Tony's Blogbach, Between the Isobars

While early on the calendar this year, we’re still in the climatological peak of severe weather season, and there is barely a storm around.  Those who ‘have’ to be out are running back and forth from Texas to South Dakota, many heading down to Texas today.  Ten-plus years ago, that be me… not now haha In fact, I am somewhat content with the down time, albeit weird during THIS holiday, which has usually been one of the busiest times for me.  Not this time, and it looks like the down stretch will likely be an extended one, minus a couple low-end backyarders possible at the end of this week.  Beyond that, nothing in the long-range gives any indication of a pattern shift.  Lots of northwest flow across the central part of the country, likely meaning MCS season up north.  Not usually on my list of things to do to chase, so we’ll see if that amounts to anything that gets me out.  I’m in Chicago the first weekend in June, something unheard of for me to plan something NON-CHASE related during that time of year, but right now, it looks like I am going to enjoy that weekend with not a whole lot to miss.  In fact, I’d argue that I may be in line for storms up that way by default haha  The question remains, what does the middle/back-half of June serve up.  Typically these wonky patterns favor an active pattern for us along the front range; not necessarily for tornadoes, but stormy none-the-less.  Hailers aren’t out of the question with the instability, flooding storms also find their way in.  Indications are for a pretty active monsoon season here, so maybe that’ll offer some lightning ops.  Otherwise, a lot of day-of looks will determine how often I head out.  Holding out hope that the central/northern plains offer some opportunities later in the month.  But right now, nothing I can point to.  That said, lots of look backs on years prior; easily the busiest stretch of days during the chase season for me in years past.  Ain’t gonna be adding anything to that this year, though…

The #ChaseTo500 continues with two more tick marks after yesterday’s pretty solid Colorado chase.  That puts the count to TEN tornadoes so far in 2026, leaving me 16 away from the 500 mark.  But of those ten, the only tornado to really speak of was the Minnesota tornadoes back on April 13.  Everything else I have seen have barely counted as tornadoes.  The two I saw yesterday in Colorado, neither were slamdunk touchdowns; the first, a rather pretty funnel, was confirmed by others that were positioned a bit better as I had just enough of a terrain rise between me and the tornado where it blocked the ground.  The second tornado was another birdfart, a low LCL fingers-to-the-ground type deal where a rotating lowering was just low enough where little clouds would occasionally dip down to ground level.  This, at least visually, was more apparent, but still a pretty meh sighting overall.  Fortunately, neither tornado were strong and did any damage, so yay for that.

Despite a solid outing yesterday, and even as the chase itself met, if not slightly exceeded expectations, 2026 thus far has been very lackluster, and sometimes frustrating for me.  I’ve left a lot on the table, many of the big days either failed to reach their ceilings, or I botched up the day with poor decisions/positioning.  There really haven’t been a TON of high-quality tornadoes outside the Braman/Enid day, so it’s not like I am missing out on a bunch, but the slim number of days thus far have not worked for me to this point.  It’s the grind that is sometimes.  Obviously I came into this season, #30, with the hope that I could hit the 500 tornado milestone in this season.  While certainly well within range, I need to hope June offers some opportunities, or just dump a large majority on a day like Akron 2023.  Sixteen is a large number going into the back third of the peak season, so I’m hopeful I can get back in the game for the opportunities that should present themselves.

The moisture return to eastern Colorado, while not drought-busting as I have said before, is very well timed.  An El Nino tends to support an active pattern for us here locally, so the combination of the two should yield some opportunities in the weeks ahead.  Yesterday, while lackluster in the tornado-department, did yield my first Colorado tornadoes of the season.  But like the majority of the tornadoes I have seen this year, they are fence-scrapers.

Should be a quiet couple of days… some low-end potential exists early/middle of next week, but nothing I am terribly gung-ho for at this time.  We’ll see how it shakes out over the Holiday Weekend.

Despite a pretty meh synoptic pattern, a halfway decent, albeit somewhat moisture-deprived setup exists tomorrow across eastern Colorado.  SPC has ticked up their outlook for the region since a general risk last night, opened with a marginal, now we’re sitting at a slight.  But us high plains nerds were all over this before sunset yesterday.  Questions becomes how big a crowd does tomorrow draw?  After the insanity that was the last couple days, one can’t help but be concerned about the crowds that could amass in eastern Colorado where we lack a solid gridded road network.  So lots of people on the few paved highways.  We shall see.

The ‘main’ target, if you will, is likely further southeast.  Better moisture will exist down there, which should increase tornado potential on any supercells that go up along/south of US-50.  CAMs do try to give proof of life further north, along US-36 and even up toward I-76, where slightly less moisture exists.  But don’t get me wrong, there isn’t BIG moisture progged for tomorrow.  Generally, if you want magic, you gotta keep about 20-25 T/Td spreads at most with dews generally at or above 50.  Obviously we take less of the ingredients for good days here, but we’re gonna be borderline in terms of whether what we have to work with tomorrow is enough.  Right now, we’re probably looking mid 70s over upper 40s with good surface flow and a piece of energy moving through, so a lot of good things, but what juice there is to work with remains to be seen.  If we were to somehow start crawling into the low 50s out east, I think you tick up the prospects for the day.  But we shall see… a lot of convection expected south of the region the rest of today into tonight, which MAY stunt some of the moisture advection into the area.  That would be why southeast is the favored zone tomorrow as that has the best chance of seeing better moisture, and there are plenty of indications the dews south of 70 do get into the 50s, which would be plenty in that environment.  I don’t hate the US-36 play, and if we can get flirt with 50s dews and keep temps in the mid 70s, I wouldn’t write off a tornado or two.  Hail, definitely, and given the cooler upper levels, could see copious amounts of smaller stuff with some stones maybe creeping up to golfball or better.

Friday shifts southeast, some indications could make a case for a western target in the Panhandles into northeast New Mexico post-frontal.  Nothing I am sold on yet, and a lot will really depend on where I end up Thursday evening after tomorrow’s chase, so we’ll play with Friday’s potential later on.  Beyond that, not a lot to speak of, at least synoptically, through the rest of May.  Long range pattern hints things perk up a bit as we get into June, and speaking locally, we’ve had a solid stint of moisture here in Colorado.  Nothing that’s going to bust the drought, but the timing of it is very hard to ignore.  Mark my words, the high plains will probably see a couple significant severe weather setups in the coming month.

So yeah, likely chasing tomorrow, possibly on Friday.  Will await to see how Friday looks and make the call as last minute as possible.  Today, I had seen a decent convergence line set up east of Denver, but we just couldn’t warm up enough to do much with it, that and the moisture is well below what I would say the threshold is for dews for a DCVZ shot.  So I’ll keep ‘watching’, but I would venture to say anything of note is highly unlikely today east of I-25.

The grind that is 2026 continues… brief tastes of success, but so much left on the table.  The story continued this past weekend.  Seems every year I hit a slump, and it grinds the season to a halt, and I wait for something to finally push me forward.  In 2024, that grind largely held all season.  But most years, I get a break.  This weekend was another grind, another tornado closer to 500, but plenty left on the table.  Monday was the headliner day, and of course, I did everything possible to avoid tornadoes.  I won’t end up writing up a log for it, so quick ‘n’ dirty was we got on the first tornadic storm of the day, then abandoned it when traffic got too clustered to keep up.  The storm would go on to produce a tornado 15 minutes later.  Next storm south we got on, similar thing, we left, it tornado’d.  Third storm did the same, and we basically gave up and got down on I-70 to get rolled by the severe line of storms that did produce 70-80mph winds on us in Wamego.

Sunday, I did get enough imagery of the EF-3 tornado north of Grand Island, but definitely missed out on any good imagery of it. Fortunately the rope out exposed itself long enough where I could get video on it for a few seconds to pull out an image to say “hey look, I saw it too!”.  Traffic again was a nightmare, and played a big role in my navigation.  Later that night, likely the highlight of the trio of days I chased, was awesome sunset skies and my first time capturing lightning this season, so that was a nice way to end what was otherwise a slightly frustrating tornado day.

Friday was largely underwhelming… a couple tornadoes did drop from the storms I was on, nothing to write home about, but added to the list of missed ones for the year.  Got some 2″ hail and a few good lightning clips out of Saturday.

The common thread, at least Sunday and Monday, was the INCREDIBLE amount of chasers… and for the first time in my career, adversely affected my ability to do my job.  There are a lot of thoughts and opinions swirling around social, and believe me, I have my share, but I’ll reserve those for it’s own thing.  But after the taste of it in Minnesota in April, it became a major issue this weekend.  Lots to say on that, but for another time.

So quick and dirty… I’m home as of Tuesday evening and will kinda reset.  Some low-end potential in the region Thursday into Friday, but I will sit on that for the night and set my chase outlook and we’ll go from there!

Yesterday went about exactly as I thought it would; bottom line was a lot of messy, HP, and outflow dominated storms with a couple tornado reports sprinkled in.  I knew yesterday wasn’t a tornado day, and that was very much the case as the few that were spotted/reported were all very brief and largely lacking any real visual pizazz.  The storm I was on did produce a briefy to my southeast, but I was dilly-dallying in the 2″+ hail and navigating a ‘minimum maintenance’ road after the soaking hail core rolled through.  I spent the backhalf of the active chase dodging lightning strikes as I tried to get ahead of the main cluster, successfully beating it to I-35 south of Des Moines, but by then the complex had turned southeast, and I opted to call the day at the interstate as I would not have managed to get back ahead of it.

Truthfully, the more disappointing aspect of yesterday was NOT being further west.  Turns out the I-70 West Kansas storm was easily the storm of the day.  It, too, had a birdfart with it, but it was the structure and haboob that came with it that stole the show.  Kudos to those who went with the SPC on that one, I definitely would play that area if I woke up this morning with a redo.

Fortunately, I once again find myself in a milk-the-checkout scenario here in Omaha for today’s setup.  I opted to roll straight here last night as I had called the chase early enough to not put me out a ton, arriving shortly after 11pm after a quick drive from Des Moines.  I had to settle for a downtown hotel as everything else in the city was sold out, and this had a paid parking situation.  Typically, I do not prepay for those cause there are more often than you’d think, situations where they will NOT charge you for the parking, and last night was one of those where the front desk guy said that all the parking was full, thus I would be forced to park somewhere else nearby (and legally).  But, after unloading, I decided to just troll through the hotel lot to see, and not only was there ONE spot left, it was practically the closest spot to the door and left my vehicle right in view of my third floor room.  Princess Parking as I like to call it, so the fates were on my side last night in that department.

So that said, after about 6 restful hours, I find myself up with several hours before checkout, and honestly, I have significant concerns about today (and tomorrow), despite the high-end ceiling.  Hi-rez CAMs have been fairly consistent in only having a very limited discrete window for supercells before lining everything out.  This has played out on most of the 6-hour runs and as we got into today, continues to linger.  Recent runs have been a LITTLE more ambitious with discrete cells, so maybe they’re trying to latch on to something there.  But its certainly the biggest failure mode in today’s chase.  Right now, based on all that, I would lean toward playing a little further south into east-central Nebraska cause it seems like the northern mode, while in the strongest parameters, will probably see this transition happen quickest.  That would lead me to Norfolk as opposed to Sioux Falls out of the gate.  Fortunately, I am less than 3 hours from just about any appreciable target today, so I can linger here til noon at least and really let the morning play out and get a better idea of how things will evolve.  I am still pretty optimistic despite the model outputs for storm mode, so we’ll see.  Given the logistics and shifting east of yesterday’s target, Ed and I postponed our meeting, so I am playing today solo and we’ll discuss opportunity to meet up tomorrow.  Unfortunately trying to plan for these things around the weather is very difficult when things shift, and thus we won’t suffer today’s wrath together.

Tomorrow, similar concerns.  Obviously we’re out of range of the hour-to-hour outputs, but most of the ones that reach out that far also continue to push the linear modes a bit hard.  I think there is no question tomorrow’s play is a Kansas one, so I will drop south after today to set up for that.  Unlikely I will go three days in a row with a milk-the-checkout morning.  Haha  But it’s not out of the question I could begin things in southern Nebraska either, so we won’t start counting those chickens yet.

Tuesday is a mop-up day, clean and simple.  Sure, maybe something starts to appear, but right now, I am 50/50 on Tuesday.  We’ll see where I end up, how far said targets could be, and whether said targets are worth that effort.  Beyond Tuesday, it’s a festering boundary series of days down in Texas, low-end, mesoscale morning-of type setups that the ‘never stop chasing’ crowds will probably camp out for.  For me, gone is the era of living out of a suitcase for two weeks straight to troll the random opportunities to cash in one of those low-end setups.  I save that type of chasing for June when the investment is merely a couple hour drive from home.  I’ve missed plenty a Fort Stockton tornadoes, and I will continue to do so.  The potential is there, but it’s all going to be a ‘if you are down there, play it”, and right now, I am not the 25 year old kid who will be down there to play it.

So that is your Sunday morning update from here in Omaha… guess I will vedge out ahead of a shower and let the morning runs roll in and figure out how far north I wanna play today.  See ya under the stormy skies!