Chase Log: May 23rd, 2006

Click on any of the SPC products below (Convective Outlooks, Watches, or MCDs) to see the SPC's "Severe Thunderstorm Events" page pertaining to this event.

MAP

Total Distance: 780 miles
Target Area: Concordia, KS, to Hebron, NE
Chase Area: Near Concordia, KS
Maximum SPC Risk category: Slight
Watches: Tornado Watch 381, Severe Watches 380, 383, and 384
Mesoscale Discussions (MCDs): 950, 952, 955, 957, and 958

Well, after a couple of weeks of very deep, persistent troughing in the eastern US, the Gulf of Mexico had been pillaged a couple of times by strong cold fronts. The propsects for getting any >65F dewpoints north of I40 looked tough, but things looked good enough to take the long haul northward. With the next 10 days looking quite poor from a chase perspective, I had extra motivation to grasp at any straws mother nature was holding.

Gabe, Dan, Brandon, and I headed towards the KS/NE border with the hope that the >60F dewpoints wouldn't entirely mix out. A shortwave trough was ejecting into the plains in a negative-tilt fashion, but weakening as it moved into the strong ridge. We sat just west of Belleville and Mankato for much of the late afternoon and early evening, watching storms try to persist but ultimately do little. Several updrafts were relatively persistent, but they were, largely, quite small and moved northeastward into NE. We kept hoping that we'd get a good southern-end supercell, but we never really saw any supercell structure at all with any of the updrafts. Several of them had nice, nearly rock-hard towers from time-to-time, but they looked to pulse a little. By 7pm, it was obvious that it just wasn't going to happen.

Frustration with the season continues. As has been a common theme, the marginal moisture likely prevented a more significant supercell and tornado threat from developing across the target area. >35kt 850mb flow helped create respectable low-level shear, but instability was low and LCLs/LFCs were very high owing to the marginal dewpoints (58-63F dewpoints with 85-92F temperatures). This season continues to look bleak for the plains, as the flow is progged to stay well north of I70, with relatively strong upper-level ridging pushing chasing potential north of I80 or I90 (or even north of the US/Canada border). Ugh. I thought 2005 was bad and never thought we'd see another poor year. Thank goodness for 4-24-06 El Reno tornadoes, that's for sure.

05-23-2006 Chase Pictures

Click on any photo to see a larger version