I successfully intercepted the only severe storm Virginia this afternoon but I had to work hard to do so. The SPC originally outlooked my general chase area with a “See Text” that they upgraded to a Slight Risk later in the day. With a stationary front…
After a good night’s sleep I’m ready to tackle yesterday’s chase writeup. The model solutions for yesterday all pointed to the stubbornly persistent wedge being scoured out by afternoon, paving the way for severe storms to develop amid good instability…
I’m not even going to attempt a full writeup of today’s chase events before a good night’s sleep, but here’s a quick summary: The Wedge Won.- Initial morning outlooks from short range models and the SPC were favorable for the warm front pushing the wed…
…in our chase territory, anyway. The forecast models didn’t handle the position of today’s cold air damming wedge very well (imagine that!!) and the heavy hitting activity all happened along the warm front well to the south and east of our chosen reg…
Unless things change dramatically (i.e. the wedge moves further north than thought today) I’ll be targeting the northern North Carolina Piedmont. This section of a forecast surface map from the 06Z NAM shows the approximate position of the wedge front …
The storm system bringing seriously severe weather to points west of Virginia this weekend will have enough punch left to create a couple of chase opportunities in and around the Old Dominion this week. The mitigating factor for most of the state will …
I knew that eastern VA and NC would have better environments than my chase area today so the fact that I didn’t score on tornadic storms didn’t bother me. What did bug me was being out of position on a really good meso and not having enough hands, eyes…
Conditions look even better for a chase this morning. And as I’d suspected the Storm Prediction Center expanded its Slight Risk and tornado probs further westward to cover most of southern Virginia between the coastline and the mountains. Here’s what I…
I’ve been (somewhat) patiently waiting for this morning’s 12Z runs to become available and have just now finished reviewing both the NAM and GFS results. Yep, it’s a go for tomorrow. To save time and space I’ll just post an overall graphic – the Superc…
I suppose it was fitting to storm chase on Earth Day even if the setup wasn’t conducive to seeing much. A cold front crossing the mountains created a lee trough that fired up some cells that didn’t amount to anything given a paucity of moisture (DP’s o…
