Friday, April 20, 2007

Dry Line Storms for Saturday?


We're watching a shortwave trough toward the southwest that looks to ignite storms along the dryline by Saturday evening. Dynamically speaking, the trough looks to become negatively tilted after sundown, but will those storms move off the dryline and into our area by Sunday morning? A negatively tilted trough is significant because of the enhanced upward vertical motion it provides. These types of upper level features commonly produce severe weather. I have included a model depiction of a negatively tilted trough above.


The 0Z run of the WRF shows a specific dryline to set up across western Oklahoma, and with decent surface heating creating CAPE values over 2,000, those storms will erupt as the cold pool aloft cracks the cap. Overall shear is not very favorable for a large number of tornadoes, but significant surface heating and strong updrafts would support large hail and damaging winds.


Storm motion will likely be to the northeast, so chances for our area seeing storms is only running around 20%. The models are trying to indicate an MCS to move across central Oklahoma, so extreme eastern Oklahoma would be the most likely area for decaying storms for Sunday morning. We'll keep an eye out on any thunderstorm potential.

Posted by Drew Michaels at 7:58 PM

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home