6/30 - 10pm - Wrapping Up the Storm Chasing Season

This storm chasing season is officially over for me as I'm back home in Louisville again. This week we went 2,930 miles through Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. Our highlights of the week were a fantastic isolated severe storm with rotation near Lusk, Wyoming on Sunday and the tail-end of a line of storms that dropped a few funnel clouds near the Canadian border town of Scobey, Montana on Tuesday. All eight of us had a great time and I'm glad I was able to help forecast and explain to our guests what was happening with the weather during our chase.

The storm chasing we did this week brings my mileage for the season with Storm Chasing Adventure Tours to 11,313 miles. I've been from the Mexican border to the Canadian border this season and in the process I gained more perspective on just how huge the United States is. Over the next few weeks I'll be assembling a compilation of my best storm video from this season and I'll post it when I'm finished on here and on my website. All of my photos from the past four weeks of storm chasing are already up on my Flickr and Facebook albums, so click on over and flip through them!

6/26 - 10:40am MDT - Another Day, Another State

Yesterday near the Black Hills of South Dakota we saw a few storms develop but they never got organized enough to be good for chasing. One storm in particular had some promise but it just couldn't get strong enough to leave the elevation of the Black Hills where its updraft was rooted. Today we're going north from the Black Hills and moving into North Dakota where there should be a threat for severe storms this afternoon. In particular, areas near and just west of Williston, North Dakota into extreme Eastern Montana appear to be under the greatest threat since a few isolated storms could produce hail, wind, and maybe even an isolated tornado. The Storm Prediction Center only has a general thunderstorm risk for this area but there's a 2% tornado risk included. You'll see the Slight Risk up there in Montana as well in the map to the right, but that area is very remote and the surface winds likely won't cooperate as well for storms like they will in North Dakota.

Winds aloft are forecast to be stronger in our target area today than they were yesterday in South Dakota since the upper-level disturbance over the northwestern part of the country will be moving east a little. When you couple these stronger southwesterly winds aloft with southeasterly winds at the surface that can create some shear for rotating storms. It's worth noting that the best surface winds could be in Canada just north of North Dakota and Montana since an area of low pressure will be spinning winds around from the east there. Since we can't go to Canada, that's obviously out. Dew points in North Dakota are downright soupy this morning and will likely continue to be that way through the afternoon. Having 70 degree dew points right on the Canadian border is something you don't see too often.

With all the warm air and moisture in place, instability will be plentiful for storms. I talked about the threat of isolated tornadoes today on the SPC's outlook and that may very well verify if the instability and shear come together. A great way to combine those two factors is to look at the Energy Helicity Index, which starts getting higher in an isolated spot in Western North Dakota according to the RAP Model. We'll see if it's enough to get some good storms going this afternoon and evening!

Keep up with our chase today by following me on Twitter and Facebook!

6/22 - 10:30am - Storm Chasing: Part 2

Tomorrow morning I leave Louisville for Denver as I set out for one last week of chasing storms with Storm Chasing Adventure Tours this year. This will be a late-season chase, meaning that the threat for severe weather will be much further north than where it was during the peak of the season in May. Unfortunately it looks like the pattern will be a little dull until the middle part of next week due to a ridge of high pressure that will be in place over the middle part of the country. By Wednesday an upper-level low will finally move across Alberta and Saskatchewan, which will bring southwesterly wind flow and maybe even a secondary short-wave disturbance through the Dakotas, Wyoming, and even parts of Nebraska. Moisture looks a bit modest at this point, but it's way too far out to judge that properly since model accuracy is low this many days out.

During the chase next week I'll be posting daily blog updates here and real-time chase updates on my Twitter and Facebook accounts. Each morning I should be able to post a weather briefing as I did back in May so that you'll have the latest on where we'll be headed to and why. Hopefully we'll be able to find some good storms!

8/23 - 12pm - MSU Forecast, Hurricane Bill to the UK

It's been hot and sticky over the past week here at Mississippi State, but a cold front that came through late last week really cooled things down and took the humidity out of the equation. It looks like the cool temperatures and low humidity will continue for the next couple of days, but more hot weather is in the works for the middle of this week. Things should remain dry for most of the week as well:


Category 1 Hurricane Bill is getting ready to clip Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in Canada today, but luckily the storm is weakening and will become a tropical storm tomorrow. The interesting part of this storm is where it's headed after Canada.... The United Kingdom. The storm will cross the Atlantic and what's left of it could make landfall in the upper part of the UK. It will most likely be just a bit of rain and wind by the time it gets there, but the fact that this storm has gone from Africa, to the US East Coast, then to the UK really shows how far a storm can travel.

12/10 - 7pm - Here's the Deal...

***DISREGARD ALL CURRENT GFS MODEL RUNS (0z-18z).***

Just do it. Please. Everyone. Yes, that means you media outlets.

I've just had enough of the inadequacies showing up on the GFS for the past few days. That forecast model is worthless right now. The problem is that the Euro, Canadian, JMA, and whatever else model you can throw at me are predicting a SNOWSTORM (you heard right) on the 15-16th (17th storm for NE US that I've been talking about) for the Louisville area. Right now the GFS is taking the low that is to produce this storm right off the coast into the Atlantic and then blowing it up into a monster. Not gonna happen folks. Nope. Here's why...

• The NAM is going deeply negative (red lines on bottom graphic): This simply means that there will be higher than normal pressure in the North Atlantic, signaling a shield of sorts to deflect all low pressure to staying within the East Coast, and not going straight out to sea.

• The GFS (I JUST saw the 18z run when writing this post and it brought the storm back, but placement is still an issue) is still taking the low too far south and making a huge storm in Alabama, which is just not the right solution given the current dry pattern there. The low wouldn't want to infiltrate that dry high down there, instead it would want to skirt along the northern edge, which is just a couple hundred miles north of the GFS forecast location on the 16th.
• Henry Margusity at Accuweather is actually putting us in the center of a snowfall potential map. He's been pretty good forecasting the recent storms in the Northeast and he's been doing well down this way as well (although there was the storm a couple weekends ago that surprised a lot of people and went north on us, which was a close call to begin with)

(Read Margusity's blog here)

• John Belski at WAVE-TV is going out on a limb (I'm behind you 100% on this) that we'll see snow on Saturday with this low. He gave the three possible low tracks (out to sea, S. Alabama, and N. Georgia) and said "I see the potential for a snowstorm". In other words, he's the only one in the local TV market calling for this (WDRB is 40 degrees and slight chance of rain/snow, WLKY is mix and snow with 30's, WHAS is cloudy and upper 30's.)

So here's my thinking, let's wait until Thursday and see what the models look like. If we're in the same or similar boat, I'm going to go ahead and call for a storm. Otherwise we'll just see what happens. Throughout the next few days we'll see fluctuations in the models, but overall I think this is the best shot we've had so far at some appreciable snow this season.


Now, shorter range (Don't you just love how I think in reverse-chronological order?)

We will see highs near or at 70 tomorrow with little rain expected. What a deal in December! The saying in Louisville is, "If you don't like the weather today, wait a little bit." That's just a little urban folklore there, but hey, 70's and snowstorms can happen in the same week!

Ahh... Now we get some numbers!

Finally! I've got numbers for you. My current thinking is:

• 2 to 4 INCHES OF SNOW (At the moment...)
  

You may say this is not too much but I'm thinking we will get the higher end of that estimate. This will occur over three periods of snow, Wednesday night, Thursday night, and Friday morning. Thursday night will be the heaviest time with a possible 1 to 3". The other two times will be an inch or two.

Now there are some risks still. It could go north/south of us. It could "miraculously" warm up like the last two disasters. The snow may not even show up.

With recent modeling though, this looks slim. The GFS is still trashed and NAM is weak so we're depending on the Euro/Canada/Japan bunch here. This estimate could change dramatically within 36 hours, but for now looks fairly solid. If anything, I think the snow totals could go up with a weaker model run biasing forecasts.

If it doesn't come, there are still many more significant snow chances on the way. But, as they say, the third time is a charm...

If things get really out of hand tomorrow (say, maybe a huge increase in accumulation estimates), I'll make the very first Ryan Weather Emergency Severe Weather Video. Again, only if I see a real change or at least a very solid forecast for over 3-4".