A Little Afternoon PH Chase Today?

A pretty interesting setup being advertised by the RUC for the panhandle today...in my backyard. The past couple of days, we have seen weak landspout type tornadoes. Sunday around LBB and yesterday near Enid. Again, we have a similar atmospheric setup over the PH. The main ingredient we need will be a good boundary for surface vorticity. We may in fact have that.

Currently, a nice boundary stretched from around Hays, KS to Childress to Sweetwater. It is important to note two meso-low circulations along this boundary with on NE of Beaver, OK and another around Childress. The models want to try and wach this out later this afternoon however, so it will be interesting to see how long it remains intact in relation to convective initiation.



The atmosphere is pretty buoyant late this morning and little to no CIN is forecast by afternoon. Surface air parcels should rise freely on their own with a little nudge. A further look at the 12z RUC parameters indicate some VERY interesting things as follows for the 21-00Z timeframe:

0-2km Lapse Rate = 8-9C/KM (extremely high!)

NSTP (Non Supercell Tornado Potential...landspouts) index up to 0.6 (nudging towards moderate)

0-3km MLCAPE = 50-80 (not bad at all....within range)

0-3 CAPE = 100-150 (again, not bad...definitely within range)

0-1km SRH ~ 100 (while not high, certainly enough)

0-1km VGP = 0.3

0-3km EHI = 2.0

0-3km SRH = 100-150 (prettty interesting)

0-3km SHEAR = 30 knots (westerly...into S-SE SFC-850mb flow)

SFC CAPE = 1500 (nice!)

ML CAPE = 750-100 (pretty decent)

ML LFC = 1600-1800ft (pretty low and overlaps the LCL heights below...nice! No cap)

ML LCL = 1000-1800ft (while not hugging the ground, certainly low)

VERY STRONG veering from S-SSE 850mb to W 700mb (wow...lots of twisting within 5000 feet)

VERY STRONG 850-500mb crossover from 850mb S-SSE at 15kts to 500mb W at 30 kts. 300mb winds W at 50 knots. (very nice indeed!!!)

I'm waiting for the 15z data to come in, but don't expect it to be alot different. I'll post anything noteworthy if there is.

The bottom line is that even without a boundary, things get interesting this afternoon. Any boundary with circulations as noted above will most assuredly produce at least a few funnels and a couple of landspouts today.

It will be interesting to see what actually happens today! :-)