Morning Forecast Summary
Operations ongoing at the time of the morning update as an approaching strong trough and associated surface features kick-started several impulses of precipitation over the Ponca City region late Thursday into Friday. This was the key forecasting challenge for this day with limited expectations for precipitation on subsequent days due to some scavenging of moisture and weak ridging to occur in advance of the next trough feature by early next week.
As suggested at the previous afternoon update, timing of the current precipitation was substantially faster - not well captured except by the latest of model solutions and already prompting an earlier mission scientists call for morning launch schedule. Here, previous evening dryline initiated cells propagating up and along a more northwardly tilting trough axis direction (as opposed to a more immediate eastward propagation) helped establish what became a more centrally located N-S squall-line over the campaign facilities - While some of these elements were suggested across the various models (NAM having timing, GFS having linear features), such an ideal situation for MC3E operations was clearly not well-established by any previous model run morphology. Nevertheless, both models still predicted substantial precipitation, and the knowledge of good moisture return and upper-level support timing was sufficient to get the basic story for the day's operations. Forecasters could have been left eating a bit of humble pie on such a difficult situation, but it should be noted that similar remnant convective dryline storms from the previous evening also redeveloped overnight in central Kansas limiting ER-2 take-off possibilities; These storms were relatively well-forecast to have significant impact on operations into early Friday. Rather fortuitously, there were not many forecast opinions that could have better maximized aircraft launch schedules under the circumstances.
This ejecting squall-line precipitation is expected to linger throughout most of the early afternoon into eastern Oklahoma. The timing and maturity of this system and associated cloud shield also should act to limit afternoon instability required for subsequent afternoon convection - mitigating cell initiation associated with the eventual trough leading edge passage - effectively hindering chances for secondary, quick-turnover afternoon Citation operations. Cells are not unlikely to fire should afternoon conditions clear, but should be limited and relatively short-lived for possible operations if firing in later afternoon.
The backside of the trough could bring some favorable conditions to jump-start isolated precipitation over north-central Oklahoma mid-Saturday associated with the upper-level jet max passage and remnant moisture, but otherwise clear conditions. The suggested quick approach of another substantial trough should bring incrementally better chances for precipitation through Wednesday of next week.
