Early Next Week

Still hedging between whether or not I want to make a long trip out west the end of this weekend or early next week. My current standing is not going. I'll keep watching the models to allow them to potentially persuade me otherwise. Outside factor that may persuade me to take the gamble will be the fact that I have the entire week off, and it will be hard to chase a three-day block again until mid-May.

Day 1 of interest is Sunday. In some ways Sunday actually looks better than the "Big Talk" day of the week, Monday. Southern Nebraska is the "would be" target for Sunday. Doable moisture with td's in the upper 50's with excellent low level shear will boost EHI's to 2-3 in a bulls eye in SC Nebraska. The lack of upper level support is worrisome, but this event may lean more towards low-topped supercells so H5 level winds may not be as big a factor in this one.

Day 2 will fall on Monday. This day has been talked about by chasers in the plains for almost a week now. I can't seem to get excited about it yet. The early season factor is probably playing into the hype, as many chasers haven't seen such a dynamic system for many months, which may make the current prog's seem much more "perfect!" than they really are. H5 winds southerly and parallel to the dryline, td's only in the mid to upper 50s and only a narrow band of CAPE near 1000 j/kg are only a few of the limiting factors for this one.

Day 3, and probably the weakest of the setups (but the CLOSEST) is of course, Tuesday. The Iowa/Nebraska border shows some promise with this one, as does the much more unfavorable terrain of southern Missouri and Arkansas. This one is even further out than the others, so it's not worth nailing down specifics.

It's early in the year, so I'm trying to not blow a ton of money on a marginal setup built mostly on hype. Limiting factors aside, it IS a very potent system that needs watching. As stated, I'm going to keep the mindset of staying home, and go from there rather than allowing to convince myself that I should or need to go after this one. If I went, I'd like to try and hit southern Nebraska for a teaser but possibly fruitful day on Sunday, and then drop south to southern Kansas or Oklahoma on Monday for the linear convective mess.