So yesterday turned out to be every eventful seeing 4 tornadoes near the Kingman, KS region, can see photos and videos here. I also proposed to Dayna as well and we are now engaged and could not be any happier. Today was a down day and decided not to chase the southwestern OK region and into TX since parameters were only showing pulsing cells with large hail threat. Thus it wasn’t worth the risk. We did drive to Clovis, New Mexico to photograph the eclipse. It was a long haul from Wichita, KS but we were able to make it in time. Now we need to decide whether or not we chase in southeast Colorado tomorrow or push on north to NE/SD to get into position for Tuesday.

May 21 (today)

The potential looks pretty marginal with broad upper ridge in place but the NAM/GFS looks to be doing something funky in through the CO area as winds begin to push back from the south. The combination of the upper wind maxima and the local vorticity that is produced in CO may potentially make for an interesting chase. The images here in order are 500 mb winds, 500 mb vorticity, 850 mb winds, sfc winds and Td/streamlines. The 500 mb wind maxima looks to be generating some subtle vorticity maxima aloft. At the sfc and 850 mb levels the strong SSW winds should enhance low level shear/vorticity in combination with the gradual upslope to possibly produce something interesting. Also note worthy is a very breakable cap is present with 1500-2000 j/kg of CAPE available through the afternoon. Parameters are still pretty iffy right now thus I'm not 100% committed to this yet since Tuesday holds more promise.

Tuesday May, 23

This day looks to hold more potential but is still a little questionable given that there is a slight disconnect with flow aloft and sfc. What is shocking to me is how similar this setup is to the setup on May 20 in KS. The following images show the 250 mb winds, 500 mb winds, sfc winds, and Td/streamlines. I'll just go over these for now to keep this brief. The similarity that I see is the scenario with the cold front darting south and gradually pinching off the dryline. I don't think this will occur as fast as it did on May 20 but right now my thinking is the same has I had on May 20. I'm favouring the intersect region of the dryline/cold front, even though aloft the flow would indicate to head more north I believe the amount of upper support along with the amount of CAPE present is more than enough to balance each other out. Furthermore, analysing the 850 mb winds the cold front at this level actually surges ahead slightly faster than the sfc front which would cut the good low level flow off to the more northern target as well thus rendering the dryline/coldfront area with more potential as the 850 flow will be free for any convection to utilize. The issues I do see are the possibility of a strong cap and the winds in the warm sector not backed as much as I would like. But I do suspect that the low level interaction with the dryline and cold front may produce some sort of mesoscale cyclonic feature which if materialises will help a great deal. The other concern is the larger CAPE into ND which may prove to be more beneficial. For now I'll stick with Murdo, SD and asses more tomorrow.