earliest. day. ever.

8:55 am

...at least on this chase.

we just left grand forks, going south on i-29. our first target (hush hush--the students are supposed to figure it out for themselves) is watertown, sd. while there we'll do a quick lunch and data stop, and our feeling right now is to play the outflow boundary which should be hanging out just north of sioux falls, sd. it's a warm front/outflow boundary surface low triple point thing.

the vans, we found out (or at least this one--i haven't yet changed vans) reset the trip odometer to zero at 1600 km. it just reset for the second time, so we're at just over 3200 km travelled.

right now it's kind of cloudy in eastern north dakota--a storm blasted away through the southern part of the state last night. it will leave an outflow boundary sitting there that'll merge with or become a warm front, and wherever that sits will be the focus. everything's there.

moisture--dews in the low 70s fahrenheit, and pretty deep, per water vapour imagery.
instability--slight cooling coming in aloft, and an elevated mixed layer (eml) advecting steep lapse rates overtop.
shear--a midlevel 50 knot jet and easterly surface winds should provide plenty of speed and directional shear.
lift/trigger--warm front, outflow boundary, and surface low. 'nuff said.

we just got waved at by a car bombing down the highway--people from my home province of british columbia. i've found that, more often than not, people are waving and morally supporting us. that's a good feeling.

so we've talked about what's going for us today. now let's examine what's not going for us.

well, the eml is also a capping feature. if it holds too strong, we could get sunburns.
the check engine soon light came on this morning. that could be troublesome.

ummmm, that's about all i can think of.

that usually means i've missed something. ;)