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.