The 19th and 20th are my two days off that I could chase. This evening (19th), I chased a very marginal setup close to home north of Dodge City. A weakening Pacific cold front moved southeast towards western Kansas by afternoon, however ahead of this front, the lower atmosphere was just marginally unstable with CAPE values less than 1000 J/kg. The deep layer shear was pretty good, but the lack of deep atmospheric upward motion prevented good storms to develop. At sunset near Wakeeney, a weak storm did form, however by the time it developed it was already getting too dark.
Friday the 20th chase forecast. The setup for tomorrow looks better with more instability present. Another strong Pacific storm system will be moving into the desert southwest region allowing southwest flow to develop over the high plains of Colorado and West Texas. The NAM model suggests increasing dryline convergence by afternoon from northeastern Colorado south-southeastward into the western TX Panhandle. The NAM develops convection along this dryline near the KS-CO border by early evening (see the graphic below). Anyway, I plan to target the region shaded in yellow in the graphic. If a storm does indeed develop in this area around 7pm CDT, then supercells would be likely given the shear/instability combination.
