Storm Chase Day 7: An about-face
PIERRE, S.D. — We headed south into Nebraska this morning with the idea of possibly chasing severe storms in the southern part of that state. But we changed our minds and returned to central South Dakota. Two factors: (1) Storms appeared as if they would fire too late for us to reach and too far south in Kansas before moving into Nebraska near sunset — this in fact came to fruition; (2) midday forecast guidance ramped up the threat of tornadoes and supercells over the Dakotas for Monday as a strong disturbance moves north-northeast through strong jet stream winds over the western High Plains. We didn’t want to get too far south for marginal stuff and put us out of play for Monday farther north. So, along a lonely highway in the Nebraska Sand Hills under cloudless blue skies, the Virginia Tech storm chasers unanimously decided to reverse course and return to where we started to set up for Monday.
After Monday’s rather volatile setup, there are big signals that the pattern will become unfavorable for severe weather in the Plains as high pressure continues to build over the eastern two-thirds of the nation. So Monday’s chase might be the last on this particular trip.
May 23, 2010 - 10:12 PM
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Uh, Kevin & Company, how about staying out of town for a while longer? Ever since you guys and gals vamoosed, it has become wetter again. :>) :>) :>) Drought threat has disappeared for the time being. We got more rain today, roughly 2/10ths to 4/10ths in the immediate Roanoke area, as of 5 PM EDT. Golf conditions are perfecto right now as far as I am concerned (I just need someone to putt for me). I even have a chance of seeing my forecast for a wet May come true, although it looks like it will fall a little short of that you had more good luck safely finding impressive storms today.
Now that our attention is somewhat focused on the summer weather and hurricane season ahead, you might want to consider what Joe Bastardi says about it in todays special. And he “might” be right. I hope not.
http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/31764/bastardi-predicts-a-hot-summer-1.asp
I wonder if your team visited North Dakota today or this evening. Jim Cantore of TWC came on this evening and described some extremely powerful storms in the Bismarck area. I just checked radar in the Plains and practically the entire stretch of states from N.D. southward to the panhandle of Texas had some areas (mostly in the western regions of these states) with severe storms.
I just looked up the CPC’s 8-14 day forecast, for June 1-7, and guess what? The cooler and wetter than normal weather will continue, if their forecast is right.
Doug, thanks for posting the link to Joe Bastardi. He’s one of the few AW guys I put a little more stock in. Thankfully, my mom grew some sense and is leaving Florida and returning to the commonwealth, so hopefully the risk of hurricanes for her is reduced…she went through several down there.
This sort of confirms what my thoughts were for the summer though: warmer than normal and drier than normal off the typical non-tropical sources, but likely made up for by tropical systems and remnants since I suspected there would be an abundance of them. Lets just hope they’re not as bad or as strong as they could be. I think this summer is going to turn out to be nearly as exciting as this past winter for weather geeks, though not in the same fun, snowman-building type fashion.