Memorial Day featured a weak upper level trough across the Central Plains that was going to boost instability across Nebraska, but focus for development was a bit nebulous across the region except for a surface convergence zone across Central Nebraska which is where the SPC had outlined the slight risk.
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Memorial Day Weekend gave an opportunity for a couple of local chases. A week of marginal setups across the southwest migrated into the Central Plains to close out the holiday. The 28th featured a bit of stronger mid-level flow across Nebraska and Kansas as a trough moved across the area. This manifested with a slight risk across Western Kansas and the OK Panhandle and while tornado chances were pretty marginal they couldn’t be ruled out.
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May 13th was the final day in a four day event stretching from Colorado to Iowa. I had actually driven home the prior night after a lengthy internal debate about whether I would even chase this day. Well, I awoke in the morning and given the forecast I decided that with the way this system performed the last three days, Northwest Iowa wasn’t that far after all.
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May 12th was the third day in a four day severe weather event. This day featured an enhanced risk across Northeast Nebraska and I decided to apply the lessons learned from the previous two days and play the north side of the surface low which was in the process of occluding as it drifted north.
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May 11th was day two of a four day chase event. The trough from yesterday was forecast to form a closed low in Southern Colorado and be nearly on top of the surface low. It would be another great opportunity for low topped supercells on the north and northeast side of the low. The bulk of turning in the hodographs would be in the lower 3km which is what we want to see for tornadoes.
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