firing line, I wouldn't be too upset to see this underperform... Wichita and OKC will both be in the firing line.

Saturday just looks plain disgusting at the moment as far as tornadic potential. With a couple of events before then, there's a lot that can change but currently, the GFS, ECM and UKM all show a higher end severe threat. With so much happening between now and then though, still plenty of chances for it to back down. I'm away at a wedding that day, Touring Cars at Donington on Sunday and a staff leaving do on Friday so I'll have to sit out the virtual chases this time around but should be plenty of activity on the streams this weekend for those with an internet connection! Wouldn't be surprised to see a few tors on Thursday too although moisture return is more of an issue for a widespread outbreak. Looking into next week, there would be plenty of activity in the southern plains through till about Wednesday too..

This is the Forney tornado from Brandon Sullivan's cam... Looks like a monster

Stout cone in Dallas county.. David Reimer reporting a violent wedge in Tarrant county heading for Arlington.. OMG...

Tornado Emergencies for both Dallas and Tarrant Counties.. 2 tornadoes on the ground in the DFW metro...

Live tornado in Dallas at the moment.. http://www.wfaa.com/video?id=139367478&sec=553117

Reading through some of the American forums, it really kicked off in Nebraska last night after dark. A lot of damage in North Platte and a significant looking tornadic supercell passing through the wilderness near Valentine later on. This was all well North of the 2% tornado risk although still in the slight risk area for hail. Today looks like it could be very nasty if there is enough clearing and storm mode stays discrete for a while. Hodographs are nicely curved throughout the I35 corridor, so I'd imagine there'll be strong rotation embedded within any lines anyway but I would not be surprised to see a few strong tornadoes today, despite the lack of a hatched area

Does look pretty juicy over there. One of the model runs a couple of days ago showed 70/60 temp/dp reaching well into Manitoba with an attendent threat of severe weather including tornadoes. It's backed down a bit on the Northern extent of the upcoming spell but I imagine it's pretty rare to get severe up into Canada that early... The event looks a little reminiscent of March 28th 2007, at least as far as location and the early nature of the setup. That was ultimately a moderate setup which massively overperformed with tornadoes through Texas, OK, KS, CO and NE. Obviously a lot can change and there are plenty of differences here but these setups can perform well, despite being early in the season...

Americanwx.com is a pretty 'noob' friendly forum which is very active (although it sometimes can be hard to find the Severe threads as they partition off by geographical area which is awkward during outbreaks which span multiple areas). There's a good range of discussion from pretty high level forecasting to your more usual amateur failcasts although it does tend to suffer from a bit of bickering and OT posting at times:) Also, there is TalkWeather.com which usaully get a good thread going for the big events (75+ pages on the last 2 outbreaks) but generally seems a little more laid back. the 2 main chaser forums are Stormtrack.org and Chasersforum.com. Stormtrack has a nice introductory forum and a good forecasts area but you'd be expected to be somewhat knowledgable if you were to participate. Still very good for the lurker and learner. ChasersForum tries to keep itself pretty locked down to all but the hardened Chaser. There are public forums, but a lot of the info is locked away for only the 'most dedicated chaser'. I tried applying but have not yet been accepted. Apparently spending 20% of my income and driving 8000+ each year on chaser trips isn't enough Both the last two only really pick up activity during the main tornado season...

Looks like it could be close for me. But I'm about as North as you can get looking at that map without much cloud on the horizon, and a nice flat sea to look out over so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that NAM is accurate or at least overdoing the cloud if not... Camera's charged up and I hope to be out of the door for about 8pm tonight... Gonna head up the caost to Ravenscar if I can. Concerned about the brightness of the moon if this ends up in any way marginal...

To be fairm Tornado Sirens are not even intended for any use other than an outdoors warning siren. The expectation is that people should use NOAA weather radios as their primary source of severe weather information and warning. Much more information can be given through this medium than with the use of sirens which have a very limited range of tones. For some reason though, takeup of weather radios is very low, despite them being heavily subsidised and very cheap. Think my weather radio cost about $13 which is nothing for something which can save your life... I do think there is an element of anti-government sentiment which will make any federally enforced NOAA radio laws fail in certain areas of the USA. People in general don't like being told what to do, even if it is for their own good.

I've chased once in Nebraska in 5 years. For one of the more frequent tornado hotspots, looking at it statistically, I've never had any real need to go to Nebraska unless heading through to South Dakota. The one chase I've had in Nebraska was immensly fun though - 30th May 2011. Nothing but Gustnadoes but some of them were amazing and there were too many to count with many occasions with multiple gustnadoes in all directions at the same time. Was an awesome moment when the field to the left of me just lifted up to the sky pretty much. Very surreal. As far as the Joplin storm goes, I'm not sure if you've seen it but there is some pretty scary video out there from a young couple who went out for a drive as the tornado came through up to the point they were hit at the Walmart on Range Line. They were just North of the store and in the Northern quadrant of the tornado so I think the building blocked the worst of the winds and they survived, but the tornado was at EF5 strength at that time so they were incredibly lucky. It's another video which shows it pretty much turning to night and you really can't see anything. They know they were in a bad situation and the poster clearly is upset at his reactions in the video if you read the description but it's interesting how people react under such stressful situation

Salyersville, KY under the gun now. Another 150kt g2g hook echo with debris ball on it's doorstep.

Cell which went through West Liberty has cycled. Massive couplet again and heading in the direction of Chesapeake, WV. Plenty of rural forest in the way but at it's current speed, It's probably there in under 30 mins. Hope it doesn't hold up as that is a very populated area.

This was posted on another forum I've been participating on tonight. http://madusweather.com/misc/2012_03/20120302_KYdebrisball_loop.gif (Courtesy Mark Ellinwood) You can really see how unlucky they were with the right moving motion. To make matters worse, it appears as though it resumed it's WNW motion and occluded just in time to hit Moon which would have been North of the path had it kept right moving. Sometimes you get the feeling these tornadoes are just aiming for towns these days...

EMA already reporting fatalities in West Liberty according to someone listening into local scanners

Courthouse damaged in West Liberty. That is the dead centre of town, and the town runs main East-WEst along the path of the tornado. This could be a horrible disaster if it was as strong as the velocity couplet indicated.