No Go Saturday & Singin' Da Moisture Blues

Latest model runs this evening pretty much put the exclamation point on not chasing tomrrow. I do believe that the surface low up in KS along the NE border will be a good play, but too far for me with as much doubt as I have about the cold core setup. It's just not what I personally like to see with cold core events. As far as anything southward along the dryline, an isolated storm or two might pop up down into OK and maybe even the Red River Valley. But, the odds of anything before dark are very very small. Again, just too far for such long odds.

So, I will be hanging around home this weekend. Things might get pretty exciting in the Panhandle as surface winds could be pretty fierce gusting to 60mph on Saturday. With the fire danger still at "explosive" levels, I can't help but think that a big fire event will unfold. Winds that high are going to knock some power lines down or arc them somewhere. At the very least, there is an idiot out there with a cigarette ready to toss it out the window. We've escaped the fire weather season so far with no major fires, but I'm afraid our luck will run out tomorrow. I hope not.

With the current weather system evolving into a very large and strong cyclone over the eastern CONUS, it isn't likely to budge very quickly and the strong, deep bone-dry NW flow at all levels will bulldoze the GOM moisture down past Cuba leaving a very large reservoir of dry stable air in it's wake. This should serve to continue a stranglehold on the nice, juicy return flow for any systems next week. That's not to say we won't see severe weather, but for the real meaty stuff stormchasers crave, I'm afraid we'll have to wait until tax day at the very least to get the GOM in shape for such feasts.

At least it appears the upper air pattern is shifting back to something more normal for this time of year and perhaps more "March-ish". Could this be a confirmation that indeed La Nina is coming to an end? This would certainly correlate nicely with the Climate Prediction Center's forecast to move towards a neutral ENSO pattern which offers hope for a more active May and June ahead of us. Maybe we can get some good rains for the western half of Texas and the Panhandles if nothing else.

I finally dumped my chase and blizzard video to the computer this evening. I've been busy trying to get adjusted to the new job and getting up at 6:20am every morning. But, I'm getting back into the working man's groove thankfully. I'll spend some free time this weekend working on it and get it uploaded. There is some interesting stuff on there.

Until next time....