After a top notch chase day, I spent the night in Council Bluffs because I wasn’t sure if I was going to chase the 27th or not. A surface low was forecast to track from Southeast Colorado to Kansas City with a frontal boundary draped to the northeast into Central Iowa and a dryline stretching towards Midland, TX.
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Friday the 26th was one of those days that looked like it could be pretty significant. A surface low in Kansas with a trailing dryline and cold front was expected to track northeast towards Sioux Falls and eventually to Minneapolis overnight. How overnight and morning convection further south impeded the flow of moisture north would be one of the key factors in how the day would unfold.
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April 25th was my first chase day of the season and looked like a decent day before the day. SPC had outlined a 10% tornado risk in Northwest Kansas. A low was forecast to deepen in southeast Colorado and models were forecasting a 992mb low. This would help transport mid-50°F dewpoints into the low and push MLCAPE values up to 1500 J/Kg.
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The 12th looked like a pretty decent local day. A surface low in Southwest Nebraska was forecast to drift east. A cold front draped south from it through Kansas and a warm front extending eastward towards Omaha. Cloud cover was pretty strong in the morning so the play would be to watch for clearing in the warm sector for a favorable target.
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October 3rd was a day I wasn’t planning to chase. A low in North Dakota with a trailing trough stretching into the Central Plains along with cyclogenesis near the Colorado/Kansas border would provide an opportunity for storms in a narrow corridor of mid-60°F’s dewpoints. The event looked like it would go linear quick in my vicinity with scattered chances further south along the dryline into Oklahoma and Texas.
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