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Late January Freezing Rain/Sleet/Snow in Norman

While waiting for spring, how about some images from the January 28-29 freezing rain, sleet, and snow (5.5 inches at our place) in Norman. It's been quite an active winter around here, with this recent event on the heels of a Christmas Eve blizzard. It's more snow than I've seen in my prior 6 Norman winters combined - several times over!

Tuesday, June 9 Chase

Yes, I'm still here! :) Amazingly (or sadly), I've yet to chase this year?! A number of other obligations, but otherwise a very quiet and uncooperative pattern this year (especially May). But it looks like that will change today!

Current early day thinking is to target south central KS, in the general vicinity of Wichita. Could maybe whine for a touch of higher quality moisture (especially for June), but otherwise ample vertical shear (doesn't look like any flow weakness at any level at first glance) will likely exist in vicinity of surface triple point across southern KS. It does seem as if supercells with some tornadoes will be possible later today.

Fri-Sun Summary and Mon June 2

On Friday, we decided to chase in southeast KS (versus say central IL) largely for logistical reasons. Plus, it gave us a chance to see our friend Ed Roberts in KC on the way south from St Joseph MO. We didn't have much robust development before dark along the prefrontal trough we were targeting, but we were treated to a nice lightning show after dark as we headed toward our hotel in Independence KS.

On Saturday, we ended up on two supercells in Osage Co. OK (northeast OK). We approached these storms from the west after sitting between Enid and I-35, eventually catching the storms and viewing them from the south amidst shaky terrain/road logistics. We saw two well-sustained wall clouds from the two semi-distinct supercells, but no tornadoes. We were again treated to an amazing lightning show (even better than Friday night) on our way back to Kansas City.

On Sunday, Gregg/John and I unfortunately had to say bye to Matt who had to begin driving back to ND. Leaving from KC, one potential chase logistic catastrophe we had to deal with was finding a new power supply for my Dell laptop. After visits to Radio Shack and Best Buy
in Topeka, I was thankfully able to find a suitable replacement. From there, we zipped west on I-70 to Goodland, and then north into the southern NEB panhandle. By this point,
a supercell was evolving near the Bridgeport NEB area. We would follow this picturesque/long tornado warned storm for several hours as it tracked southeastward into extreme northeast CO/far southeast NEB.

After staying in Kearney NEB last night, we are currently headed back west for hopeful supercells and perhaps a tornado a two in western Nebraska and/or northeast Colorado.

Fri May 30 / Sat May 31

Didn't see much to speak of in southeast KS Friday afternoon/evening, although we were treated to nice lightning show after dark.

Leaving from southeast KS (Independence), our initial target is the Medicine Lodge-Wellington-Alva-Enid corridor for today.  This would be a play on the outflow reinforced stalled front and associated west-east oriented moist/instability axis near the KS/OK border. Looks like it should heat up quickly across northwest TX/western OK this afternoon, and I'm envisioning deeply mixed/high based cu intercepting this west-east boundary(ies) somewhere in the aforementioned corridor mid/late afternoon. Overall thermodynamic/kinematic environment looks good for supercells, with 40 kt westerly mid level flow and nice veering profiles. I expect a few tornadoes and like the theoretically favorable storm motions parallel to the boundary, however in the contrary it seems like there'll be some pre-sunset weakness in the lowest 1 km with respect to well-sustained tornadoes. Although the boundary layer will deeply mix to the southwest, given seemingly limited large scale support, I do have a slight worry about CI much before dark given some mid level warmth -- slightly afraid of a scenario whether most of the development is late (toward dark) north of the boundary in a redeveloping WAA regime.

We'll likely head north into Nebraska/South Dakota/Iow for Sunday/Monday.

Thur May 29

In central Nebraska on Thursday, we saw a brief (1 min or less) tornado with the second (western) supercell (not the leading Kearney storm) about 8 miles south of Elm Creek (a half mile east of Hwy 183) at 520 pm. Occurred in a field and appeared to cause no damage as it neared a house.  Otherwise, we viewed at least 3 separate supercells with rotating wall clouds in south central Nebraska.  We tried to drop south into north central KS to intercept ongoing supercells, but we were too late before dark.

Wed May 28 / Thur May 29

Using Wednesday as a northward relocation day, Gregg/Matt/John and I ended up chasing into eastern Colorado near Kit Carson. We watched an isolated severe-warned storm transition into an LP supercell with a well-sustained/weakly rotating wall cloud. Viewing this storm for about an hour from south/east of Kit Carson, we watched it literally evaporate to nothing as it advanced toward Cheyenne Wells. Below is a picture of the aforementioned wall cloud.


Leaving from Colby Kansas, my cohorts and I will initially be targeting south central Nebraska on Thursday, perhaps the Holdrege-Kearney vicinity for starters. I'm certainly impressed with the overall kinematic setup, perhaps most excited about the 40-45 kt SSW 850 mb flow across the warm sector during the late afternoon/early evening (pre-nocturnal enhancement!) -- with potential for some surface backing ahead of the low along the eastern CO/northwest KS border. The degree/orientation of the shear will provide a more than adequate window for tornadic supercells through sunset. We'll probably limit the south extent of our target envelope to northern KS north of I-70 -- farther south I'm worried about progged higher LCLs/LFCs along the dryline with respect to tornadoes. Chase camera/positioning updates available on the website as connectivity permits.

Friday will likely take us into eastern IA, northern IL, or perhaps MO -- however much mesoscale uncertainty exists given potential for an extensive MCS across IA early in the day.