Tomorrow's Thoughts & Cingular/GpsGate

The NAM this evening is slowing/shifting things westward abit for tomorrow. I still think initiation will be further west of I-35...somwhere along a Duncan to Jacksboro to Stephenville line. By the time they reach the I-35 corridor, they should be rocking and rolling. One scenario that looks likely to me is that the front/dryline will stall or crawl once it reaches this corridor. This is being hinted at by the NAM after 00Z. This would create a nearly-stationary updraft generation area (similar to Friday evening). That always makes things very interesting with regard to storm-relative parameters. Things could get pretty wild. I've seen this exact same pattern many times with the surface low pretty far north up into KS/NE area with a dryline stalling out or only crawling this far south...especially as it encounters the deeper moisture. I just do not see any reason why it should mix as far east as being forecast. We'll see what happens. :-)

With good moisture in place and CAPE values forecast to near 3000 along with the excellent shear and good veering profiles, the stage will be set for a significant severe weather event....although it might only be two or three isolated cells. DFW I think is in a potential hot zone. I believe that the dryline will light up from North Central TX into KS tomorrow with more isolated behemoths on this end. I'm not sure about the tornado threat yet, but with instabilities along with the other things I see setting up, there should be at least a few DITORs and some isolated tornadoes. I feel confident that it will be a very good chase day.

Now for Cingular. They have changed their no-contract policy regarding data connections with PC cards on laptops. You have to sign a minimum one-year contract. I balked at first until I realized my voice contract with Verizon runs out in August. So, when the guy at the store told me that I could switch it over to a voice plan then, it made sense to do it. At least I didn't have to buy the SIM card (you have to get a new one if you ever disconnect service). I'm a datahead now. It worked pretty well today despite the bust. This will augment my WxWorx service that I expect to start up in another week or two when my hardware comes in and I get everything hooked up. I should be a rolling SPC bubble of data now. LOL!!! I don't know if it will help me catch more storms or not...we'll see. :-)  If the rumors about WxWorx/ThreatNet come to fruition this year, I might be able to pretty much trash cellular access next year altogether.

Speaking of which, I dived in to getting my GPS split into virtual ports today to run all of my toys concurrently. Last year, I used GPSGate by Franson and it worked well. I downloaded again and installed it. But, I remembered that you have to download a driver from DeLorme to convert the USB into virtual COM serial ports first to get it all working. Imagine my surprise when I perused their website to discover that DeLorme has trumped GPSGate by now offering their own virtual COM port utility with the serial emulator for free. I installed it and it works just fine. It was fast and easy with only one reboot. It is limited to creating three virtual ports which is plenty for my needs. What is cool is that you DO NOT have to jack with the SA settings (at least on SA 2006...but I think it will work on 2004 and 2005 too). It still uses the USB port. :-)  Goodbye GPSGate. To download this new Delorme utlity, CLICK HERE. I noticed that they updated that page last May. How I missed that, I'll never know. I guess perhaps yet another 100,000 word psychological evaluation/analysis from somebody out there doubling as an amateur psychologist will help me get deeper in touch with my inner chaser. I dunno. ROFL!! ;-)