Tony's Blogbach, Between the Isobars

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!

Target continues to shift further east today; a nice break given I start here in Kansas City.  Morning surface analysis shows absolute trash dewpoints this morning across northeast Colorado, southwest Nebraska, and northwest Kansas.  And you can see on the surface map above, there aren’t favorable wind directions to bring up those juicier numbers.  You’ll likely see SOME rise out there, but not enough, even by high plains standards, to make a viable target out there.  I have NO IDEA why SPC maintained their 5% tornado probs out there, but I would be shocked if they were not removed in the 1300z outlook.

I still stand by my idea last night that today is not a tornado day… I could see them adding a 5% somewhere in the northeast Kansas/southeast Nebraska and adjacent areas east.  And that’s what I am targeting right now, somewhere in the Belleville/Seneca/Nebraska City/Geneva square.  Also worth watching is south of Des Moines where hirez CAMS continue to pop a complex of storms.  Again, probably a more messy solution in that area, but that seems to be hotspot #2.  Again, nothing about today jumps off the page at me, and I still believe any tornado reports will be low in numbers and likely not too exciting, but I would almost (ALMOST) venture to say that we will see nothing tornadic west of US-183 today minus the off chance of some rando landspout, but assuming the dewpoints out that way can even get into the mid-40s, you’re still likely seeing a spread of 40-degrees out there, meaning said spouts would have to be to the level of my closing day tornado in 2021.

So I will await the 13z Day 1, and put $10 down on the western 5% being removed.  I’d probably take a low bet on odds that they MAY add a 5% somewhere further east.  Right now, given all I am seeing, my primary target is going to be northeast Kansas east of US-81, despite the CAMs insistence on much higher storm chances/coverage further east along I-35 in southern Iowa.  I think if there is a place for a tornado, it’ll be if an isolated storm can interact with the wind shift there is deeper moisture.  But all signs point to a pretty messy setup regardless.  But we’re here to play, so play I will…

That said, a shower and a milking of the checkout here in KC seem appropriate this morning.  It’s an easy 3-4 hour haul back toward Belleville, so assuming an 11am departure and enough fuel to get to Belleville, I should be able to do it easily in one sitting.  That said, being up at 5am was a useless endeavor, so another hour of sleep may sneak its way in before I load up and head out.

Tomorrow is likely NOT a tornado day… I will just get that out of the way right now… yes, there probably will be a couple that sneak their way into the reports, but overall, I think tomorrow is likely gonna be a damaging wind and hail day.  Today, I wussed out; nothing about today was highly anticipated, and most of the better parameters shifted well north and east, and anything I was going to get on early evening was taking me the opposite direction I needed to go, so I threw a couple chips on some convection that tried to fire west of Kansas City, but nothing took hold.  No loss on that.

Biggest issue tomorrow seems pretty easy to spot, marginal moisture at the surface.  Even the Colorado play is going to struggle to get to what I would consider a minimum dewpoint.  If I were coming from the west (home), I would probably give it a bit more attention, but I am coming in from the east, and thus my eyes are drawn to the I-80 Central Nebraska target.  Models have been consistent with that area, showing some hefty supercells developing, likely high based with big hail given the spreads of 30+ degrees.  Colorado will see similar spreads, maybe slightly more given dewpoints progged in the upper 40s out there.  But currently, I do not see enough in the Colorado target to warrant the rolling across the entire state of Kansas or Nebraska for.  Also worth a mention, a potential play in southeast Nebraska, north of Kansas City.  Not giving that too much at the moment, but it DOES exist.  But that said, I am going to aim for Grand Island by 3pm.

Sunday continues to be eastern Nebraska north of I-80 (the NAMNEST takes a HUGE dump all over Sunday, FYI: probably why it is being retired later this year – haha).  No significant changes in my thoughts on that right now.  I have coordinated with Ed to have him meet me in GI as we’ll saddle up together for the Sunday/Monday plays (maybe Tuesday if warranted).  Monday has a couple potential plays; still earmarked as the biggest of the two headliner days, but has TWO potential targets.  The first and most obvious would be the Iowa play, likely seeing a lot of storms up that way.  The lesser, secondary target, but equally as volatile, could be southern Kansas/northern Oklahoma.  While not as quick to get to Monday, it can easily be done if that one looks to be a solid get. Assuming we get a couple storms in that environment, they’ll likely be less overall verses up north, which one of the Iowa failure modes would be too many storms.  Too early to tell, too early to worry, but know it’s a thing I will float back to as I look ahead to Monday.  Tuesday is nothing more than a mop-up day, which if we stay north on Monday, may have higher odds we play the northern target in Illinois.  Anything south would be in play, but to a lesser extent.  It would NOT surprise me to see Sunday end up being the bigger day from a chaser perspective, but too much on the plate Monday to say that with any confidence.

So yeah, some late evening thoughts on the days ahead as I watch another abysmal Rockies baseball game.  They’re losing to Arizona 9 to 1 in the top of the 9th, and were down 6 to 0 before they ever even came up to bat in the first.  Fortunately this will end soon, and I will turn myself in to a pumpkin, get up reasonably early, and hike myself up I-29 into Nebraska, then cut over to Grand Island to set up for tomorrow’s hail chase day.

BTW, snow potential along the lower Front Range locations has all but vanished… not terribly concerned with this particular event for the Front Range.  Mountains oughta do pretty good, and still looks like a good heavy-moisture system for northern Colorado, so adding some tornado juice to the region regardless.  Now I just do not have to worry about covering the gardens.

See ya on the road tomorrow!  We go for real then!