Saturday, June 2, 2007 - 8:32AM

Active week ahead

By DAN ROBINSON

Editor/Photographer

Looking at all of the data this morning, it looks like my week has the potential to get me to Wilmington, North Carolina shooting a tropical storm tomorrow, then back to Charleston, WV to catch a line of storms on Monday, then driving to Kansas on Wednesday for a tornado outbreak.

Tropical Storm Barry, currently in the Gulf of Mexico, is forecast to move up along the Atlantic Coast tomorrow and Monday, affecting Charleston, SC, Wilmington and Cape Hatteras, NC, then Virginia Beach, VA, New York City and possibly Boston in the next few days. Since I'm in Raleigh, a drive to Wrightsville Beach will not take long at all.

The Kansas part is a little iffy. We finally have a strong 500mb trough moving in from the western USA over the Plains, but the other levels of the atmosphere are still questionable at this point. The most interesting days so far look to be Wednesday through Friday. However, the cap looks to be too strong on Wednesday, with high 700mb temps and no precip showing up under the best upper level winds. By Thursday, the low-level flow (at 850mb) becomes unidirectional with respect to the 500mb winds, eliminating ideal directional shear. If the GFS is correct as it stands, Wednesday will be a blue-sky cap bust and Thursday will see a squall line rather than supercells. I'm not ready to resurrect the 2007 storm chase expedition just yet.