STRONG Tornadoes Likely Today if One Thing Happens...

[00:00:00]Howdy folks and welcome to your stormchasing forecast show for Monday, July 20th. Back to work everyone. I am Gabriel Harbor. He is Cameron Nixon.

[00:00:11]Cameron, how you doing there today?

[00:00:13]>> I'm good. Had a wonderful weekend and like you said, I'm back to work. How are you?

[00:00:18]>> I'm doing great. I just got back from the gym about an hour and a half ago and you and I were talking about how Swole Cameron is loading right now. So, I'm excited.

[00:00:28]>> Teaser. Yeah, we're gonna come back and I'm gonna My voice is going to be two octaves deeper. It's going to be a great time.

[00:00:33]>> No, we can't have any of If anything, we [laughter] need to go the other direction. I feel >> I feel like there are some species of animals that lack the ability to even hear the part of the spectrum that we're [laughter] on. So, yeah, >> we got to go the other way, man. Teasing indeed. The future swole Cameron. We're also going to tease what's on deck for today's show. You've got the outlook pulled up there, Cameron. I know you were mentioning to me that there are two areas in particular of interest today spread out across the risk area. So if you just want to take us through what you're thinking and then we can dive into the details.

[00:01:08]>> Yeah, absolutely. Like you all you all see the very large slight risk and even enhanced risk in here. It is kind of driven by a 5% hatched tornado risk through central Wisconsin into Iowa. As always though with these really large scale events, there could be a couple different targets today. And I'm actually seeing some signal that today's target could actually be bifurcated in two. One of them potentially way up here in northern Wisconsin, which of course it's going to get an eye roll from a lot of folks. This is really not that great of chase terrain as we've dealt with the last few days. However, another one into Iowa, which we might even focus on a little bit more. So, let's break down into why I think we could potentially split this up into two. And let's look first off as to why we actually have this enhanced risk. As we've been having these last several days, we just have this kind of trough parade. And this is really strong flow for late July here.

[00:02:06]This is actually ridiculous that we're getting these these extensions down into the Midwest. And so, it should not be surprising that with this much of a jetream overspreading the area, we're going to have shear and we're probably going to have severe. And if you go down a little bit, look at 700. You could see this this large short wave here too with perhaps some lead features. We're going to have to look at this a little bit more closely. That might cast a kind of a little monkey wrench in today's setup.

[00:02:33]Here's a good example of maybe a lead short wave, but then this main wave behind it. And so just broadly speaking, and we're going to we're both Gabe and I were noticing earlier that the wrap may not have a fantastic handle. So, we'll zoom out just a little bit and take a more broad brush approach. And we have a strong low up here in Canada dragging behind this kind of pressure trough here with what at first glance seems to be a diffuse cold front what we've been dealing with the last few days. We'll go into some de detail though that suggests that we this might not be exactly how our surface pattern shapes up later. But let's look at Dupoint 2 again in the broad brush sense. And we have another one of these cold fronts that still has a fairly decent moisture behind it. So again, not really like an undercutting bad kind of cold front scenario, but something that'll probably spark off some severe storms and supercells.

[00:03:26]But let's take a look at maybe a more higherrise model like the HUR and give you an idea how this might take hold.

[00:03:33]And to get to that, let's take a look at how it is assimilating today's convection and where this convection is kind of end progue to end up later. So if we're dealing with this kind of early morning MCS, this will probably leave some sort of remnant outflow boundary somewhere in north northern and eastern Iowa. And again, I spoiled it right here, but let's take a deeper dive as to what that might look like on the surface pattern. And if we look at the hur surface pattern, you could see a little bit more detail emerge that wasn't really obvious in the wrap, you have this kind of broad flow all south of that front. And of course, here's your northerly flow coming in with that front. But right here, what you notice right into central Iowa is you get this sudden wind shift associated with that boundary. And as we all know, tornadoes love boundaries. So we can take a little bit of a closer look. I know Gabe was looking at how the photographs changed along either side of this boundary and you can see this is southwest of this boundary, right? You have fairly weak veered low-level flow and relatively straight photographs here. It's also pretty dry here and this is going to be something that we're going to have to deal with potentially. But if you look north and east of this boundary, we have a little bit more moisture here near the surface and we have a lot more veering in our photograph. Look at how much larger that photograph is and more fear it is. So, this is definitely interesting. I definitely get some some pause with this thermodynamic profile, but we'll talk about that a little bit later. And as we go up north into Wisconsin, her maybe just a little bit weak on this moisture return up here.

[00:05:13]This actually doesn't look too great. I think I've seen other models kind of like this area a little bit more. Kind of keeps surface moisture at bay and has mostly elevated moisture here. So another model that we could look at is the NAM is this will probably give us the opposite potential and still goes pretty crazy on dues. It it looks like we probably have some kind of outflow boundary being resolved here. That just gives us higher due points east of that.

[00:05:42]But you see our surface windfield is really not much different across that boundary. So if you pluck a sounding here, you probably won't get these really large looping photographs. But still definitely sufficient for supercells. 92 over 79 is bonkers.

[00:05:59]This kind of just insane. So I don't know if this is going to happen or not, but already again you're starting to notice there's lots of dry air here. And I am usually a fan of dry air. Okay. I love me some dry mid-level air. Not necessarily when we're dealing with these kind of weekly force cold fronts though in the shallow moisture. Oftent times these are kind of your mini supercell environments and minis really struggle against this kind of dry air.

[00:06:26]Further south and in west and kind of western Iowa we probably get even drier than that to the point where is pretty much impossible to get convection here.

[00:06:36]So you're definitely going to have a rapid cut off of convection as we get west into Iowa and up north into Wisconsin. I think Nan was actually really loving this.

[00:06:46]Maybe not as much as I remember, but really nice K profiles up here. Maybe a little bit more moisture loft such that you can actually sustain any convection that does fire up there, but mostly straight photographs.

[00:06:59]>> And a couple of things. First of all, you keep throwing my name in there like I was the one contributing to some of this analysis. I just want to let I want to let it be known I asked a question or two. Cameron is the one that took a look at everything. So, all the credit and glory to you, my friend.

[00:07:12]>> Appreciate it. And then also one of the things that you pointed out with there being a narrower window to actually get the type of storms that we're looking for. I did notice that especially with northward extent. It seems like the axis of instability really narrows down to the point where there's not a lot of room for air. How do you handle situations like that where it's just not a huge area where you actually can target? Does that mean that if maybe something goes a little bit off or it's not according to plan, then you really are going to end up with the ingredients not overlapping with one another?

[00:07:45]>> Yeah, that's definitely quite possible.

[00:07:47]One thing that I do like to see is that we have this kind of swift motion of that moisture axis. It's moving with the storms, so to speak. So, while these storms up north might definitely be the first to move out of that axis, I I don't exactly think this is going to hinder this target from performing that much, unless you were thinking of something else.

[00:08:09]So, I was actually going to use that as a segue into the the the Iowa hype that I was about to dive into, which is it seems like there's a much larger area to the eastern portion of the state where you basically have an opportunity for something to go right in addition to that potential remnant outflow boundary being left there. And then I think the most important factor, and I think today might be a perfect opportunity to highlight this for our audience, is when you're choosing a chase target. Let's say you could go to anywhere along the risk area to chase today. Even if it doesn't look the best, I would probably always target Iowa here just because I might actually [laughter] see something as opposed to going further north and just having my view obstructed by a tree.

[00:08:51]>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, here's where I'm going to start to break down kind of these these few target areas here and explain the pros and cons of what we're dealing with. Obviously, this target up here in Wisconsin, man. Like, if you're really feeling it, go for it. But I think it's just you're it's trees. It's nothing but trees. I I think here's the kind of sounding that I was plucking that made me think Nan was on fire for this up here. Do [snorts] think it's a pretty potent environment, especially if you get stronger surface flow near the low, get these elongated photographs, and then you get this rich moisture below this dry air mass and strong enough forcing. I do actually think we could have tornadoes up here being potentially strong, which is why that five hatch was issued there. However, if you're not looking to play the trees, thinking the next best opportunity is going to be somewhere along that remnant outflow boundary. And you can see that in the NAM. It's like we have the biggest cape right here around that intersection from this morning's and the actual cold front here. Again, I think the NAM kind of washes out this boundary, but it's possible that could that it could even be stronger than this. So if you pluck some soundings around here, you're going to get something that looks pretty good, at least on the NAM. Pretty average of kind of the best case scenarios here. Long photographs, but also some low-level sheer and then deeper moisture, also dry air loft, and really big cape. This is an extreme thermal profile. I don't know if this is if we're actually going to get this many this many due points, so to speak, but this could yield some pretty robust supercells. I think they would be fairly small given those low LCL's and that drier loft, but all the better for producing possibly photogenic tornadoes if something were to form on this boundary. One thing that I was not liking though, and I think I might maybe shift to the wrap. I think it was showing this or no, maybe the hur. Let's look at the her where it actually showed a really sharp kind of boundary here remnant from that MCS. And if you pluck some soundings around here though, you get these profiles where your low-level laps rates are not that great. You have this deep moisture here. And in these profiles, I'm not exactly sure where our parcels are going to come from. These are these kind of like quasi elevated.

[00:11:13]Might get some elevated storms, might get some surfacebased storms, might get both. And I don't necessarily like to see that. And again, let me go back to the the NAM and show you what I mean that I actually did [clears throat] like to see. And it was something like this where you could only source parcels from the surface. You're not creating any elevated storms here. You're comically dry in this, by the way. That's really funny. So, it's likely going to be somewhere in between, I'm guessing, these these two outcomes. And I think I would just worry a little bit that we could be dealing with elevated storms on this triple point. Or maybe we could be dealing with storms that initiate a little bit early and then become mostly hail producing supercells then maybe have some tornado threat as they move further into Iowa. Again, this is really nuance and I'm kind of just spitballing here, but I think that is the potential failure mode for this target. Maybe you go a little bit too early and maybe you're more of an elevated [clears throat] kind of hail mode.

[00:12:12]However, kind of southwest of this, further along kind of the cold front, if that were to spark future storms, I'm really just not liking. I I think your LCL's are going to be much higher. Your shear is going to be weaker, and I'm not exactly sure what the I guess purpose would be to target further down southwest of that line, unless you're looking for just more highbased or photogenic storms.

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[00:13:12]You know what time it is. Cam verse cams. Who will win?

[00:13:16]>> Yes, sir. And it's usually never me, but it's also usually never the cams. So, [laughter] we could take a look at what the herd currently has going on. CS rolling its way into Illinois from Iowa.

[00:13:29]If you're waking up today, this might even be some kind of damaging wind and hail threat with this line. What I don't like to see is again kind of this this signal that these these storms are forming early and in kind of this elevated fashion. If I pluck a sounding south of these storms here along this triple point, we're actually pretty we got that lowle inversion here and we're sourcing from around 800 millibars. So her is a little bit giddy with these elevated storms. This might not exactly bode well for this target later. Maybe it pops another storm later. We could take a look at its kind of hypothetical environment and it seems to get a little bit better over time. So you could be dealing with the case where your kind of early afternoon storms are largely elevated and then we start dealing with more of a surfacebased supercell threat.

[00:14:16]But again, I'm just a little bit cautious that this might be mostly a hail threat or a big HP kind of supercell threat. Again, up here, you hate to kind of look at targets that you can't really see, but I do think this target does have some potential. Hurst simulates a few supercells strolling into a a very nice looking environment here. Mostly just surface base with some really dry air loft and pretty strong little shear. So I do think there is a potential for multiple tornadoes even up here if the convective mode is right.

[00:14:47]Some that could be strong. We could take a look at the Rufus again kind of showing that scenario. Maybe these supercells a little bit further east and then cluster of supercells developing down into Illinois. This looks like to be a little bit further east than the her head. Nam, I'm guessing will be the farthest northwest of the models. It still shows a fairly robust discrete supercell threat up here. Quite interesting. Again, if this terrain was any better, I think this would be a very viable and spicy chase target, but also shows some fairly good action down here.

[00:15:22]Might be dealing with a little bit more storms or a clustered mode. Again, when you get deeper moisture and more chances for elevated storm convection, not all these these storms are going to be elevated, of course, but there could just be more convection. And I think that's what the HER and the NAM and the RFS are kind of showing here. It's just the potential for more storms, more interactions, might have a shorter window of tornado potential here, but a a longer window for big, beefy, and potentially photogenic storms.

[00:15:53]big and beefy storms. Almost like they've been getting swole, too. So, >> yes, all three of us.

[00:16:00]>> All right. So, last thing we'll hit here, and unless you have something else you wanted to go over, is what would we be looking for as far as uptrending is concerned that would perhaps tip the scales in the favor of the northern target if people were planning on Iowa earlier in the day?

[00:16:15]>> Yeah, definitely. I would just keep an eye on those due points and just see. I think that the northern target is the most sensitive to due points, especially because when we've been plucking these soundings, our moist layer is so shallow here and our air loft is so dry. So, I definitely think that we're going to be very sensitive to getting our low to mid70 degree due points here. And if we don't get that, we might not even initiate many storms at all. So, I think we we are kind of teetering here. I think the the ceiling is higher, but the potential for storms up here might actually be lower. I definitely think there's a much larger chance for storms somewhere around this area from Rochester down to Davenport and Rockford just simply because we have that remnant MCS. We have just deeper moisture here in general and kind of that that triple point where that cold front meets the outflow boundary. And down here, I'd definitely be looking at what does the sky look like? Are we dealing with this kind of icky kind of stratus layer? Are we dealing with storms initiating around 1, two, 3 pm? All those things would kind of lend me to think that today's potential will probably be more hail and wind. However, if we recover really nicely, you're seeing kind of blue skies and just rows of cumulus. I definitely think that we could be on for some more surface-based development and strong supercell. Remember to check out those links in the description below and then watch another video. [music]