Check out this supercell I captured south of Winslow, Arizona, just as the storm was beginning to encounter capped low-level air but a big RFD surge was commencing. It was an interesting push/pull in atmospheric dynamics:

The Week Ahead

The system responsible for the multi-day severe weather outbreak across the Southwest will slowly slide east and north. As that main area of forcing departs, enough lift in a modestly unstable airmass may produce a few storms on Monday/Tuesday across the Southern High Plains and Southern Plains.

Instability is limited, and shear is also limited because the departing system is displaced from any warm sector. It wouldn’t be shocking if a marginal risk was introduced either day for some winds/hail...but nothing major looks on tap.

Read Full Article

The Data Stream

One cool new feature we’ve added to TitanTrack over the last couple of weeks is the new data tab on the left-hand menu. If you’ve ever been curious about nationwide highs and lows (or even regional), you can look up a variety of weather stats in one simple spot.

Check It Out

Overall, we’re looking at a large trough in the western U.S. this week which will bring up a very moist airmass into the southwest and Plains. Storm chances will increase starting today and tomorrow across Arizona and New Mexico, with rain becoming more widespread into the mid-late week.

At the surface, dewpoints will rise into the 40s and 50s, with PW values sitting at or above 1” across much of the region. Model plumes are showing broad agreement with solid moisture values. These will be more pronounced in eastern New Mexico where the heaviest rainfall totals are expected.

Read the Full Outlook

Big TitanTrack Upgrades

Phew, I don’t know where to start. But some of the stuff we’ve added to TitanTrack in the last few days is going to make weather nerds smile I think. First off, we have model biases for every ASOS/AWOS site in the country. This will allow you to see if the HRRR is over or underestimating the temperature/dewpoint and winds in any location. This has been a huge help on those iffy dryline days on the Plains.

Another new feature I’ve been playing around with are our new climatology tools. We’re still refining these as we discover what’s possible with decades of weather history, but I’m excited about the early returns. We’re actually in the process of building out an extensive data set based on severe reports over the last decade that will fuel a lot of this engine. As always, TitanTrack is in Beta and is actively being developed so we’ll add and even remove features without much warning right now. But some of the stuff we’ve done has been pretty cool so far.

Check Out TitanTrack

New Features on the Site Too!

I know I’ve said this a time or two, but we’re quietly building out the most complete weather site on the internet, built by weather nerds for weather nerds. And our new Climate maps section is going to be something you will want to check out.

Check Out Our Maps Section

The most favorable day for severe weather this week arrives tomorrow across the Central and Southern Plains. Storms will form in the afternoon and persist into the evening, with damaging winds and large hail as the main threats. A couple of tornadoes are possible if a dominant supercell can establish and last into the evening hours. I’m not sure storm mode will cooperate for that, but severe weather is very likely tomorrow even without a robust tornado threat.

The main tornado threat zone looks to be from the eastern Texas Panhandle into Southern Kansas. While the maximum severe risk zone runs roughly from Kansas City to Amarillo.

The Ingredients

• Risk upgrade: SPC extended the Level 2/Slight Risk for wind and hail to the St. Joseph and Kansas City, MO areas, citing a favorable CAPE-shear environment.

• Moisture: Southerly low-level winds keep the warm sector moist, with dewpoints from the mid 60s to low-mid 70s.

• Instability: Midlevel lapse rates aren’t especially steep, but moisture plus daytime heating should deliver MLCAPE of 1,000-2,000 J/kg by afternoon.

• Shear: Veering wind profiles with 40-50 kt of deep-layer shear favor supercells as the initial storm mode. Large hail is the primary hazard along and north of the front.

• Timing: Slight height falls, heating, and convergence along surface boundaries should erase the remaining cap. Storms fire by mid-afternoon from the TX/OK Panhandles into central Kansas, then develop farther northeast along the front into the lower Missouri Valley by late afternoon and evening.

Question Marks

• Storm mode: Some model guidance surges the Kansas segment of the front south during the afternoon and evening. That would favor a quick transition to outflow-dominant storms and a damaging wind threat. Both the HRRR and RRFS have been trending this direction for quite a few consecutive runs and the REFS also tends to favor this.

• The tornado window: The tornado potential is conditional on supercells holding together into the evening, when the low-level jet strengthens and near-ground shear increases. I’m not sure you’ll see more than one or two storms that come close to fitting the bill here.

• Beyond the main event: A more isolated wind and hail threat could extend into southern Iowa and Illinois Tuesday evening and night. A separate round of strong to severe storms is also possible Tuesday night into early Wednesday across southwest Texas and the Permian Basin.

Extremely warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico are contributing to an environment that will continue to favor tropical development. Shear is lower in the vicinity of this system, which will continue to support organization as this system continues its trek to the east and north.

The Gulf’s weather pattern features a weak cold front extending from Cape Canaveral to just north of Tampa Bay, where it stalls near a 1010 mb low. This front will remain over the northern Gulf through Wednesday before weakening Wednesday night. A surface trough extends from the front’s tail along the eastern Mexico offshores toward the developing low. Fresh NE to E winds and building seas are forecast north of the front, while moderate or weaker winds prevail ahead of these boundaries.

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Rain is Coming Back

Rain is coming back, but it’ll be a more typical setup for the Southwest onto the Plains.

While the next week will be mostly dry (tropical activity in the Gulf notwithstanding) — we are going to see the middle of the month bring Rain Chances back (October 11-15 or so). The current CPC outlook shows a pretty strong likelihood of above-average precipitation for much of the country. From what I’ve seen on models, there may be just enough instability for some strong to even severe storms, but there’s also going to be a lot of cold air with this mid-month system.

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I Built a New Tool to Search Weather History

We’re busy building some cool things at Tornado Titans, but this one might be one of my favorite projects: The Titan Archive. Its one part storm reports database, one part climatology viewer, one part setup browser and another part something else yet to be determined. I’m super excited to show this one off and to have you check it out for yourself…

Watch the Video

A complex but classic setup is taking shape over the Plains today, with severe weather surely to follow.

A mid/upper-level low pushes from the southern Rockies toward the central High Plains through tonight, dragging a slow-moving surface low across the southern High Plains with it. A warm front tries to lift north out ahead of that low, but lingering clouds and precipitation could slow its progress. Meanwhile, a strong low-level jet (50+ kt) shifts northeast across central/eastern Kansas into western Missouri and southeast Nebraska/southwest Iowa by evening, keeping wind profiles cranked up near that warm front.

See Full Forecast

Fall/Winter Lookahead

A trough sitting over Arizona and northwest Mexico is driving moderately strong southwesterly flow across the southern High Plains today. Morning obs already hint at what’s coming: dewpoints in the mid-60s to near 70°F and healthy PW values streaming from the middle Texas coast into the eastern TX Panhandle. The catch is a mid/high cloud deck riding in ahead of that trough, spreading over the richest moisture and likely capping how much the boundary layer can heat, especially the farther west you go.

Overall the relatively highest threat area extends from the Texas Panhandle into NW Oklahoma and S. Kansas.

Read the full forecast on our site.

TitanTrack Adds Key Features

We’ve added some big features the last couple of weeks.

• GFS model and model soundings now available.

• 7-day forecasts with dynamic computing on risk hazards for thousands of locations across the lower 48.

• Bug fixes, data reliability fixes, more.

Check Out TitanTrack

Wild Supercell this Weekend in New Mexico

What a wild non-severe risk chase. Models were painting a concentrated area of hail/wind potential with supercells, and I even thought a non-zero tornado chance too. All of it verified, and then some, just south of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Full Chase Report

Busy Weekend Ahead

There’s already a marginal risk out for parts of Western Oklahoma into adjacent portions of Kansas and the Panhandles.

Plenty of shear and low instability will combine to create a classic fall, low-end setup in this region, at the very least. If we can muster enough instability tomorrow, I’m expecting another risk of severe storms to be introduced somewhere on the S. Plains then too. We may end up chasing!

Stay tuned to our website for the latest updates.

Today’s threat will bring a risk of hail, damaging winds, and a tornado or two. There’s a 5% tornado risk with a level 1 hatch across SE Nebraska into Western Iowa. Strong low-level shear would support tornadoes if storm mode is cooperative. That’s a big if, though.

See more about today’s risk on our website.

Is this the end of storm chasing as we know it?

Chaser convergence has been a hot topic in the middle parts of America and within the storm chase community. It’s gotten so far that even lawmakers have talked about ways to reign in storm chasing. Is there any path forward? Is convergence even the problem that people say it is?

See my latest commentary on our site.

The Pattern Ahead

The ridge over the middle of the country/mid-south will continue but the monsoon storm pattern is picking up in a big way today and should last throughout the upcoming week. Some areas may receive 25% or more of their yearly annual rainfall over the next week across Eastern Arizona and Western New Mexico.

I wish I had better news for the Southern Plains though. But the ridge that’s been dominating our weather out there since June is not going anywhere right now.

The weakest I can find the ridge is around later this week, when some weak 500mb flow may be able to sneak over the Southern Plains again. This is not that different than what we’ve been seeing, where the ridge temporarily weakens, allowing some jet stream energy onto the Plains with storm chances, before reasserting itself again.

Indeed, the GEFS strengthens and amplifies the ridge once again into late September. This may keep the summer vibes going into the late parts of the month at this rate. Eventually, this ridge will get supplanted by a more progressive/troughy type of pattern. The big picture does favor that, and I do think it is living on borrowed time.

We’ll be keeping our eyes out for that. In the meantime, if you live in the Southwest, enjoy the cooler and rainier weather this week. It should be a good one for a lot of us.

And for months, we’ve been talking about El Niño and the cooler/wetter pattern it tends to favor for the Southwest/Southern Plains.

And today, I wish I was writing this newsletter telling you its here. But that’s not this newsletter.

But things are improving.

The Pattern Change?

That ridge has been the dominant feature for awhile. Here’s where it’s at early this week.

The ridge will continue to keep things drier/hotter for a bit yet. I wish I had better news there. But I can see a change in the offing as it weakens and slides south, allowing some jet stream energy to pass into our region.

We’re not talking about a lot of flow though, so this isn’t a major pattern shift as the flow will still be out of the northwest like it has been the large part of the past several months. What it does show is the ridge won’t last forever and eventually it’s going to be unseated. And it may give us a break from the horrendous heat for a brief period with more storms.

However, models do show the ridge wobbling and even restrengthening a bit, pushing the jet stream back to the north of the region. Still storms possible up that way, but hardly the blockbuster pattern change we would otherwise be excited about.

In fact, the operational GFS this morning showed the ridge persisting throughout much of September, which would be awful if you want to feel any fall vibes whatsoever.

Our ensemble fed mean Severe Environment Index does show a hotspot for mid/late week for parts of the Southern Plains. This mirrors our REFS product in showing where severe ingredients align with forecast precipitation. My guess is we’ll likely see a marginal to slight risk or two in the region again this week.

TitanTrack Updates

We’ve been hard at work with some new tools and UI enhancements in the app.

First, we added a per-station graphing inspector. So now you can click onto any surface ob and see its 6 hour history on the items we are keeping track of. This was an easy win I thought of while driving through the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

While in Maine, I realized that over half of our users are using TitanTrack on mobile devices. Which I should have anticipated. While the mobile experience was refined for the screen, I didn’t feel like it was in the spot I wanted it to be in. So I spent some time this weekend refining the interface and bringing it more in line with the desktop experience. New items like a color legend, a full screen option, and better menu organization were the result.

We’re also continually working on our data stream into the app. It’s very expensive to run a data operation like this, and our goal is to keep our cost as low as possible while still providing our users a free experience they can be happy with.

Happy tracking!

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This guest post is from Ash, a member of the Titans and a mental health specialist. Check out her Substack and give it a sub:

ash

🧠 Licensed mental health therapist | 🌪️ Storm chaser | Exploring storms of both the literal and metaphorical sort- and the people that love them- with the intention of building more resilient communities.

The storm chasing community has not always been easy to defend.

Those of us who have been in this community long enough know what it feels like to watch something we love produce outcomes that embarrass us- the convoy that wouldn’t yield, the footage uploaded that centers the chaser instead of the devastated community. We know the puzzled look from the outside world- and the harder, quieter version of it we give each other when no one is performing for an audience. We have felt the gap between what this community is capable of and what it sometimes chooses.

But this post is not about the gap. It’s about what could sit on the other side of it.

What We Actually Do

Let’s start with honesty about the claim we keep making:

We do not save lives as a matter of course. It does happen on occasion, yes. but the statement is often too large, too reflexive, too often reached for when someone is questioning our conduct rather than our contribution. It functions as a credential- when it should function as a responsibility. And when it functions as a hollow, meaningless credential, it does damage- to our own integrity, to the trust we need from the communities and institutions we operate alongside, and to the people for whom the claim is most personal.

Think about the family in the farmhouse- the one watching the wall cloud organize to their southwest while twelve vehicles they don’t recognize sit at the end of their drive. Or the town that got hit last spring, that is still metabolizing the loss, where the warning came and people still didn’t make it. To stand in front of those communities and say we save lives without the full weight of what that means- without the accountability that should come with it- is not a contribution; it’s a performance. And they can most certainly tell the difference.

The honest version is this: if we are in the right place at the right time with the right training, we contribute to warning systems that save lives. We have the capacity to be the first on scene of a destroyed house even before first responders, and we can pull people out of life-or-death situations. These are some of the most noble, significant moments in a storm chaser’s life. But it requires the right place, the right time, and the right training- and it requires us to be honest about when we have those things and when we don’t. Trustworthiness is the only currency that actually matters in this ecosystem.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

What Generative Chasing Looks Like

There is a version of this community that is generative- that produces something of value for every system it touches.

It looks like chasers who contribute to science not because it justifies their access, but because the science matters. Who understand that ground truth data, tornado climatology, the mesoscale processes that still aren’t fully understood — these are worth showing up for independent of whether anyone is watching. Who treat the atmosphere as the thing itself.

It looks like the storm chasing educator who takes real footage into schools in tornado-prone communities and gives young people a framework for what they’re seeing when the sky changes- and how to get to shelter quick. It’s the storm chasing content creator that breaks down complex meteorological concepts for nerdy laypeople like myself to better understand atmospheric magic as it unfolds- and that knowledge helps us stay safe when we’re out chasing. These contributions exist because someone loved the atmosphere enough to share it, and that love transferred.

It looks like staying engaged with impacted communities after the storm. Showing up not just when the sky is doing something spectacular, but also when the people underneath it are trying to put their lives back together. Remembering that the places we chase are not just coordinates on a map- they are people’s homes, people’s loved ones, people’s histories, people’s entire worlds. Using platforms built chasing storms to raise awareness and resources for the communities those storms hit. Donating.

It looks like the photographer who captures something that has never been captured before and never will be again- a structure, a panacea of light and color, a moment of atmospheric violence that becomes the image someone puts in a classroom, that makes a student understand for the first time what the atmosphere is actually capable of- and inspires them into a career.

It looks like the storm tour operator who puts someone under their first supercell and watches them become a different person on the other side of it- someone who understands weather not as an abstraction, but as a living system they have stood inside. And that they themselves are as dynamic as the weather systems they love- and that gives them a reason to live.

It looks like being honest about what we love. We love nature in all her ferocity and all her beauty. We love the ephemeral- the storm that will never exist again in exactly this configuration. We love the science and the skill and the community of people who understand why you would drive eight hours deep into nowhere for a storm. That love is legitimate. It does not need to be justified by EF ratings or other metrics. It is enough on its own, and it is the thing that was here before the cameras- and will be here after the algorithms change.

Toward a Trauma-Informed Chasing Framework

The communities we operate in are not neutral spaces. They are places where people have survived things, where the anniversary of a tornado is not an abstraction, where the sight of a convoy of chase vehicles on a county road activates something that has nothing to do with the current weather.

Trauma-informed practice is a framework developed in clinical and social service settings that starts from a single premise: when you are operating in environments where people have experienced trauma, your presence has an impact independent of your intentions. It asks practitioners to shift from “what is wrong with this person” to “what has happened to this person”- and to let that shift change how they move through the environment, communicate, and make decisions. It was developed for therapists and social workers and first responders. It can apply, with full force, to storm chasers.

A trauma-informed chaser understands that the family watching twelve vehicles park at the end of their drive during a tornado warning is not just inconvenienced- they may be terrified, and the terror may be connected to something that happened long before we arrived. It means slowing down enough to register that the town you are driving through in May is still metabolizing what happened in May three years ago. It means treating the communities we move through as full human environments, rather than operational terrain.

In practice, it looks like this: you introduce yourself to locals when you can. You explain what you are doing in plain language. You do not park in front of driveways. You do not film residential damage without permission. You do not upload footage of someone’s destroyed home before they know their family is safe. You use your platform, if you have one, to direct resources toward impacted communities, rather than just directing attention to how cool you are because you are a storm chaser. This is fundamental behavior when you operate with awareness and thoughtfulness.

Trauma-informed practice applies to our relationships with first responders too. The emergency managers and sheriffs and highway patrol officers we share the road with are themselves carrying cumulative exposure- seasons of mass casualty events, notifications, the weight of being responsible for communities in acute crisis. That exposure changes how they respond to anything that feels like a threat to their ability to do their job. A trauma-informed chaser understands that the sheriff who wrote the letter to the legislature is not simply an obstacle. He is a person whose nervous system has learned, through repeated experience, to treat certain behaviors as dangerous. Changing that learning requires repeated experiences of something different. That is our responsibility as much as his.

And it applies to each other. The chasing community has its own trauma history: the deaths, the close calls, the personal costs of this lifestyle. We have built a culture that prizes toughness and has historically treated psychological vulnerability as incompatible with the identity- and we all know on some level that this culture is costing us. It is producing people who are running on unprocessed grief and calling it passion, who are making decisions in the field from a dysregulated nervous system- and will some day get bit by their impaired decision-making. Trauma-informed chasing starts with being honest about what we are carrying- and creating enough safety inside this community that people can put it down sometimes.

Growing Community

We don’t to be regulated into basic conduct. We do not need a licensing body or a legislative framework to have standards. We just need the willingness to come together and build one.

The ethical bottom line is not complicated. We contribute- or we do what we can to prevent negative impact on the people and communities with whom we interact as we chase. We move through impacted communities with awareness and respect. We use whatever platform we have- large or small- in service of something larger than our own metrics. We tell the truth about what we do- and what we don’t do. We share real stories that reveal that chasing isn’t the glamor that it’s been portrayed to be on TV.

And then the things that should not need to be said but do: we drive legally. We yield for emergency vehicles. We treat each other with respect and act with integrity. We don’t bully each other online.

None of this requires a credential. All it requires a decision- made individually and collectively- about what kind of community we want to be.

The momentum toward that community already exists. It lives in the chasers who stay after the storm, in the ones who call in the report and keep driving, in the ones who show up to the pre-season briefing and introduce themselves, in the ones who use their platforms to raise money for the town that got hit, in the ones who check on each other when a season gets heavy. It lives in the photographers and the tour operators and the educators and the scientists and the people who have always known that this work is about something more than dopamine and followers and proximity to destruction.

We are not going to become that community through legislation or calling people out. We are going to become it the way every community becomes what it wants to be- through enough people deciding- one at a time and together- that the version of this thing they love is worth showing up for.

ash

🧠 Licensed mental health therapist | 🌪️ Storm chaser | Exploring storms of both the literal and metaphorical sort- and the people that love them- with the intention of building more resilient communities.

On the move: The ridge that has dominated the weather over the United States for the last 3 months is finally moving, allowing for SW flow over the western United States over the next few days. In the short term, this is leading to severe weather risks across places like Utah, with damaging winds likely. Long-term, this SW flow will bring in gradually drier air, shutting the monsoon down a bit.

In the middle, between the strong ridge in the east and the SW flow aloft in the west, will be the dry and hot Great Plains.

Read the Full Article

7-Day Precip Forecast

Moisture hole: The middle of the country will remain in a moisture hole with little rainfall, while a slightly more active pattern surrounds it on the fringes. However, there are no signs that this pattern is breaking through the first week of September.

Any Signs This Pattern Will Break?

I don't see any reason to be excited about a major pattern change. Dry air remains dominant over the middle of the country. I do think the pattern eventually breaks, and perhaps violently, in September with SW flow-driven severe weather. But from everything I see, that is still 2-3 weeks away. The hotspot of the last 3 months will remain along the fringes of the ridge until then.

TitanTrack Updates

Just wanted to share that we’ve been hard at work on TitanTrack over the last week to improve the overall reliability of the data amid much stronger demand than anticipated (I’m actually surprised by the strong response and usage patterns!).

No new features generally, sans one. We added a full sounding modification for HRRR and Mesonalysis forecast soundings.

The most helpful use for this tool is to adjust the sounding to better reflect real surface conditions and perhaps to account for less warm/dry air just above the surface. But you can use it to modify a sounding at any level, especially if an 18z sounding yields a surprising or different result. If winds are 10kt off at the 500 mb level according to the 18z sounding, you can apply that adjustment across the whole range and give soundings a more accurate read of the atmosphere.

Many more features are coming, but short-term work is focused on improving the system's overall reliability and stability to meet our more intense user demand.

Check Out TitanTrack

Ridge Isn’t Going Anywhere

Persistent Ridge: Nothing has moved the ridge off of its perch in the Southern U.S. over the last 3 months now. We’ve had wobbles of the ridge, even slight weakening at times, but it has persisted and dominated the weather pattern over the U.S.

Drought Rising: This has led to ever-more dire drought conditions across the middle of the country, back into the Southwest -- where monsoon rains have, so far, been hit-or-miss.

Long Term: I'm not seeing much in the name of signs that this ridge is going to fully break in the coming couple of weeks. However, as we move into September, ensembles are beginning to weaken and flatten out the ridge.

See the full story.

TitanTrack Tool Tip

The difference in SSI (Base) and Supercell Threat Index is in the formulation, of course — SSI base is basically answering the question: Storms? A few severe ingredients? PAINT!

It’s a bare minimum calculation that’s helpful in patterns like these with monsoon-ish vibes. It’s sniffed out severe storms out here in ‘no risk’ situations many times already this summer.

On the other end, the Supercell Threat Index is looking for more overall, and it’s always going to show lower, and sometimes 0, where SSI is pretty hot. It’s asking: Storms? UH? Strong UH? Supercell ingredient stack? If yes, PAINT!

It’s kind of brutally simple, but it combines how I approach a chase forecast with a single field. They inherit all of the limitations of the REFS model, of course, so if you get bad data in, these are going to combine that bad data into bad data out. I’m not here to claim 100% accuracy, just a 100% shortcut for those looking for a quick glance on any given day.

Check out TitanTrack

Learn Mesoanalysis While Using TitanTrack

Programming Note: While we are increasing the frequency of newsletters once again — this author will be going on a well-deserved vacation this next week (weather permitting). So expect no newsletters next week, but when that ridge is breaking down you’ll likely hear from me about all of that in early September.

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Most likely, storms should form this afternoon or evening in the northern/western 1/2 of Nebraska. Supercells seem like a good bet, with 40kt of 500mb flow aloft mixed with strong to even extreme instability. The question will be timing: can storms get going before the sun sets? If so, despite weak low-level shear, I wouldn’t count out a tornado today.

Get More Info on Our Site

We Launched A New Site

If you missed our prior e-mail, we just launched an entirely new online weather experience with TitanTrack, our new web app, at the center. It works on all devices on day 1 and allows you to do all sorts of cool things with it. Check it out using this link.

Mesoanalysis for the 21st Century Storm Enthusiast

Generally speaking, a weather enthusiast examining the atmosphere in real-time has had the same set of tools available for over a decade. This is because those tools have been timeless and will exist well into the future. But we wanted to make something that allows you to combine and build your own experience mixed with the educational work we are known for. That was the basis behind why we built TitanTrack.

Watch Video

Pattern Eases a Bit Into the Weekend

We’ll still see some severe risks into the weekend, but the ridge will flatten out a bit and the jet stream will ease aloft, keeping a lid on the overall intensity of activity into the weekend with just a marginal risk or three outlined for Saturday right now.

I wouldn’t rule out a few supercells in the Central High Plains, with hail/damaging winds the primary threats.

In other news, the monsoon continues without ceasing, and this storm chaser will likely be out and looking for some pretty electric cells over the weekend. I’ll see you all out there.

Most weather apps show you products. TitanTrack helps you combine them, interrogate storms, and understand why the atmosphere behaves the way it does.

The goal of TitanTrack is to make tracking weather events accessible for every weather enthusiast, and it contains the DNA of our educational instincts so you might just learn a thing or two along the way. Enjoy the process of stacking layers and seeing how different ingredients interact in real time, while also monitoring a storm's internal metrics and how they change.

Try TitanTrack

We’ve built every part of TitanTrack for weather enthusiasts like us, people who want more than the standard weather app, want to understand events as they unfold, and don’t mind trying something genuinely different.

I suspect that’ll be something some folks won’t enjoy as much, and if so, that is ok! The wonderful thing about the weather app space is that there is enough variety for everyone; this is just our entry.

Here are five things that TitanTrack can do that I particularly enjoy:

1) Stacking Layers in Real Time

TitanTrack isn’t a full-tilt radar app and has no intention of bringing full 3D volume scans into it. What it can do is combine several atmospheric layers at once to deliver real-time analysis and intel.

In the screenshot below, you can see 500 mb winds (mid-level jet stream winds) overlaid with real-time radar/warnings/watches and MLCAPE (a measure of instability).

2) Per-Cell Advanced Intel

Something I’m finding myself enjoying is the many ways to gather intel on a storm and what it’s up to. In the example below, you can see our four threat scores, which combine the storm cell’s internal dynamics with the environment and ground-truth reports to give a storm a score that lets you track its progress in real time. That makes it easier to see whether a storm is strengthening, weakening, or shifting toward a different primary hazard altogether.

You can track everything from the cell’s history to the environment it will move through during the next three hours.

3) Ensemble Forecast Models

One of the keys to the year-after-year success we’ve had in storm chasing is knowing how to use and decode ensemble models. We’ve included three in TitanTrack, with more to come on the model front.

But my favorite features have been our proprietary fields, which combine elements of the ensemble run to deliver intel you won’t find anywhere else. Think of it as an ensemble shortcut for people like me who would rather interpret one useful signal than mentally combine a dozen fields every time.

I highly recommend our SSI fields (Severe Storms Index), especially the base field — which combines the probability of storms on the REFS with the likelihood that severe weather ingredients overlap. It’s pretty rad.

Try TitanTrack

4) Presets and Layer Controls

One of my favorite things to do in the app is switching between presets and quickly enabling different layers. I spent, admittedly, way too much time on this. This is only the first version, but even now I do think switching from Storms to Flooding to see the various products in a focused setting feels pretty nifty.

5) Our Boxed Soundings Regional Inspector

I needed to save my favorite feature for last.

I’ve always tried to point out to anyone who will listen the importance of collecting more data for soundings. I decided to make that the default method for analyzing the atmosphere in TitanTrack. But analyzing the atmosphere means having multiple tools at your disposal.

Our soundings take an entirely new path, with real language to explain what the sounding actually shows, perfect for the beginner storm tracker.

And our hodographs include multiple options, including the ability to set a manual right-mover motion to match what’s actually happening in the moment. Soon, you’ll be able to modify the entire sounding and choose between multiple models and even model blends to analyze what’s going on out there.

Try TitanTrack

This Is The Beta Version

The roadmap for the future, first off, involves today’s critical step of a public release. However, this is only the beginning of the road for this product. This is a genuine beta. Some workflows will change, some features will need refinement, and we expect users to find things we missed. That feedback is part of why we’re opening it up now.

There’s much more coming to TitanTrack. And there’s a whole lot more this app does that I haven’t even begun to touch on, but will soon.

And I haven’t mentioned it yet, but we’ve also completely redesigned and rebuilt TornadoTitans.com and Titan U from the ground up.

We may be 17 years old, but we’re just getting started. Stay tuned for more exciting updates in the coming weeks!

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The ridge, centered on the southwest U.S. right now, is forecast to weaken over the next week as a new monsoonal moisture surge makes its way north.

A few severe storms remain possible from the Central Plains into the Southwest, along with another possible zone along I-20 in Texas later today. The main threats remain hail and damaging winds, as things just aren’t quite lined up for tornado potential anywhere. Additionally, dry air seeping in from the east continues today, with a large overall downtick in monsoonal storm coverage away from the higher terrain.

A 500mb ridge over the SW US will weaken this next week, bringing a surge in monsoonal moisture into the Southwest with a large uptick in storm activity across New Mexico, Arizona, and adjacent portions of the desert SW. Severe weather chances will continue across the Northern and Central Plains, associated with the jet stream that’s riding up and over the ridge this week.

In short: the pattern of the last two-ish months will persist through this next week as well, with minor variations from region to region.

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Storms are up in Nebraska already, with some of them showing rotation, but most are showing a more blobby appearance. Whie the environment will technically support cold-pool dominant supercells, complex storm interactions and upscale growth will likely lead to a more linear/blobby multicell look through much of the day with damaging winds the primary threat.

The main driver of this is a small disturbance working its way over the top of the ridge, with 500mb winds at 25-35kt over the region. This is helping that shear increase just enough to create an environment that favors storm longetivity.

The aforementioned high is centered over SE New Mexico, where we’re seeing a fresh batch of monsoon convection again today work its way around the western edge of the ridge as storm activity under and around the immediate periphery of the ridge center is squashed. It’s been an eventful monsoon season already, and I feel like the busiest months will be August and September. We’re all very happy about that in the Southwest.

The Pattern Ahead

Looking ahead…the pattern is going to largely persist in where it’s been for much of the last month.

A ridge will sit over the southwest United States and will wobble to and fro over the coming days. This will impact where the monsoonal activity sets up on any given day, but it won’t suppress activity altogether.

The main corridor of very active severe weather will remain across the Northern Plains and down the immediate east/south side of the ridge where there’s plenty of monsoonal moisture and shear to fuel storms.

This pattern should persist much of the first part of August as well, with the ridge bouncing around in location and strength but never fully going away. The monsoon rolls on, and so does storm season.

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Down here, it’s been a lot of pulse/pop-up type of stuff on the Plains into the Southwest with the monsoon pattern ramping up.

The Big Driver

The big driver of our current pattern is a powerful ridge of high pressure sitting over the middle of the country, pushing that jet stream way north.

Curious about the jet stream? It’s a good day to learn! We actually have a new video on that below:

Ring of Fire

The ring of fire pattern we’re seeing is resulting in ample storm opportunities around the periphery of the ridge, from up in Canada to down into the desert SW. Daily rounds of storms are expected from Arizona back towards Texas, with heavy rainfall possible in localized regions.

Severe weather threats will remain on the low end of the scale, but damaging winds and small hail are possible in a pattern like this, as very low wind shear will combine with tropical moisture. However, shear has weakened quite a bit over the last week, and the threats may be more sporadic than they have been.

This isn’t a banner pattern of severe weather in the US, and won’t be for a while.

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Super El Niño

You’ve no doubt heard about this one, and it’s true, we’re seeing something pretty unprecedented since records have been kept in terms of oceanic warming.

The Pacific Ocean is running a fever, which is going to almost certainly lead to this year being amongst the warmest on record.

An El Niño event like this one is without a lot of historical precedent, so it’s hard to say if the effects of a typical Nino pattern are amped or if we get something a bit different. The additional moisture content in the atmosphere and likely southern track of the jet stream will likely mean an active late summer through winter from California into the Southeast, with heavy rainfall/snow possible.

Typically, El Niños have a modulating/lessening effect on tornadoes in the year after they form…typically. In 1998, the country saw over 1400 tornadoes with several of them violent in what is the only realistic comparison to this year’s El Niño. That’s a small sample though, and it’s far too early to talk next spring when I personally think Fall this year might end up busy.

But that’s for another newsletter…

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For the Monsoon, we look for tropical moisture to be carried from both the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of California over the SW U.S., sometimes also supplemented by Pacific moisture, which will likely be the case this year with a busy tropical season on tap down there.

A high-pressure ridge builds and cycles this moisture around and underneath it daily, with daily storms that lead to heavy rain, flash flooding, and some of the most picturesque stormscapes on planet Earth (sorry, the storm chaser came out in me early today).

What Will This Year Look Like?

Look, here’s the deal, the record-breaking El Niño is creating a few traps in terms of forecaster confidence. I’m certain there’s going to be more moisture than typical around, but who gets how much rain is very much an open question. What I do feel confident in is this: the monsoon season will have a long tail into autumn this year, with a very robust ‘transition season’ pattern along with the classic monsoon pattern.

The Euro weeklies are trending drier over time for July, which is not a surprise: a lot of El Nino year monsoons start late and end late.

However, the Euro is by far and away the driest model, which isn’t typically the case. It’s a brave new world this year or something.

The CFS weeklies are similar in showing a drier eastern CONUS, but the west is much wetter as we move into mid-July. Which leads to lowered confidence short-term with how robust the monsoon pattern will be early.

This is where I tend to just go to the ensembles and #trust.

For July, the NMME is showing positive precip anomalies over many areas in the Southwest, which more closely matches what I’m seeing on current extended/operational models which are showing a monsoonal moisture surge beginning next week.

By August, the vibes look to continue on the NMME with a continued active pattern across the west. I’m not getting too worked up either way, but a slightly above normal signal is probably a sign we’ll see an active pattern throughout the summer months. It may just be not everyone is active all the time.

However, once we get towards the latter part of the classic monsoon season and into fall…things get busy.

Sepetember is showing widespread positive anomalies across the Southwest, which matches with historical trends and my own personal expectations. I think the supercell/severe weather chances this fall will be plentiful in the Southwest actually. The monsoon will be very active at this point.

October isn’t classically known as a monsoon month, but I think it’ll have a lot of those vibes even as the temps cool, thanks to a more active storm track. Again, I suspect many severe weather opportunities, classic monsoons, and, by the end of the month, maybe even mountain snows?

I shouldn’t get excited and call for wetness in an area so frequently marred by drought, but if there’s anything that can snap the SW out of a cyclically long drought, it’s gotta be a record-breaking El Niño. At least that’s what I’m going to keep telling myself…

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Monsoon Chasing: Best Time?

I’m timing a lot of my trips to various locations later in the season, with a slight lean towards August/September for a lot of different possibilities.

However, don’t sleep on July. I’m eyeing this first burst as a possible first trip period for a weekend, possibly somewhere a bit more ‘non-traditional’ into the inland parts of the west. We’ll see. I’m excited about the very real likelihood of an enhanced and active monsoon pattern.

Pattern Update

Overall, I’m not seeing a lot that says, “big pattern change imminent” — we’re basically stuck in the same type of pattern we’ve been in for what seems like two months. It’s basically the same thing on repeat.

A western trough with a ridge over the SE continues to dominate our weather. However, the western trough is, like it has been much of the Spring after April, skirting well to the north and taking aim over the Central/Northern Plains.

As the week goes on this week, the broad W/SW flow aloft will continue, with storms likely taking shape most days across places like the Texas Panhandle, E/SE Colorado and W Kansas. Shear is favorable enough we’ll likely continue a slow/steady drumbeat of marginal type of risks throughout the next week.

Precipitation-wise, there are two regimes worth knowing about: the first is the aforementioned one over the High Plains with daily storm chances with small wetting footprints but damaging winds/hail being possible.

The other is the typical summertime storm activity over the south, which will do what that pattern does — lots of storms each afternoon with small footprints with localized damaging wind gusts possible.

Neither is “big time”, sorry we don’t do hype around here. But they’re both worthy of your respect. Be sure to stay weather aware out there this week and stay hydrated.

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Read Helicity Maps The Right Way

You’ve probably been looking at helicity wrong this whole time. New research has been coming out showing that the traditional maps (0-1km and 0-3km) aren’t the best indicies for assessing things like tornado potential. Find out more in our latest video:

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Stay cool out there.

But the threat is broader than that…

An enhanced threat of hail and wind exists for the Southern/Central Plains today as well. And it’s the pattern driving the risks we’ve been seeing:

Broad SW flow aloft exists from border to border in the country. This flow, when it overlaps moist and unstable air, sets the stage for severe weather more often than not. While surface temps remain hot and moisture more limited. There’s still enough of everything to provide an atmosphere favorable for severe storms with hail and damaging winds as the primary threats through the rest of this week.

However, as we look ahead into this weekend this flow begins to weaken and turn out of the Northwest. While this isn’t necessarily a storm pattern ender in June, it still tends to limit the overall tornado chances comparatively. Thus, while storm chances will likely continue, we’ll see the chances remain rather modest throughout the period for anything but damaging winds and hail. I could see at least one additional MCS event through this period though, which is right on schedule per the calendar.

By early next week, strong northwest flow will dive south over the Plains and crash a cold front all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. That’ll limit overall storm chances for a couple of days into early next week.

By late next week moisture should recover though, with an expansive dryline from Nebraska to Texas. June isn’t quiet at all in terms of severe weather, just it isn’t a prolific tornado producer…yet.

Overall Threats

Overall, I think the highest threats (outside of the Northern Plains) will remain scattered wind and hail. Last night, we saw 100mph winds at Salina, KS, so that’s not a risk to sleep on. But the tornado risks will remain lower end.

To my eye, there are a few solid chances for severe weather coming up through the rest of this week to continue yesterday’s theme, with the highest tornado chances coming on Friday or Saturday in the Central/Southern Plains. We’ll be out chasing for sure. Hope to see you on our live stream on YouTube!

I’m not sure why they’re all burning their cameras right now, I thought I was excellent.

Anywho, let’s talk weather.

1)The Season is DEAD

That’s right, pick any ensemble you want and the season is truly well done, burnt-toast, dead. It’s over. Pack it up. A giant ridge is parked over the middle of the country and no ensemble weakens it, everything strengthens and amplifies the ridge into June.

While there will be some chances for severe weather on the apex of the ridge up towards the Dakotas, the lack of quality moisture will be hard to overcome for much more than continued sporadic/scattered severe weather chances.

This is why you don’t try to become a professional storm chaser kids, seasons like this one, where weeks of quiet with nothing meaningful to show for tons of work become something that is part tragedy and part warning-story.

Pack it up, it’s over.

2)The Season is ALIVE

Now…despite all of that, the subtle pattern we’ve been in since early this month is persisting. Another low will give a glancing blow to the Plains, sending just enough energy to organize a few severe storms today through at least Saturday.

This is that type of stuff we talked about in the season preview. Mid-level flow will be anemic, heck, all flow is anemic. Moisture is just good enough. The hodograph shape is curved, albeit small. So a supercell or two amidst a lot of multi-cells with an eventual upscale growth into a linear complex seems to be the most likely outcome each day.

This is not late-May tornado outbreak weather to be sure — but it is a steady drumbeat pattern that may persist even into June despite the building ridging. Precip totals for the first 10-15 days of June on most ensembles are truly impressive, which points to an active regime where the ridging does not suppress storm activity completely but it does limit the amount of shear and moisture. So the storm season will continue for the Plains, just it will continue about where it’s been.

3)Catch Us Live

We’ll be out and about a lot of the upcoming days as time permits, the geography makes sense, and the setup is worthy enough. If you haven’t done so, it’s a great day to subscribe to our YouTube channel.