Another chase day?

It's looking like today may turn into another chase opportunity for us here in the Northern Plains. We're sitting under a fairly extensive cloud deck this morning over much of eastern North Dakota, however we should see some clearing this afternoon and with us getting into the warm sector of the shortwave pushing east-northeast through the region today, we should get into some decent instability. The 06z NAM and GEM are a bit quicker and start convecting around 21z over eastern areas of North Dakota and then progressively initiate thunderstorms along the inverted trough axis and cold front this evening. The NAM still seems a bit high on it's moisture return this afternoon, with surface dewpoints increasing into the mid 60's across the area by this afternoon. I'm a little concerned with that, given that our dewpoints this morning are only in the lower 40's across the northern valley. They are increasing over the southern portions of the valley down by Fargo (they've gone from 38° to 52° in the last 2 hours) and especially near Wahpeton (from 53° to 61° over the same period) where they're getting sun already.

The quicker we lose these clouds, the better chance for our daytime heating and moisture return. LI's range from -2 to -8 across the region and with EHI's at 3+, it seems that we have a decent balance of instability and shear. Could very well have some supercells out there this afternoon. Looks like east-central parts will be prime by later this afternoon and if I do head out, I'm thinking of heading in that direction.

More later...