Slight Risk, No Reward: 11 March 2012

On a day where there was little school work to do, Cooper, Blanchard, and myself departed MLU around 11am with an initial target of Fordyce, AR.  Although this particular day garnered the attention of the SPC, who issued a 10% tornado risk across much of Central and Southern Arkansas into Northwestern Louisiana in their morning outlook, My expectations for this particular chase were tempered. Stratus covered much of the region from the previous day's convection that was generated from a residual MCV in northeastern Texas. This would greatly inhibit destabilization across the region, thus making intense convection in the target area a longshot.

The morning sounding from KSHV revealed no instability and no capping inversion, which would allow storms to quickly intensify and new storms to initiate over a large area as existing convection moved into the pre-frontal convergence axis.

Regional radar showing stratiform rain affecting the target area in southern Arkansas as convection intensifies in the pre-frontal convergence zone in far eastern Texas. 

Upon arriving in El Dorado, AR around 12:30pm, we were greeted by cool stable air and a light stratiform drizzle that essentially killed any chance of decent convection over the target area as expected. After spending about 30 minutes analyzing the situation around Shreveport and deciding that the main threat for the remainder of the day would be damaging wind and a few isolated MCS/QLCS tornadoes, we decided to chalk up our losses and return to Monroe.

Miles: 200
Wx: None