My excitement for a Sunday chase in the Panhandles has significantly fallen away. I guess it's just as well as I have enough home things to do to keep me busy all day Sunday (laundry, cleaning, that sort of stuff). However, there appears to be a slim shot of an Eastern Colorado/Western Kansas chase Tuesday evening. While I'm already working Tuesday, I could possibly skim out around noonish and fire out east to Burlington in time for a late afternoon initiation.
Here's what I'm seeing from the 12z ETA for 84hrs out (0z Wed)... at 500mb, southwest flow aloft with good divergence over the areas east of the Rockies; winds in Eastern Colorado are in the 20-30 range. Theta-E at 850 shows a nice max in Central Kansas with a little tounge of 320s pushing into Central Colorado, arching back toward the Denver area. A LOW is forecasted to be in extreme southeast Colorado with 850 winds in Northeast Colorado out of the northeast at about 5 to 10, which gives some weak upslope over the area. SBCAPE follows the theta-E tounge into Eastern Colorado with values upwards of 1000J/kg. Again, the biggest concentration of CAPE is over Central Kansas with values over 2500J/kg. 3km helicity values pushing 150 to 200[m
2/s
2] while 1km values are hardly evident. On a final note, the ETA does break out precip over the Denver area and areas to the south and east. The biggest concern... temperatures; I overlooked it on the first glance, but cooler air may filter down and kill off convective chances in a hurry.
While this is a long way out, it does bare watching as perhaps our first chance for severe weather over the Eastern Plains. Lot of things could (and likely will) change before Tuesday actually arrives, but I'm eyeing this as the first chance to chase Colorado's Eastern Plains!
