Chasing 2008

Well, time to start a blog for this years chases. I wish this spring had been a little more active. I am hoping for big things next week. Here are my thoughts tonight.

Right now, it looks as though we will leave the gates running. Given early week possibilities being slim, we need to take advantage of things while we have storms. As of now, this looks like the best scenario I can give you:

Friday...leave by 8AM and head toward southern IL/MO bootheel region. I am not sure how things will be in terms of tornadoes, but there should be a severe risk and a chance to get some big storms as a cold front comes through. (There is an off-chance we might actually chase around here a little earlier...) I would hope to stay in Little Rock overnight.

Now the cold front is a real problem. That is bringing cold air southward and dry air. How dry the air gets will matter because a second upper-level disturbance which will swing toward the southern plains with a surface low progged to develop in the OK Panhandle. This will slow the southward push and allow for some instability to make its way toward that low. Dynamically things might be interesting but how much moisture we can get back will be key. I am not sure how good it will be...high based storms might be worth a picture or two. However, overnight, here might be a nice MCS that forms and will give us a good lightning show. We will watch that
because after that, things will shut down for a few days. Cold air will plow into the Gulf of Mexico. We can hope that it is quick to recover because the flow toward Tuesday starts to get much better. I would suggest heading toward Dallas or San Antonio or do something fun Sunday and
Monday. The Texas Rangers have an afternoon game on Sunday. We can get 5 dollar tickets.

Then hope...for moisture return quickly.

But the good news...that at least by Thursday there should be a couple of good days for chasing. I mean...i am looking at the prospects of at least two good days of excitement, if not three. We can also hope for something interesting on Wednesday which means we could have a very good trip.

At least that is how it looks to me right now.