May 18, 2011 Storm Chase
Looking at the WRF/NAM/GFS the 250 mb will be sitting off to the northwest into the Oklahoma panhandle and southeast Colorado, not all hope is lost for west Oklahoma as the 500 mb jet manages to just nose its way into the western portions of Oklahoma. Hopefully this little bit of upper level flow will be our saving grace.
At the surface, a low looks to establish itself in the southeast portion of Colorado with a warm front draping down in through Oklahoma and south of Oklahoma city. Moisture looks to return with dew points forecast to get up into the mid to lower 60's (degrees F) and mixing will establish a dry line in the vicinity of Weatherford, OK. Although the upper level support is marginal, what little flow there is at 500 mb combined with the 850 mb low level jet of about 35-40 kt, 15-20 kt surface flow look to keep shear values in range for some supercell development along the dry line, hodographs around the Weatherford area also confirm this
CAPES in the vicinity of 2000 - 2500 J/kg look to provide enough energy to get storms going, but soundings indicate that there may be some issues with capping. All factors look to show a slight potential for some isolated storms to develop in the Weatherford, Oklahoma area between 21Z-00Z, but the lack of jet dynamics is concerning, and areas northwest of Weatherford, such as Woodward and possibly a little further NW are not out of the question either. This same system looks the continue into Kansas ans current model guidance looks to be pointing in the Dodge City, KS area where a triple point looks to be established with good upper level support, but more to come tomorrow.
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