Quincy

Chased New Mexico today and some of the better structure was just southwest of Tucumcari:

A pattern flip is certainly plausible. I wouldn't be surprised if late May is rather active. With that said, seasonable activity in comparison to the current state of affairs would seem like a big difference. It's hard to screw up late May unless you get a bizarro cutoff low over the Ohio Valley, or massive ridge over the Rockies.

I've taken a bit of a deeper dive into the medium-long range period and based on trends, model guidance and climatology (analogs), it seems probable that the next 2-3 weeks will feature below average tornado activity. Additionally, we may continue to see typically active areas in early/mid-May (North Texas, central/eastern Oklahoma, eastern Kansas; Missouri) remain very quiet. Global guidance is consistent in showing an omega blocking-type pattern through at least the start of next week. This will mean that favorable upper level flow will remain largely split away from the Plains, with a seasonably strong northwest jet from the Midwest/Great Lakes into the Southeast and similarly strong upper level flow across the western United States (transitioning more toward the Desert Southwest by the end of the weekend). Aside from sporadic severe (mainly damaging winds) across the West and East Coast, this looks like about as benign of a pattern as one could draw up for the first 5-10 days of May. Going forward, there is some potential for severe threats to materialize across the southern/central High Plains during the first half of next week, as a cutoff low ejects east from the Four Corners region. Kinematic and thermodynamic fields don't look particularly impressive, especially not for mid-May, although it's likely that tornado activity ticks up a bit next week. My main focus is on the period beyond that. Does this month get out of this seemingly extended early May dearth of tornado activity? Probably not, at least not in any big way. I took a look at two main model projections, the CPC day 8-14 analogs and the new Euro weeklies, which were released within the past few hours. The signal from both camps is more or less the same. The CPC analogs are centered on May 15th and I took the top 5 analogs and ran out tornado counts from days 1-10 in those periods for a comparison. The analog days 1-10 period averaged 55 tornadoes, which is well below the average of 79 for May 15-24. Also, the focus for tornado activity is centered across Kansas/Nebraska/Iowa, which fits the weeklies progs very well. The pattern is projected to feature some troughing over the Great Basin, with a tendency for shortwaves to transverse the central Plains to upper Mississippi Valley. (The period starts with a "death ridge" across the Plains, before the pattern becomes less ugly with time) That would tend to favor severe in the central Plains, which means the May tornado season could effectively "skip over" the Oklahoma/southeastern Kansas/Missouri area. There are at least some instances of tornadoes across the southern High Plains into Oklahoma in these analog periods, but the likelihood of a deep trough bringing substantial tornado threats to the southern Plains through weeks 2 and 3 of May seems fairly low. Overall, the analogs and medium-long range guidance both support below average tornado activity across the Central United States over the next 2-3 weeks, with at least some potential for near/somewhat above average activity in the central Plains/middle Missouri Valley. (Don't count out the southern High Plains early next week) It will be mid/late May, so you can't rule out a bigger event that could throw a wrench in this thinking verifying, but the odds seem lower than 50/50 on such a scenario, which is also climatologically abnormal. It was going to be difficult to bring this year's tornado count back to seasonable levels after such a busy early season, but a below (if not well below) average May could manage to achieve that.

On the bright side, recent heavy precipitation events have wiped out almost all drought areas across the central United States:

April is hit and miss for Oklahoma. It seems like occasionally there are some big early season events, offset by plenty of years with little action in April. The April average of 11 tornadoes for Oklahoma jumps to 28 in May, but you can see the graph for central Oklahoma spikes sharply into May. On the other hand, we've seen one of the busiest Jan-Apr tornado periods in recent memory across the Gulf Coast states. Overall, we're still well above average year-to-date, but low severe activity through at least the next 5-7 days will probably move us back to near average in terms of tornadoes.

Current trends and analogs suggest severe threats may return by the middle of next week across the southern High Plains, to perhaps as far north as eastern Colorado, as that cutoff low ejects east. Until then, I'll be working extra, unanticipated hours to save up more for prime chase season. Even if things don't line up ideally next week, we're getting into the part of the season when it's harder for such troughs to not produce at least a few tornadoes.

What a hostile setup for central U.S. severe potential through at least the first week of May and quite possibly through much of the first two weeks. The relative dearth of severe potential has been consistently modeled for quite some time now. There were some hints about pattern changes into the second week of May a few days ago, but that potential seems to be dialing back as well. The pattern favors two cutoff lows effectively shutting down any significant severe threats in the Plains over the next 7-10 days. The lead low works to scour rich, Gulf moisture, as the 12z ECMWF struggles to bring >50F dew-points north of Oklahoma through 240 hours. There are only a few panels in which low to mid-50s dews squeak into parts of Kansas. That's quite a feat to keep the central Plains that consistently dry through the first 7-days of May, especially given excessive, antecedent rainfall across a broad portion of the central United States. Back west, while modeling showed western U.S. troughing for a while, such a trough may result in a meandering cutoff low over Southern California. Such a low remains too far west for any appreciable large-scale forcing across the Plains. Some analog guidance has hinted at some potential across the southern/central High Plains later in the day 6-10 period, where upslope flow can work to offset otherwise seemingly marginal (at best) low-level moisture. Outside the sub-forum, this pattern could yield some severe potential from the eastern Gulf Coast states into the Carolinas. As we know, forecasts for a week out can significantly change. Look out to day 10 and beyond, and sometimes the model progs end up being way off, as patterns evolve much differently than expected. Nonetheless, barring some sort of mesoscale accident or extreme model error, this upcoming week looks about as dead as it could possibly be across the Plains with respect to severe potential in May. It's been mentioned before and it's actually fairly common to see a bit of a severe lull in early May. The difference here is that the medium-range pattern looks so hostile for severe, that we may see little to no severe thunderstorm activity in the Plains for quite some time. The only day of slight interest this upcoming week looks to be on Tuesday, where there could be some modest severe potential across Oklahoma. Such a setup will revolve around a lot of ingredients coming together, as the synoptic scale pattern does not look particularly favorable.

The lead supercell near Banty, OK as I photographed at 6:47 p.m.

Tishomingo cell is about to go into a radar black hole too.

Seems to be struggling a bit, both visually (I'm near Marietta) and on radar. As it moves east into an area of warmer near-surface inflow, it may better organize with time. Cu fields popping down the line into North Texas. The cap is breaking.

21z FWD sounding shows a substantial cap, but favorable wind fields for severe. Storms should have little problem initiating (next 1-2 hours) to the NW of the metroplex where surface temps have risen into the upper 80s/near 90F.

The only apparent red flag I see is how the shear vectors don't produce a large angle with the composite outflow/frontal boundary. Storm mode may become clustered relatively quickly. With that said, if any discrete cell that fires in North Texas can remain at least somewhat isolated, there will be significant tornado potential. The metroplex is going to be in the crosshairs, which is a bit concerning.

Plenty of very large hail events showing up in the analog soundings. I generally take these with a grain of salt, since the matches are usually loose, but there's still a pretty strong signal there.

The hires NAM shows a fairly messy setup with faster progression of a cold front through Oklahoma. The RGEM is much closer to the GFS and shows a surface low passing very close to OKC at 00z SAT with a warm front-like boundary draped from roughly OKC-FSM. The Euro is more of a compromise between the two "extreme" solutions and may be the most reasonable at this juncture. Before I post the 00z OKC RGEM forecast sounding, I want to make it clear that this is likely one of those setups that doesn't come into really clear focus/reasonable confidence until the morning of. So many things can adjust the mesoscale setup, including, but not limited to: early day convection, effective warm front position, any outflow boundaries, capping (or breaching of cap into N TX), speed of cold front and orientation of shear vectors WRT cold front/dryline.Modify this RGEM sounding for areas just E/SE of OKC and that spells big trouble. If the cap can be breached into North Texas (as the RGEM attempts to do), I'd almost prefer that area. That's far too conditional in an already cloudy short range convective forecast.

I'm in Groom and the cloud bases were fairly high at the time of the tor warning. A ragged wall cloud is now forming in the NW direction.

Watch the discrete cell forming in the eastern Texas panhandle. It's been well-modeled by the HRRR all day. Although deep layer and low-level shear are lower-end, strong instability and veering winds with height (and favorable low level wind flow out of the southeast as Jim mentioned) should favor storm organization and maintenance for at least a couple of hours.

The 00z AMA sounding looked awfully weak in the 500mb layer, but mesoanalysis indicated about 30kts of h5 flow at 23z INVOF the cell. That translates to ~15 m/s, which is still unusually low for tornadogenesis. Seasonably large CAPE values (2500-3000 J/kg mixed layer) helped offset the lower-end shear.

Nothing stands out in the next 10 days. That's not to say you can't get a mesoscale event or two, or perhaps some change in the pattern, otherwise it looks like a relatively quiet mid-April stretch.

Those cells look to be east of the instability axis and are moving into a region with considerable CINH. Some cu is spitting off the dryline in western OK, but even there, at least some capping is holding on.

Can't get a real good feel on today's "threat" beyond the fact that it's conditional. If a storm goes up anywhere from south-central Kansas to Oklahoma, it will certainly have the potential (if not likelihood) to go supercellular. Although there are legit concerns about SBCINH/capping, the NCAR ensembles erode most of the cap at LMN by 23z. While just 3/10 NCAR ensembles show robust convective initiation in OK (all in SW OK), they show nothing where the HRRR shows better convergence in north-central OK. Brett mentioned it in the long range thread: we could get nothing and the models may back off, as just a slight bias toward cap-breach will be the difference between nothing and a supercell. The latest HRRR shows nothing through 23z, but you can tell it's on the verge at that point near I-35 in northern OK.

The lack of more turning with height seems to be the biggest red flag. Steep lapse rates are there and both the EC and NAM erode the cap by 00z. EC also favors a discrete storm mode as well. Although moisture is better than some recent events, the EC favors near 60F dews, as opposed to the more bullish NAM. This, along with veered flow/largely unidirectional wind fields aloft points toward a marginal tornado threat at best. Mixed signals here, but a lower end severe (mainly hail) event seems most reasonable, unless things trend in another direction soon. Not unusual at all for early April, but not particularly impressive either.

Recent rainfall with more falling today across the southern/central High Plains should help put a dent in what was a gradually worsening drought, which will be a factor in severe threats into April. If we can sustain a fairly active upper air pattern and increase surface/boundary layer moisture at the same time, that will bode well with severe prospects in the coming weeks.

Large dew-point depressions as well, although an area of upper 50s dews over north-central Kansas as of 19z should advect into southern Nebraska. A locally enhanced severe threat may develop in this vicinity where the shear/instability overlay will be more favorable than points south.

It's still a long way out, but have to wonder if Thursday may feature an early season west-of-I-35 threat from the Texas panhandle into the central Plains. Wind fields strengthen ahead of a trough ejecting east from the Desert Southwest. Even the Euro shows an area of mid to upper 50s dews with convective precip ahead of a dryline. The quality of moisture return appears to be the biggest question at this stage. Friday seems like the best threat day at this point, especially if models slow down a bit more as they already have over the past few days.

Elevated WAA thunderstorms are ongoing across southeastern Kansas, feeding from a plume of 1000+ J/kg MUCAPE. It will be interesting to see if this convection leaves an outflow boundary that could influence afternoon storm development, and/or if this convection eventually becomes near-surface based as it spreads east into Missouri. Either way, fairly rapid moisture return is noted with a 10F dew-point increase at JLN over the past two hours. Based on the trajectory of these storms thus far, they should have little if any negative effects to afternoon convective development