A weak surface low flirting across the southeastern states, an upper low drifting up the Ohio valley, and the promise of a stubborn high pressure center anchored off the New England coast are all combining to suppress any decent chances at chasing here…
I concluded that today’s (Wed. Apr 24) setup wasn’t worth heading out to preposition for a chase so I kept an eye on the radar from home just in case something worth looking at popped up. It did, as shown in this 2059Z radar grab:I had noticed th…
I think I’ve finally wrapped my mind around what occurred during Friday’s chase. Looking ahead I’m seeing a slightly less volatile setup showing up for this coming Wednesday but it appears interesting enough to chase east of the mountains again.&…
I headed out to chase just after lunch yesterday – Friday Apr. 19th – with the idea of starting out in Gretna where I would meet my son and chase together. That part of the day worked out as planned but the rest of the chase was almost totally un…
This 12Z NAM graphic shows the Supercell Composite Parameter to be >2 for much of eastern Virginia at 8 pm Friday. That provides some “comfort” feeling that Friday’s setup will be worth chasing even if the 0-6 km wind shear is pretty much unid…
Friday’s cold front looks like a squall line generator for the Virginia Piedmont with a very strong but unidirectional upper air wind regime. At the moment the models (GFS, NAM, Euro) are showing only a bit of CAPE (500 j/kg max). However t…
We did chase today, we did go south into North Carolina, and we did intercept a discrete cell. Those are the good things about today. The bad part was that the cell we went after died before our eyes and we didn’t even see or experience any…
We’re heading to the Danville VA vicinity this evening (Thursday) with admittedly slim hopes of catching a pre-frontal cell firing in northern NC and moving northward. A couple of short range models hold out hope for a discrete cell or two to fir…
Given that the approaching potent cold front is forecast to slide through the area Friday morning it would seem that chasing would be a futile exercise. However since I’m determined to salvage something from this mess I’ve been considering two op…
Aggghhhh! The models are agreeing that the upcoming cold frontal passage will happen overnight Thursday into Friday morning here in Virginia. Of course that’s just about the worst timing for a storm chase but that seems to be typical …
