Chase Forecast No 1.1 ~ 2025-03-05

It is currently quarter of 6 AM writing this, so please excuse any pre-coffee errors.

Last time I wrote, things were looking rather favorable in my opinion out towards western Pennsylvania into Eastern OH for some supercells and a potential tornado or two. Models after publishing that whole breakdown really started to downtrend so by the time I went to bed last night, I was leaning more to staying in than chasing. I woke up at 5 AM to see if things had gotten any better.

If there’s anything that has helped my case since yesterday, it is that there has been an eastward shift in initiation, which is both closer to home for me in New Jersey as well as over more farmland (easier viewing). I definitely was getting bullish on the far-end ranges of the high resolution CAMs, definitely letting emotions get involved as I was really looking forward to a first chase of the season. While overall ingredients look marginal, I think there is quality in the right places. While synoptically a different setup, this reminds a lot of a chase that I had in 2021 near Lee, NY, where Connor and I were the only ones to get eyes on an unwarned EF1 tornado. The environment looked lame on paper, but there was sufficient 3CAPE and lapse rates in play.

What has me optimistic this morning is that this is a cold-core setup, which I really didn’t talk about in the last post. We have a closed upper low with very cool temperatures aloft aligned with a surface low almost directly beneath it. We’ve got dry air streaming in at 700 mb, and our surface dews are in the mid 50s while temperatures are in the low 60s. There are a couple of problems though that will cause some struggle compared to a traditional cold core tornado event. Firstly, the warm front will be too far north to be in play. It is the warm front that really gets the show going for cold core supercells. Secondly, I don’t think there’ll be a great deal of clearing to flush out the clouds for more destabilization. 

Even with both of these issues, I think we can get some good first chase of the season action with these rather nice hodographs. In my eyes, the key is efficiency with the quality ingredients in the right places. I guess we’ll see how this unfolds. My target to start the day will be south central PA, somewhere along the MD border (more than likely Greencastle, PA).

Cheers,

Ethan