Forecasters:Bruce Entwistle (NWS) and Morris Weisman (NCAR)
Generally warm and dry today over the STEPS domain, but some residual moisture and instability along with a weak upper level disturbance propagating down from the NW may produce some scattered high based weak convection from mid-afternoon on. The melting level (0 deg C) is about 13Kft, and -10 deg C is about 18Kft.
Warmer and drier on Monday, with no convection expected.
Hot and dry on Tuesday.
| VARIABLE | Day 1: 1-4 pm | Day 1: 4-9 pm | Day 2 | Day 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Convective Potential |
0.5 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Storm Type | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Triggering | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Intuition | -1 | 0 | -1 | -1 |
| Total | 1.5 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| SYSTEM | STATUS |
|---|---|
| Ops Center | Operational except for T1 connection to S-Pol. T1 connection will be looked at Monday by phone company. |
| CHILL | Operational. Will run some solar calibrations early. |
| S-Pol | Operational except for T1 connection Ops center. The first-shift technician will always arrive on sight daily at 11 am MDT. A second-shift techician will work as needed. |
| LMA | Trailer near the WFO installed. Six sites are operational. The remaining seven are expected to be up and running by late today. |
| MGLASS | Not yet operational |
| T-28 | Not yet operational, but the crew has arrived and will be doing preparatory work for the beginning of operations on Monday. |
| Storm ballooning | Not yet operational, but the crews have arrived. |
| Mobile mesonet | Not yet operational, but five vehicles are expected on Monday with the sixth arriving on Tuesday. |
| Storm chase van | Not yet operational |
| YRFS | Operational |
| NWS | Operational |
We will standby at the radars until later in the afternoon to see if some early clouds develop for Charlie Knight's early cloud polarimetric studies from the S-Pol radar. Morris Weisman and Jay Miller will be attending the STEPS kickoff at the Burlington high school this afternoon so we will likely secure from an coordinated operations by around 4pm MDT.
Some very shallow cumulus developed by ~1:30 pm MDT (1930Z) in all quadrants from CHILL except southwest. Bases were ~13 kft with tops at ~13.5 kft. We had the T-28 come out and penetrate a few of these clouds to test telemetry, voice communication, and GPS tracks. The T-28 flew north along US385 until north of Wray at about 100 km from CHILL. As this location had the radio line directly through the CHILL dish, this was encouraging since we never lost voice or telemetry. We secured these tests at 4pm MDT in order to make the STEPS kickoff at the Burlington high school.