It’s Monday morning, the day before Day 1. I met up with Matt Crowther and Jim Leonard last night here in Dodge as they set out for their trip. It looks like they’ll head into Colorado today to try and catch anything off the Palmer Divide towards early evening when some of the good upper flow comes out. Last night was rather interesting. We ate at Montana Mikes and we all got a free dinner thanks to a car accident near 14th and Wiatt Earp. One (or more?) of the involved parties ran into a power pole and took out the power along West Wiatt Earp, so the power went out for a good half hour to 45 minutes before our food came out. Fortunately, we timed it just about perfectly as they must have just finished cooking our food before the power went out. The salmon was still good, even though we all ate our supper in the dark… well not pitch black, but you get the idea. We then headed to my work (NWS-DDC) to look at some new 00z model stuff.
Jay, Stacie, and I will probably reunite with Jim, Matt, and Jim’s friend from Florida (they are all chasing in Jim’s van) on Tuesday. Below is my last installment of the “dart-board”. The last dot is now in north-central KS. I think there may be a decent “tail-end Charlie” play in this area Tuesday. Jay will be driving down from Lawrence very early Tuesday morning and will leave his car here in Dodge for the two weeks we are out. Stacie will be arriving late this evening.
Looks like after Tuesday, we’ll be down Wednesday and Thursday (not chasing), but setting up in the Dakotas (likely Rapid City) for late-week/early weekend activity. The 850-700mb baroclinic zone will be up here, along with the best mid-upper winds, so this is where we’ll be. There are growing signals that towards late weekend into early next week…. once Jon, Rob, and Mitch come out (They’ll be joining us on Saturday), we’ll begin to shift our focus south I think… the ECMWF shows some decent 500-200mb flow shifting into the southwest as another deep trough (hopefully) evolves eastward into the intermountain west. This would probably result in increased southwesterly flow all across the High Plains. Early next week (like around the 30-31??) could be interesting — a wide open Gulf with very good looking trajectories originating from the deep tropics…allowing for very good moisture. We’ll see. The 29-31 of May is a historic hot time anyway, so there’s hope there.
- Day 1, Tue 5/23=N. Central KS (photogenic supercells?)
- Day 2, Wed 5/24=Travel to Rapid City (down day it appears)
- Day 3, Thu 5/25=Sightseeing? (looks like a down day, not much moisture yet?)
- Day 4, Fri 5/26=Southern Dakotas (looks better for chasing)
- Day 5-7, Sat 5/27 to Mon 5/29=Trending a bit farther southwest each day into the central High Plains as new trough emerges in the west??? Very preliminary. Climo would support this).
