I agree. I pretty much have a rule (especially after 3/15 last year) that you can’t really say for sure if an event will be a super outbreak until it’s right in the middle of or after the event. Too many factors have to go absolutely right and in perfect synergy at both the storm scale and mesoscale (think Palm Sunday 1965, 4/3/74, 4/27/11). I don’t think that can be properly gauged even the day of.
To your point: the best example of this, to me, was March 15th last year. It legitimately looked like it may have that potential in the 72-18 hour window beforehand only for things to downtrend towards a more average high risk Dixie alley event because of a variety of factors.
I think a lot of people forget the lead up to 5/20/19 all of the models were just mean. And I think what got people’s alarm bells really ringing was seeing that infamous HRRR run with about 8-10 discrete supercells churning up Oklahoma. I remember watching the lead up to that and it looked like a Super Outbreak a day or so out. And IIRC they even issued a 45% tornado risk for OKC.
I’m of the opinion that it will be conducive to more significant events right now, especially given the pattern we’re heading into with multiple events that may have strong forcing associated with them, but as the drought gets worse later in Spring it may end up killing more setups than helping them. I really have no idea outside of that though, could be totally off the mark.
I’ve really changed my thinking over the last few years on the EML. You absolutely need a good EML, with the right amount of dry air, and sometimes a stout EML at that, for a high ceiling event. I’d be more bullish on days where you could have a cap bust vs no EML and an overcrowded crapvection-fest with guaranteed initiation.
Fully 1000% agree. Perhaps this is recency bias on my part, I didn't start getting super into tornadoes and weather until the 12/10/21 outbreak, and I didn't fully start paying attention to severe weather in general until about 11/4/22. With that being said, the majority of under-performing significant events I've seen thus far are the result of this. Was 4/28 last year a cap-related underperformance? If so, that may be the last one I recall tracking. I cannot remember.
That's a good question. I imagine that Trey has some good resources that support the idea of the state of drought in the EML source region being significant for predicting how a season's tornado output will go, it would be uncharacteristic of him to not have any papers or studies displaying how they are related. But I definitely haven't seen any of it myself and I imagine it's very difficult to tie any given cap-related underperformance (or overperformance) strictly to the degree of drought in the southwest.
I can't remember if it was cap-related, but I do know that storms just failed to fire off for some reason (was the capping too strong?). Most of the risk area was clear.
Very irresponsible comparison right now IMO. There's just too high of a model spread to parrot this right now. If you had every operational agreeing on the GFS or ICON's presentation at 500 mb, then I'd be more accepting of it. People are going to run with this comparison now and that's just the nature of weenie forecasting unfortunately. Not saying Gabe Garfield is himself a weenie, but people are going to take this out of context, have sky-high expectations, then be upset when it isn't 5/24/11 again.
People get way too worked up about what WXTwitter and chasers in general think of a set up. If the general public is getting their information from chasers or WXtwitter, that is on them.
Trey has a good video on it. Essentially messy storm mode, limited destabilization, plus “neutral” jet speed winds (the jet wind speeds essentially stayed the same throughout the day).
its cause its been so dry recently everybodys all perked up now that theres something coming up...
This is a very good point, there’s a lot of people out there waiting for one of “those” days to come on the horizon. This system has the possibility of being that, but people jump to too many conclusions because they see a thermodynamic, or synoptic detail that is similar to past infamous events. You could have a detail like 5/24/11 whether that’s the trough geometry or having 3000-4000 CAPE. The reason why those bold conclusions are being thrown around is because we have had such a long and quiet drought without any significant severe weather, and frankly, any severe weather at all.
I don't have a whole lot at this point, tons of model spread. Unfortunately the last chase day of the tour is Sunday. I'll probably chase Monday on my own on the way home, especially if Iowa continues to look good for that day. That's the upside of missing out on the first few days of the tour and driving all day yesterday, is I'll be in my vehicle and can chase rather than spending Monday on a plane.
In-person forecast update before leaving the hotel this morning:
Exactly. It’s “2011 this, 2011 that”. If this whole thing pans out like how it’s shaping up to be, it will probably end up as one of the big days of 2026. However, we’ve had a day 5 30% already this year, and look how it went…
