I’ll have to apologize since I have not been able to post so much lately due to poor internet connections and trying to limit data usage while chasing and about 9 straight days of chasing will tire you out. To summarize the past few days; May 22 and 23 proved to be a little disappointing with some good setups. Unfortunately warmer 700 mb temps and a lack luster flow up from the Gulf really had these setups go to waste. May 24th proved to be less disappointing with a great structured supercell that spun up in a line of storms. It was brief but still produced a nice meso near Ottawa, KS. See image below.

May 25 was an incredible chase with the forecast working out perfectly. Our target area of Great Bend to Rush Centre had us right in the middle of all the action where the triple point had setup. Capping along with the ridge axis aloft had me a little concerned that nothing was going to be able to get going. But the low level shear and CAPE were able to break the cap and overcome the weaker flow aloft to produce. The cell in Lacross, KS was almost stationary at one point, which was a result of it being able to plant itself firmly in the boundary layer and latch on the warm front. This is why, in my opinion, the cell was able to produce as it did since it was able to feed off the added low level vorticity from the warm front. It resulted in a prolific EF-2 tornado which was lit up by lightning (video coming soon to http://www.severeweatherdiaries.com/video/) and a secondary EF-1 which hit Lacross. This first photo here shows the rope out stage of the EF-2 tornado and the second shows what I believe to be a dual meso signature. The circled area indicates our position on the northwest side of the circulation. Looks like we were in tight but the funnel was to our east passing in front of us then moving away. May 27 turned out to be a bust, even though we were on some cells near the 5:00 pm CDT hour which did give some very light rain and a few rumbles, the storms were not able to root themselves fast enough and were carried over the warm front by the flow aloft thus killing off the updrafts.

Today looks to be a little more promising with a strong trough working its way into the upper plains. Still not ideal with the upper low centered near the Canadian border in Montana, the vorticity maxima forecast to eject around the base of it should be the focal point for today's chase as shown in the 500 mb vorticity chart below.

Along with this are two other main features aloft that I like. The first is the strong curvature seen in the 250 mb jet stream as well in the 500 mb flow. Furthermore the main axis of stronger 500 mb flow lies within the warm sectors of the secondary low that spins up in west Kansas. This tells me that there will be added cyclonic vorticity and backed winds within the warm sector. The images below clearly indicate that the 500 mb jet lines up with the sfc warm sector but does not show winds as backed and I suspect the model may be underplaying this slightly.

Again moisture will be the limiting factor here again due to subtropical storm Beryl off the Atlantic coast not allowing for a full flow from the Gulf, but whatever flow there is should be more than enough the get upper 50's to even mid 60's dew points into the north central Kansas region by tomorrow afternoon. What also has me encouraged is that the CAP should not be as big of an issue as it has been over the past few days as 700 mb temperatures look to be in the 5 to 10 degrees Celsius time around initiation. With a strong 850 low level jet surging in around 00Z through north central Kansas and up into Nebraska low level shear should be more than enough to have rotating updrafts, even though the 850 flow is not ideally backed, but Ada, OK in 2011 had slightly veered 850's and look how that did, thus I'm not too concerned there. More encouraging is the NAM-WRF/GFS agree with the setup and the SREF H5 is also on board but is slightly north than the other two models. Thus the area between Phillipsburg and Smith Centre along hwy 36 looks to be the area of interest for me as I suspect anything north will be pretty sloppy. Then looks like for May 28 will be back down in southwest Oklahoma in the Lawton area. Currently I’m interested in the dual jet flow and the interactions they will have as seen on the 250 mb forecast below. Current sfc flow returns as a result from this feature are little weak but I believe the model will begin to pick up on this by tomorrow. I'll give more details on this tomorrow.