First Severe Threat of the 2011 Season for Texas

Looks like there will be somewhat of a severe threat in northeast Texas on Thursday.
At least it is the first chance of Thunderstorms for the DFW area in about a month or more.

Well for starters I am not sure how excited I can get. If I look at the 18z NAM for 21z Thursday I get this for CAPE:

Pretty downright awful. And I think part of the problem is its belief that thunderstorms will have already been initiated along the dryline... therefore preventing any further destableization for the afternoon.

The moisture out ahead of the dryline doesn't look bad at least. Especially since it is still February and it takes some work to get 60 dps in February. 

Shear doesn't look bad as well. About 50 - 60kts from 1000 - 5000mb.

The GFS basically looks the same but with a more aggressive push to the dryline into East Texas.

One other thing I forgot to mention is that the 12z run of the NAM was faster and more in line with the GFS. We will just have to see if the models are on a slowing trend. 

This basically reminds me right now of what happened with the first chase of last year. Storms fired east of I 35 and became severe well into northeast Texas and we never caught them due to there quick speeds.

If anyone is going to get pounded on Thursday it will probably be in Arkansas where the instability is greater due to 60 dps and colder temperatures aloft combined with stronger upper-level support. (Not to mention the much more favorably backed surface winds allowing for stronger low-level rotation.)