Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Rogue svr / spin up in northern IL Tuesday?

I'm weirdly excited about convective chances tomorrow afternoon (technically later today now). There isn't much shear to speak of, so supercells are not going to be a potential threat, and that would pretty well eliminate tornadoes. That said, there will be plenty of instability, with LI's around -7 bullseyed over northern Illinois to the south of a slowly southward sinking boundary during the afternoon. It looks like things could stay capped for a majority of the day, but given extremely strong surface convergence we should see scattered thunderstorms erupt around 5 PM.

Tomorrow looks like a potentially big downburst day with scattered damaging wind reports with any storms that go up, as indicated by the inverted-V soundings found across the area. Strong vorticity along the boundary near the surface with strong NE winds colliding with warm SW flow lead me to believe that a landspout tornado or two is possible early in the development of convection. This isn't a given, and the odds of me or another person looking for such a thing are extremely slim.

Tuesday's are my most free day of the week, so I'll be keeping an eye out locally. If things had been more dry I'd hope for some photogenic dust plumes along any potential downbursts, but I'm not sure that will be the case.

Whether or not I head out to try and find some convective fun depends on how quickly the boundary begins sinking southward. A stagnant slowly sinking boundary will lure me out a lot quicker than if that things starts surging south earlier in the afternoon. I'd like to setup somewhere near Interstate 80. How about Moline to Ottawa for initial development around 4-5 PM, slowly sinking south through the evening? I'm not at all in "chase mode" yet, but given the right look to things I might be lured out on a wild goose hunt.

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