A cold front has moved south through northern TX, placing the majority of the Plains in a colder, drier surface airmass. Indeed, it was just 13C in Amarillo (TX) this morning, which felt decidedly chilly! An upper ridge is currently moving across the western seaboard, and this will translate eastwards across the southern Plains by early part of next week, bringing some dry but much warmer or hotter conditions to the likes of Texas and Oklahoma etc, and more crucially some well-needed respite after what has been the wettest May on record for many parts of TX and OK. Hopefully things will start to dry up a bit here as there is a lot of flooding in parts of TX at the moment (after 4 years of severe drought).
With the jet displaced much farther north, the focus for any severe thunderstorms will largely be across the northern Plains where the upper flow is more zonal with small-scale impulses running eastwards in the broad westerly flow. As a result, it seems much of next week's chasing will be across the northern Plains, and so we are treating both today and tomorrow (Sunday) as 'positioning days', travelling the 800-900 miles or so to get into position for Monday onwards. Aiming to spend tonight somewhere in/near the Denver (CO) area and will assess tomorrow morning where to aim for by tomorrow night.
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| Schematic of pattern change by early next week, highlighting key components of upper pattern |
2015 STORM CHASE stats thus far:
McDonald's tally: 4
Applebee's tally: 3
Distance driven: 1,103 miles
States visited: 3
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