5/9 – The Chief’s “Warm & Wet Pattern” Tuesday Morning Forecast
The high pressure that has been over the region has been providing for little to no resistance to convection working into the area from the west. Yesterday was a little different with a defined impulse coming into the area but a stronger ridge would have slowed it down some, pushed it more to the north, or even in the most extreme cases helped to wash it out and yet these t-storms complexes and disturbances have just been barreling through.
The past few days had been advertising a much quieter forecast for today and tomorrow but some of the models have now backed off that idea and given what has been occurring why would one expect a different scenario from the ridge now. A closed low pressure system and weak Rex block set up is a touch farther east and this is now suggest convection will be much easier today than previously thought. Difference from yesterday is there doesn’t appear to be as clearly defined an impulse like we had moving off the TX coast Monday morning. The weak energy associated with a weakness along the NW’tern GOM is the subtle influence we get today but can`t really see anything else. Moisture flow will still be quite high and with that once again very subtle features will get convection to fire off today. Storms will likely be scattered to numerous and storms motion will be much slower than previous days so locally heavy rain is a concern.
Going into Wednesday the TX low should finally work north. How far west or east it is before it starts to track north will determine the coverage of storms but once it does start to lift we should begin to dry out a touch. The forecast gets no easier into Thursday. What looked like should be a dry day is now in question. Main issue is after our low moves out of the area what comes in behind it. Does the ridge quickly build in or will there be a residual trough over much of the Lower MS Valley that may try to phase with the strong 4 corners low that lifts across the Rockies Thursday. By Friday, model guidance suggests upper-level ridging will be in place over the area through the Mother’s Day weekend.
