on March 23, 2009 by sroberts in Uncategorized, Comments Off

Today’s Starting Point: My House

No, really, I mean it. These two graphics show some derived parameters from the RUC model, as predicted for 4pm CDT. The first one is based on research by Jon Davies.

[Edit: I linked both graphics incorrectly...should have uploaded them instead...these graphics are changing every time they are updates, so they are likely to not show what I'm talking about by the time you read this. As I write this edit, they are actually a bit higher values, for 7pm, than they were for 4pm.]

This one is based on some parameters that have more to do with larger tornadoes. Certainly nothing amazing, but definitely worth staying close to home for.

Pros: plenty of shear to work with, and from all indications the dry line will still be fairly sharp. The NAM shows a tongue of warmer surface temperatures right west of I-35 at 4pm, which tells me we’ll get the clearing we need for some instability.

Cons: instability is still mis-placed from shear, though the two are much closer than on previous model runs. Moisture return…as I write this, the 60′s are just about to, or in some cases across, the Red River. If we can get just a tad more SE component to the wind, and if things will slow down just a couple of hours, we could get the moisture here just at the right time.

Yeah, that’s a lot of if’s. My call: damaging wind/hail within 25 miles of Wichita, larger tornadoes will hold off until dark and be a bit east of here, but I would not be at all surprised with a tornado warning during the 5-6:30 timeframe in Wichita. NWS said yesterday this bore a lot of resemblance to 3/7, when we had the weak twisters just south of Hutch. I’d place todays 30-40 miles south of there.

Guess we’ll see, eh?

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