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!