Tornado Central

No time to post much in the way of updates lately. I think the only significant event that happened since the last post was a crazy tornado-fest on 4-23 in southwestern Kansas. We saw ~7 tornadoes in the span of about 45-60 minutes, including one time during which there were 3 tornadoes on the ground concurrently. I've certainly never seen that before!

Tomorrow looks like a potentially excellent chase day in Kansas. I'm concerned about initiation and the location of dryline / triple point by late afternoon. The NCEP models have been quite underwhelming in terms of accurate dryline position (even the 12hr forecasts -- see 3-28-07), so I'm not sure what to think. Forecast hodographs display an excellent shear profile by 0z ahead of a dryline bulge in western Kansas.

Kim and I are leaving for Lauren's wedding Florida sometime early-to-mid morning on Saturday. As such, I'm not too keen on driving N of I70 tomorrow, since that'll likely mean an arrival back in OKC-area around 3-4am... If we leave ~8am Saturday, that doesn't leave much in the way of sleep.

Speaking of Saturday... Looking at the 18z GFS and NAM, it looks like Saturday could see the best potential for a violent tornado outbreak that the Plains has seen in at least 3 years. The last time I saw a setup this favorable was 5-29-04, and that day was a little disappointing in terms of storm coverage (unless you were on the supercell in southcentral KS, in which case it didn't matter ;) ). Otherwise, I need to go back to the May 4-May 8 2003 time period to find a chase setup that resembles, in terms of areal extend and intensity of potentially-tornadic supercells, what we should see Saturday. Alas, I knew months ago that the only time during which I cannot chase this spring (May 5-8) would turn out to be a major outbreak time. Oh well -- I can't complain too much given how good of a season I've had so far this year. And hey, a lot can change in 48 hours. I wouldn't be surprised, however, to see a High Risk on the Day 2 outlook tomorrow.