Fall Season Coming on Fast

After a summer of below normal temperatures, the southern Plains summer came back with a vengeance this last week, with temps soaring into the low 100s over Oklahoma and Texas. The extreme precip that most of the Plains saw this year aided in making it absolutely unbearable to be outside, with 70F+ dewpoints over much of Oklahoma even in the face of extreme surface temps. 

But as the massive summer ridge continues to sit over the entire plains, hope appears on the horizon for a solid fall season. The maintenance of high boundary layer moisture gives me hope that fall setups shouldn't be running into many issues outside of timing on troughs. A prolific fall hasn't been seen since roughly 1998, but a 98 season isn't needed to get good tornadoes out of the fall. 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 have all featured solid fall days somewhere on the central to southern Great Plains and hopefully the trend continues. I've managed to nab tornadic storms in 2 of the previous three years, including a day with three tornadoes in the Panhandle in 2012 so expectations are running high. 

I haven't been out and about on the Plains since the ill-fated June trek up to northwest Kansas, which managed to add an extra 980 miles to my mileage in one go. The itch to get back out to see if I can eek another gem out of this season is getting bad. Then again, so is the desire to have college football back. 

I recently was hired on at WDT so my posts will likely be few and far between going into the fall semester, but I will try and keep this blog up to date on any chasing opportunities that come up this fall.