Chase Day 7 Discussion - NW Texas

[Nick F]

Looks like east or northeast of Wichita Falls towards the I-35 maybe best area for tornado potential:

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/md/md0644.html

Quietly crept in this risk for severe storms today, sometimes these sly risks can actually deliver the goods, storms over the Red River in Oklahoma, but rather disorganised ATM, hopefully more discrete cells can fire further south.

Edited May 15, 2013 by Nick F

[samadamsuk]

Lets hope so Roger. I seem to have lost most of my forecasting links - better get my eye in for next spring when I go out. Where is everyone by the way? - I would have thought this thread would be buzzing ..

 

Sam

[chionomaniac]

Sweetwater cell topping topping out at 40000ft

[Arron]

Really dodgy inet here, sorry guys! Stream is working now and again so keep persisting! Heading towards Haskell to watch the bubbles brew!

[Tom Lynch]

ATM

 

 

 

[Tom Lynch]

and another

 

[samadamsuk]

superb!

[chionomaniac]

Sweetwater cell severe warned now

[Nick F]

Probably as dodgy as my internet connection using a mobile connection in the sticks of Kent, unfortunately won't be watching the stream tonight on my tablet, will be relying on you guys to fill me in on what's happening.

[Arron]

Dropping further south towards Stamford, tower going up loverly

[chionomaniac]

Dropping further south towards Stamford, tower going up loverly

Good growth on that cell, looks promising

[samadamsuk]

hey all.

 

Cant help but think here that the dry lines pushed through in the target area - someone please correct me though as I'm no expert here -

[Tom Lynch]

And again

 

 

 

[nsrobins]

Lets hope so Roger. I seem to have lost most of my forecasting links - better get my eye in for next spring when I go out. Where is everyone by the way? - I would have thought this thread would be buzzing ..

 

Sam

The important people are in here Sam

And a stormchaser never loses his links - shame on you LOL.

[Tom Lynch]

and there is more

 

 

 

[Nick F]

2 inch hail on cell just north of Wichita Falls

[nsrobins]

hey all.

 

Cant help but think here that the dry lines pushed through in the target area - someone please correct me though as I'm no expert here -

20Z surface Obs (coutesy DuPage). DL still out about 40 miles E of Lubbock.

[Tom Lynch]

with vis sat added in

 

[chionomaniac]

Latest dryline and DP's Sam

 

 

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/mesoanalysis/new/viewsector.php?sector=15#

 

[Tom Lynch]

another

 

 

 

[bristolstormchaser]

The stream is showing a nice storm developing, will stay glued as long as I can, good luck! :-)

[samadamsuk]

perfect. thanks Neil & Chino,

 

Charles Edwards has an intermittent view of this cell - cooking nicely,, http://www.chasertv.com/

[Roger J Smith]

On the question of the dry line, this is a rather diffuse dry line, it is probably in the vicinity of the two cells north and west of Abilene, dew points ahead of it are 15-18 C and behind it about 7-12 C. These are relatively gentle moisture gradients for a west Texas dry line. It's probably more like an old M front than a dry line.

[samadamsuk]

thanks Roger. Stunning views on the stream, although I'm only getting occasional connections

[Roger J Smith]

This is for new readers and maybe one or two not new readers, almost everything you might want for guidance short-term is on this page:

 

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/

 

and if you click on mesoanalysis, go to southern plains then try out all the surface and upper air (UA) links, you'll see everything clearly laid out there.

 

They had some heavy rainfalls and snow melt in the TX panhandle earlier this year and I suspect it is greener than past years, maybe the team could comment on that. Green of course means better evapo-transpiration and higher dew points in dry air masses, the moist air masses rely more on Gulf of Mexico temperatures which are not perhaps quite as high as past years.

 

Old school frontal analysis has been more or less tossed in the bin but I tend to rely on it anyway being obstinate, so for that, you have three frontal groups, P (polar) which separates tropical air from whatever moderate source (usually Pacific in our case), then M front (Maritime being a transplanted name but in N American terms it's a front between Pacific and arctic air masses), then the A or Arctic front which is between modified arctic air and fresh arctic air, and sometimes you can break it down to M1/M2 and A1/A2. The dry line concept is additional rather than a substitute for anything in that set, it's the leading edge of an air mass that is either truly cT or so warmed up Pacific that it has a profile similar to cT (you can tell the difference by dew point).

 

In this particular case there's a lot of meso-scale trough rather than front activity but at a stretch, there's a P front east of the current area of interest curved northwest into OK, there's a weak M front in the vicinity of the cells, and there's a secondary M occlusion running NW-SE with a proto-dryline hanging from it west of Abilene.