Forecast 5/9 - Dangerous Situation

1930Z UPDATE: I'm keeping my chase target area pretty much intact(Dallas/Gainesville/Ardmore/Bonham/Dallas... but Waco to Norman are going to be in the hotseat as well) despite the front/OFB apparent on satellite just south of the I40 corridor. Don't get me wrong as I certainly expect a real bruiser of a supercell to pop up there and munch along that OFB. However, as of this writing, profiler and SPC analysis shows pretty weak winds below 700mb and especially below 850mb. RUC forecast show that this area should also see a more unidirectional wind profile. While a tornado could occur up there, I don't like the weak boundary layer wind fields for anything more than a brief episode.

Further south, the winds south of the Red River are remaining backed to the S and even SSE at a few stations. The 850-900mb winds are also more backed (SSW) according to FWS VAD analysis with more speed....especially at the surface. The special 18z sounding from Fort Worth is astounding. You might say it's an "astounding sounding". LOL!! CAPE of 4200 and LI of -10 with LCLs around 5000 feet. However, the CIN was -156 which is still a substantial cap....but breakable with the hot surface temps in the upper 90's encroaching from the SW behind the dryline aimed right at DFW as well as convergence and additional heating ahead of the dryline. The lapse rates are dry adiabatic from 850 to 600mb and still pretty steep above that. My calculations from this sounding are that by about 5pm, CAPE should well exceed 5000 with LI of -12 to -13 with a very "fat" CAPE profile increasing with height above the LFC. This is a similar thermodynamic profile to the Jarrell event back in 1997.

What does all of this mean in English? All hell is about to break loose...big time. The torndo threat in my opinion is actually better from the Red River Valley southward to near Waco....with DFW in the middle. I would not rule out a violent tornado with this thermodynamic profile. However, with such a strong cap in place, we might only be dealing with two or three big tornadic supercells. I do not expect them to move much at all at first with a more southward drift in time. The CAPE profiles certainly appear to support super-sized hail (would you like to super-size that order? LOL) with baseballs and softballs common with the supercells that form. I won't be surprised to hear of grapefruit hail either. If, God forbid, one of these suckers gets going over DFW, it could be quite devestating. There's no way of telling where they'll form exactly as of now though.

The powder keg is packed. The fuse is about to be lit.

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Certainly an extremely complex forecast today regarding surface features. However, one thing that is a guarantee are CAPE values exceeding 4000 and even 5000. The atmosphere is super-juiced with dewpoints in the lower 70's into the Red River Valley region. We literally have a big poweder keg waiting for the fuse to be lit. Right now, I'm going with the 12Z RUC forecast of the initial threat being across S OK and the Red River Valley region and then evolving down into the DFW area by 00Z. In fact, the 00Z scenario looks abit ominous for DFW with locally backed surface winds (SSE) sharply veering to westerly at 700mb of 30 knots. This is ideal for expected LCLs today. My target for today is Dallas to Gainesville to Ardmore to Bonham to Greenville back to Dallas. My house is in the middle of that. LOL!

For the rest of the details, the Storm Prediction Center is on top of it at http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day1otlk.html