Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Upcoming severe chances...

I think we've got more of a mid-late June pattern taking effect here, which is really going to favor two areas. Those two areas being the upslope flow along the Rockies, namely in central/eastern Colorado into western Nebraska and Wyoming and the other being the midwest in areas from the NE/IA/MN/IL corridor.

Their should be several good days along the front range of the Rockies where upslope flow interacting with any shortwaves ejecting eastward could net some sculpted supercells and potential landspout play for high plains chasers.

Further east we'll see the late June style pattern set in, with a stationary boundary stretching from Nebraska into the mid-Mississippi valley under at times very favorable NW flow. Typically you'll see a severe threat anywhere along this stationary front as it wobbles north and south, being enhanced by any embedded shortwaves in the NW flow, and any outflow boundaries from overnight convection. It's certainly not everyone's first pick, but you can come away with some beefy supercells early on from these setups, often of the HP variety. It's not the first choice for tornado viewing, but can be fruitful from a convective standpoint. The Interstate 80 corridor from Grand Island, NE to Chicago, IL is often a good place to be during a pattern such as this.

We'll see how things play out. Late May and early June instability will be in place, but whether we get some good waves embedded in the NW flow will be the key. Already looks like a potentially good day in eastern Iowa on Friday if enough moisture can arrive in time behind this tropical low that's finally moving on out.

7 comments:

Dann Cianca said...

I'll drink to high plains chasin'! What the hell is happening to the Cubbies!?

Andrew Pritchard said...

As long as we play the rest of our 110 games at Wrigley, we'll be fine!

But we should probably keep bats out of Zambrano's hands for a while.

Anonymous said...

zambrano needs to go to anger management

Unknown said...

What about Missouri? This year has sucked big time. I don't have the freedom to chase, so I like to take in what I can locally. Big let down season!

Anonymous said...

you ever come up in wisconsin?

Andrew Pritchard said...

I actually have a summer home on a lake in central Wisconsin (near the town of Oxford; population 400).

I don't frequently "chase" Wisconsin, but will humor any local setups that come in while I'm vacationing at the lake. Have used it as a home base to chase Minnesota, however.

Anonymous said...

thats pretty cool. I don't know if you know where winneconne is but I live just east of there.. 8 mi ne of oshkosh.. every couple summers we usually get some small funnels poking around. I got a good shot of a wall cloud a couple summers ago. pretty crazy when you see like 5 tails drop down and then they all turn and combine into one huge funnel.