When examining a sounding while forecasting a tornado event in the southern Plains, there are many parameters and metrics to consider. Given that this was expected to be a supercellular tornado event, ingredients for supercells must be examined (given that a Skew-t alone cannot predict a tornado). In general, the four basic ingredients for a tornadic supercell are moisture (generally at the surface and in the low levels), instability (generally measured as CAPE), shear (normally defined by storm relative helicity and bulk shear or by examining the hodograph) (Warren at al. 2021), and lift (which cannot be accurately assessed with a Skew-t alone).
In a typical Southern Plains tornado outbreak, a strong upper-level trough will eject from the desert Southwest. This will induce surface cyclogenesis in the lee of the Rocky Mountains, which will cause winds to turn out of the south across Oklahoma and Texas. A dryline will likely develop from north to south across the Texas Panhandle and will serve as the main initiating boundary.
To the east of the dryline, low-level moisture will rapidly advect north on strong low-level flow. At 850mb, a low-level jet will be parked across the warm sector, causing low-level shear to rapidly increase. Supercell thunderstorms will initiate off the dryline in the afternoon hours and track northeast across the warm sector, gradually increasing in strength as low-level shear and moisture increases.
Generally, the most favorable time for intense tornadoes will be from the late afternoon into the early overnight hours, coinciding with an overlap of shear and instability (Straka at al. 2024). The storm mode is typically discreet supercells for several hours due to the intense shear and subtle dryline forcing.
