Map for tomorrow’s setup over kansas

First I’ll briefly go over tomorrow’s forecast and then I’ll discuss the long range tornado prospects.

Tomorrow reminds me of Wednesday with a little less instability and a little weaker shear. I’m referring to the area from the KS-OK border area back up towards the Emporia area in this forecast btw. I didn’t bother to look at the other places in the slight risk area.
I’ll be chasing tomorrow since it’s so close to home and it’s in the KWCH viewing area. There are slight differences between the NAM and GFS on the exact location of the frontal boundary, but that shouldn’t matter much. Both models are consistent with breaking out convection all the way down the boundary to the OK border by 00Z.
The CAPE is obviously more than sufficient for supercells, but the deep layer shear is very weak. However, both models have been consistent in producing a kink in the isobars causing surface winds ahead of the front to back some place between Wichita and where the frontal boundary intersects the OK-KS border. This area should enhance convergence and I expect a storm or storms will fire in this area before the cold front begins to fill out with convection. The backed surface winds will also act to increase deep layer shear and more organized storms, which is certainly a huge problem with tomorrow’s setup. This makes choosing a target very easy for me.
I’m going to sit in wichita and watch the front and keep a close eye on the changes in surface pressure and wind fields. Unlike Oklahoma, Kansas doesn’t have a mesonet, which sucks terribly, but if you know where to look you can find a Bush League version of the Kansas mesonet and it even updates like ever five minutes instead of being on an hourly schedule.
Surface analysis will be important, but honestly you could probably pinpoint the same area I’m looking for by watching visible satellite closely, which I’ll also be doing. I don’t expect much out of the day. somebody will probably see a scud cloud touch the ground so we’ll get a couple tornado reports and I’m sure we’ll get some hail, but it’s definitely not the kind of chase day I’m looking for in mid May, which leads me in to my next topic.

Long Range Forecast
I haven’t spent a whole lot of time looking at the long range models, but the earliest I could see us getting much action would be this time next week as a trough moves over the Pacific Northwest. The GFS has the trough falling apart as it approaches the plains, but the models have been terribly inaccurate so it’s certainly not a trustworthy source. If I remember right even if this trough did enter the high plains with so decent kinematics moisture would likely be an issue and preclude a good tornado setup.
The ensembles were all in very good agreement with this trough until it reached the Pacific Northwest and then the ensemble members went every where (ensembles are bunches of numerical models with slight differences in their equations and they average them out to give you the ensemble mean or average prediction).
The GFS has the long awaited pattern shift occuring at the end of the month. Some time around the 27th of May it shows a high amplitude west coast trough anchoring in over the Rockies. This is the typical spring patter we want and are used to this time of year so let’s hope to god it happens.
I’ll continue to post more on the long term prospects as it becomes more clear since there really isn’t much else to watch anyway.