Well I’ll make a quick post here while I still have wireless data on I-80. We left Lincoln, NE after I picked up my new 18-55mm Nikon lens at the Rockbrook Camera store — which is a pretty darn nice store, might I add. Anyway, that lens and a UV filter set me back about 200 bucks. We are with Matt Crowther, Jim Leonard, and Jim’s friend Steve now heading west to the Nebraska Panhandle. It’s 4:30pm now near North Platte with a nice connection on my Alltel card. I’m very very pleased with the performance of the Alltel/Kyocera setup… I didn’t expect to have a near-continuous signal and download during the chase yesterday. It was very nice! We didn’t miss a single volume scan after we got into Nebraska which was great.
Anyway, a perusal of the models this afternoon (Jay’s driving so I got to do some model crunching 
), suggest that Friday there could be two plays… one being in the Neb Panhandle as low level moisture advects northwest into the region…and another play could be along the central ND/SD border. There are some moisture concerns up this far north, though, which we will have to consider. The best mid-upper flow will be up here though. Saturday…. man… the "fantasy" 84-hr Eta shows a LOT of low level moisture with a nice surface pattern over North Dakota. Good west southwesterly flow in this area as well with a halfway decent 700mb baroclinic zone. There’ll be capping concerns, for sure, but this is where the best shear will be in the whole plains. Interesting that the GFS is suggesting some moderate 850-500mb flow coming into the Central High Plains and even the TX Panhandle Saturday… but the upper tropospheric flow really stinks in between the main polar jet and the subtropical jet wayyyy to the south.
Anyway, I think the plan is tomorrow will be a leisure day… and we will have several more model runs to pin down Friday and Saturday. They both look like legit chase days to me with organized severe storms.