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As it has been shortly said yesterday, an interesting setup is shaping up for today over central Plains towards Misouri valley as upper level zonal flow continues to cross central US, where several embedded short-wave troughs are moving within this flow and will be a focus for storms development. At surface, quasi-stationary old OFB/weak frontal boundary is evident over S IA into SE NE near the weak SFC low located in SE NE, and extending SWwards into central Plains. Further south, a low pressure area over southern High Plains support rapid moisture advection northwards into central Plains, where SFC dewpoints are confidently expected by all models into the mid 70s as north as central OK. The focus for today’s storms development will likely be a convergence over NE/IA earlier and destabilization further south over E KS/W MO towards the late afternoon.

Impressively rich moisture advection with mid 70s over central TX into central OK and low 70s over northern OK during the afternoon pushed models to yield extremely high CAPE values, showing SBCAPE around 5000 J/kg or more where of course RUC model again is going out of control, having SFC dewpoints in upper 70s over S OK/NNW KS yielding AOA 8000 J/kg of SBCAPE. Besides this rapidly improving moisture at low-levels, warming of EML ahead of low pressure area over W TX with rising mid-level temperatures well above 20°C at H85, which resulted in strong cap over south-central Plains, will likely surpress any SFC based convection during the day. A dryline will be slowly mixing eastwards over W TX and Panhandles, but only weak SFC wind convergence, limited SFC heating due to LL cloud cover and no forcing aloft to support ascent, has no chance to overcome such a stout cap. Attached below is also a sounding for Wichita Falls, TX showing extremely high amounts of CAPE, but too strong cap and warm mid levels.

But anyway, further NE over E KS, W MO and northwards into SE NE and S IA right entrance of strong zonal flow allow enough ascent. Strong surface heating should result in sufficent weakening of the cap and destabilization will take place, storms should fire along the SFC boundary and likely continue to organize/maintain later as they move into better environment further SSE into E KS and MO. 60kt+ of 0-6km bulk shear, 20-30kts LL shear, improving LL moisture with 2000+ MLCAPE will be supportive for supercells development with the main threat as very large hail and damaging winds. Hodographs are impressive given the LL veering wind profiles. Still quite low dewpoints in this area, likely mid 50s over IA/NE and mid 60s further south, lower the tornado chances and limit them mostly to MO later on, as LCLs are higher than 1200m up there. However, main wind flow today is again pretty favorable for some photogenic structure of supercells, as veering profiles are impressive and also LCL are high enough.

So today’s target for some nice severe storms would likely be around state border KS/MO, I am virtually targeting a town Harrisonville, MO. Its just SE of Kansas City where parameters seems to overlap the best. However, given the strong mid/upper-level WNW flow, spliting supercells are very likely given such linear hodographs. Later in the evening, when LLJ increases over the Plains, elevated storms will likely take place along the nose of this LLJ over OK/KS with a MCS racing northeast overnight.

As regarding tomorrow’s setup, its still looking pretty good despite the limited forcing/ascent as flow is somewhat weaker than it was simulated yesterday, so cap will ikely be holding airmass capped well into the late afternoon. But at surface, positions did not change that much, dryline bulge evident over S OK into NW TX, strong shear and extreme instability in place support tornadoes along with very large to giant hail and damaging winds. More detailed outlook will be posted tomorrow.