Bone Dry & Wednesday's Potential
Right now, a station in SE NM is reporting a temp of 84F with a dewpoint of -13. Throwing that in the humidity calculater = 0%. That's a whopping 97F dewpoint depression. That puts the LCLs in orbit with the space station. LOL!! Wink, Texas is abit more humid with 95F and -1F dewpoint. That's a whopping 1% humidity.
With all of this dry air in place, we should see some incredible drylines the rest of this season. It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out on Wednesday's setup. My thinking is such dry air could be a double-edged sword for chasing.....particularly in W TX and the PH. Any sort of slightly veered 850mb to 700mb winds would result in a thermonuclear cap and suppress convection like a Chinese riot squad thus needing a stronger impulse aloft to help bust it.
On the otherhand, the drier the air, the more dense it is. So, with much stronger/sharper drylines this season, the boundary layer convergence should be stronger. The drier air will also heat alot more than usual in comparison to the humid air to the east. I would expect this to result in stronger supercells along the dryline as well as stronger 0-3km lapse rates. More landspout opportunities perhaps?
I also wonder with stronger differential heating along the dryline, will there be more/better mesoscale lows and circulations developing along the dryline?
Lots of questions to ponder for sure. This will certainly be an interesting season for the caprock. Like I said, the first test comes this Wednesday.
The models so far are advertising a good setup for tornadic supercells. To some extent, it is starting to look similar to 5/15/03. I'm already targeting Stratford...lol. The one important ingredient will be plentiful moisture to work with as the PH gets it's first real honest-to-goodness moist upslope return flow of the storm season. With a warm front and merging dryline evolving over the PH and W TX with modest westerly flow aloft atop SErly flow at the surface, it looks like a prime setup. More later of course as we get closer.
Thursday has potential too as I see a trend in the models to slow the upper air progression and relaxing the amplitude abit. A rest period for Friday and then, Saturday is now starting to come into play with the latest model runs. The storm system mid week is not advertised to be as strong, so the warm, humid airmass won't go too far and return flow will be rapid. Stay tuned.!!
With all of this dry air in place, we should see some incredible drylines the rest of this season. It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out on Wednesday's setup. My thinking is such dry air could be a double-edged sword for chasing.....particularly in W TX and the PH. Any sort of slightly veered 850mb to 700mb winds would result in a thermonuclear cap and suppress convection like a Chinese riot squad thus needing a stronger impulse aloft to help bust it.
On the otherhand, the drier the air, the more dense it is. So, with much stronger/sharper drylines this season, the boundary layer convergence should be stronger. The drier air will also heat alot more than usual in comparison to the humid air to the east. I would expect this to result in stronger supercells along the dryline as well as stronger 0-3km lapse rates. More landspout opportunities perhaps?
I also wonder with stronger differential heating along the dryline, will there be more/better mesoscale lows and circulations developing along the dryline?
Lots of questions to ponder for sure. This will certainly be an interesting season for the caprock. Like I said, the first test comes this Wednesday.
The models so far are advertising a good setup for tornadic supercells. To some extent, it is starting to look similar to 5/15/03. I'm already targeting Stratford...lol. The one important ingredient will be plentiful moisture to work with as the PH gets it's first real honest-to-goodness moist upslope return flow of the storm season. With a warm front and merging dryline evolving over the PH and W TX with modest westerly flow aloft atop SErly flow at the surface, it looks like a prime setup. More later of course as we get closer.
Thursday has potential too as I see a trend in the models to slow the upper air progression and relaxing the amplitude abit. A rest period for Friday and then, Saturday is now starting to come into play with the latest model runs. The storm system mid week is not advertised to be as strong, so the warm, humid airmass won't go too far and return flow will be rapid. Stay tuned.!!
posted by Steve Miller TX at 4/21/2008 03:44:00 PM
1 Comments:
SPC's 1700Z day 2 is showing a 30% severe chance in the Childress area, but I also noticed that the Denver HWO mentioned the possibility of tornadoes for eastern CO as well... east of a line from Limon to Sterling. Still waiting for Pueblo to update their HWO. Best of luck, I'll be watching tomorrow, that's for sure.
Jim C
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