April 2008
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This morning starts off with a bang. I must admit, more convection than I anticipated, but also more organized that I anticipated. The air across the area is already quite unstable and the first bit of energy now working on the area. Severe Thunderstorm and Tornado watches already hoisted and a supercell just about 40 miles to my southeast. Any day I can wake up to this it has to be a good day for chasing!
Things should get progressively more potent as we get into the afternoon and especially early evening when the wind fields through the atmosphere increase in speeds and enhance the tornado threat.
Not much time to go in to a lot of details here, as we are trying to get some things out of the way and get out early. Graham will be chasing with me again today, so we will be able to have more blog updates.
The frontal boundary is near impossible for me to pick out this morning, but I get the impression it is just to my south, or about 50-75 miles north of where I analyzed it last night. Temps south of that already in the 70s with dewpoints in the low to mid 60s across the area, and even upper 60s across the rolling plains, where the better action will be later today. Dryline is out in eastern NM.
Quick look at visible satellite shows clearing in eastern NM and south of the western part of the front to the south and west of that current supercell. This bodes well for things to heat up and become more dramatically unstable.
SPC Mesoscale Analysis models already depicting surface based Capes in this area as high as 3500. We could see some 4500 if it gets hot enough. For the laymen, that is basically a measure of how unstable the air is. CAPE=Convective Available Potential Energy. Lifted Index already of -10 in this area as well.
My current thought is to watch the area from my location here (35 SW of Lubbock) and south for more initiation, and for that to strengthen as it moves further northeast. As the Lubbock NWS forecasters mentioned in an update forecast discussion this morning, close attention will need to be payed to any reminent boundaries that are hanging around the area for more storm initiation.
We’ll post again when we get on the road and have the LIVE ChaseCam active.
BTW, thanks to the LBB NWS folks for the great graphics!
Written by David Drummond on April 23rd, 2008 with no comments.
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Things have shifted around a bit on the latest runs with regard to the triple point location, but are still bullish on the early convection across the area. My gut instinct is still telling me that an evolution similar to what is depicted above will more likely happen, in regards to frontal position and dryline position.
I have this feeling, and I hope I am right, that the early convection is not going to be nearly as wide spread as advertised. In fact, I can’t stop thinking about how all the models on the bigger events this year brought the energy to get things fired off out way earlier than what actually happened when the event came. This resulted in firing around or after dark on a few occassions, rather than late afternoon. I can’t help but wonder if this will be the case this time, and in fact there won’t be any early convection due to the energy coming out later than forecast.
All that said, it’s time to start looking at what is happening NOW and how it evolves into tomorrow. That is an important step, and should be one of the first steps so you can see how it relates to how the model forecasts go, if they are verifying or not. Below is a quick hand analysis I did on the current surface conditions to get an idea of what is going on with this front and dewpoints etc. You can click on it to get a better look at what I am about to talk about.
I’ve been watching these observations for a few hours now. The front itself appears to have stalled across north central Texas and is only still moving to the sw from about Midland TX into SE NM. I expect that progression will stop very soon as it will be getting to the mountain foothills. I could still see moving southwest recently on the Midland, TX radar.
Secondly, I drew out the dewpoint lines from 50F degrees and higher, ever 5F degrees. There is some moisture up in OK that is moving in to the panhandle, south plains area of Texas, but the winds across that area have been slowly coming back around to the east all evening.
South of the front, we have a good general SE flow, albeit weak right now. Interesting to note what appears to be a very sharp dryline with a triple point in the Odessa, TX area, and the dryline extending southwest. This is noted by the mid/upper 50 dewpoints south of the Midland/Odessa area and the extremely dry dewpoints in far west Texas, either in the single digits or negative digits. This dryline appears to be moving west, at least just to the west of Odessa, because the station reporting in Wink and Pecos now have winds from the SE with dewpoints now in the 30s. I suspect the dryline just passed that location at the time this observation was recorded and in fact now as I write this I see they are at 38 and 48 respectively, so that verifies the dryline moving westward.
The next thing I wanted to take a look at was to see just what the low level jet was doing right now. I first looked at all the radar sites south of the front, and looked at the VWP product (vertical wind profile). This give me some idea of what the winds are doing above that station. In the area across where I drew the big arrow, the all appear to be out of the S or SE at around 35 kts at around 2-4000 feet. This is good, it means gulf moisture transport is underway already, although I would like to see those a little stronger, but as you can see, the moisture doesn’t have all that far to go, and the areas north of the front aren’t exactly dry. I also expect those speed to increase as the night progresses. I went ahead and took a look at the SPC Mesoscale Analysis tools just to see how that was playing with what I analyzed. Looks like that is in agreement so we are good there.
I took a look then at the water vapor satellite imagery loop, and noted a piece of energy coming ashore south of California headed this way. I eyeballed the timing of it, and if it stays consistent should arrive here by early afternoon.
So right now, I think some of the models are way off on the further south placement of the triple point. I expect to see the front start moving north again soon as the low level flow acts on it. Maybe not very fast though, given the speeds involved with the winds. This of course will drag the triple point north and probably even northwest given the dryline is on the retreat back to the west currently.
All and all, I still think we are on track for a triple point to be somewhere in the Lubbock vicinity by early afternoon, perhaps even a little west or northwest of Lubbock. A dryline bulge that has been depicted on the models all week south of Lubbock I believe is a reasonable expectation.
Now, IF we get a great deal of convection north of the front like the models are wanting to do, this would impede or even stop the northward progression of the front at that point. I’ve seen this many times. However, a few more isolated storms could lay down some very important outflow boundaries that could be a focus for afternoon convection tomorrow, or even for a storm to latch on to and go crazy with the tornadoes.
As for tornadoes, all other factors appear they will be adequate. IF we can get limited or no early convection, things should heat up nicely and result in a very unstable atmosphere where we could see explosive storms, very large hail, perhaps as large or larger than baseballs and of course with supercells that strong, always the risk of tornadoes.
So there is my take on things. SPC outlook should be out here in about 40 minutes or so and we’ll see what their thinking is. Should we get little or no convection in the early period, I would not be at all surprised to see a moderate risk by mid-morning, if they don’t decide to go ahead and do it on the first day 1 outlook. We’ll see.
At any rate, I WILL be chasing tomorrow, and we will have the LIVE ChaseCam going for you folks. My target is… a little east of the triple point, wherever that may end up. Any storms that form there and move in the vicinity of that front should have a good chance of producing tornadoes.
EDIT: After writing this I notice that Midland and Odessa observations report the winds now have veered back around to the southeast, the front is now retreating north in that area, just as expected!
Written by David Drummond on April 23rd, 2008 with 2 comments.
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After taking a bit of a break from things, it’s time to get back in the groove of things!
The dryline FINALLY returns to west Texas with a chance of not only some very much needed rainfall, but some rather significant severe weather.
I’ve been watching this day approach in the forecast models all week, and while they have been back and forth with things over the course of this entire week (the week for me being the previous 7 day period), one thing has been consistent, and that has been the development of convention over West Texas on Wednesday.
Right now model solutions show plenty of wind shear, instability and moisture with a bit of a jet overhead to help vent the storms out once they get going.
The one factor that could complicate things is that the models have also been consistently showing some convection overnight on Tuesday which could potentially serve to mess things up for Wednesday.
A frontal boundary will be in the area, and my gut feeling is that if there is any convection overnight Tuesday it will be north of the boundary, which is ok, because we will be keeping an eye on areas south of that boundary. I do NOT think we are going to have the issues we had last week, with the saturation and fog we had to deal with. This should be a much more spring like event.
The one thing that overnight convection could potentially do to help us out would be to lay down some outflow boundaries in the area. A good east-west outflow boundary intersecting the dryline could really enhance storm rotation and tornado potential.
I’ll post more on this as we get closer to the event. I of course will be out chasing this as it is in my backyard, and I will be chasing for KCBD as well. I’ll have the LIVE ChaseCam up and running for you guys as well!
Written by David Drummond on April 21st, 2008 with no comments.
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Oh how tired I am. I didn’t get home til about 4 am Thursday morning. This was the first time I have been home since Sunday evening and over 3000 miles on the road since then! I am still exhausted even after sleeping half the day. I am a bit happy we are going to have some Chamber of Commerce weather for a week or so. I need some down time!
Yesterday was mostly a flop. Yes, another one. The upper support didn’t arrive until well after dark, so the only thing that could get going was the elevated crap well north of the front, and a couple of supercells right along the front. The first one went on to produce a tornado that damaged parts of Breckenridge, TX. We were not in position to intercept it, but waited for the later convection in the warm sector.
Finally later in the day, another one erupted along the front and we decided to go after it. Those that were watching the LIVE ChaseCam saw the foggy mess we were in as there was a cold air pool about 500 feet deep north of the front, and while we were right under the updaft base according to the radar, we couldn’t see a darn thing. That was quite unnerving, so we decided no point in staying with that one.
After a bite to eat the dryline blew up all at once, and we decided to get in front of an intense part of it and take some shelter in Sterling City, TX and see what it would bring. Showed a pretty good hail core on it, even though we never saw any, but did sport some winds in the severe catagory. We hoped for some good lightning for photos after it passed, but nothing much to work with.
This squall line went on to become a derecho event that did quite a bit of damage across north Texas during the early morning hours.
All I can say is I will be glad when the May storms get here.
Positives that came from it, we did the first live intro for KCBD that I chase for locally, that went very well, and we had some viewers from livenewscameras.com that were able to chase along with us via the video feed. Sometimes I forget that stuff we take for granted out here (high winds, cloud to ground lightning) isn’t as common as other parts of the world. Mother nature didn’t disappoint with not one but two close CG strikes right in front of the camera!
So welcome all you new folks from livenewscameras.com Hopefully as the season progresses, we will have MUCH more interesting things to show you on the live feed!
Time to rest up and get caught up on some work now!
Written by David Drummond on April 11th, 2008 with 3 comments.
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Sitting south of Sweetwater on hwy 70, decided not to be tempted by the first supercell of the day……..only time will tell if that was a good decision. Hopefully something will erupt along the dryline to verify our decision. Currently considering going after the storm over Big Spring.
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We are go for Big Spring, go for Big Spring, currently hoping we don’t pull a Steve Miller Tx aka kill it at arrival on scene.
Structure is amazing, anvil is knuckling over, radar looks like a good.
Written by David Drummond on April 9th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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