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Storm chasing forecast update 6, for March 31
A quick update in between chases (see the March 30 log for yesterday's event) to highlight a tornado risk in the Great Plains that kind of snuck up on us. Models have increased the just-in-time moisture return behind yesterday's wave, and are now initiating supercells in southern/central Kansas tomorrow evening/night in a favorable environment for tornadoes. This is the result of the big trough that will produce Wednesday's event in the Midwest beginning to impinge on the Plains dryline:
GFS 500mb forecast for Tuesday evening, April 1
As with any setup, there are a few caveats that are preventing this from being a slam dunk chase trip. All along, models showed strong capping with this system over the Plains, even now they are not in great agreement on whether dryline storms will initiate and sustain before dark (though this has been improving in recent runs). The most potent environment is shown peaking in Oklahoma around midnight, but again, it is not certain if storms will develop on the dryline that far south. The storms that models have been most consistent on are shown firing on the cold front late in the form of a squall line, and those typically are not great chase prospects even though they can and do produce tornadoes.
The second issue with chasing this setup is one of logistics. Wednesday here at home in the Midwest still looks like the main event of this trough ejection, and that day's storms look to get started very early. Going to the Plains for a late night event makes getting home for early storms the next day a challenge. But as we've seen many times, it's very common for a "day before the day" to be the one that produces the best results in terms of photogenic storms. The weather is just like that sometimes. If a supercell does initiate on the dryline in Kansas at 4PM as some models have hinted at, it has the potential to be good. The increasing capping shown could result in great storm structure along with tornadoes if a storm can get established prior to that.
My go/no-go decision time for this chase will be early tomorrow morning (a benefit of living in St. Louis as opposed to West Virginia, in which case I would have already needed to be on the road now). I likely won't have time to do another blog update until after Tuesday's and Wednesday's events are over (though I'll post something tomorrow night if I manage to catch something significant).
The following table charts the probabilities for a Plains storm chase expedition taking place for the date ranges shown:
| 2025 Plains Chase Expeditions - Probabilities as of March 31 |
| April 1 | 65% | |
| April 5-10 | 5% | |
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