The 1921Z NOAA-20 overpass is now in and there are many valid soundings to east-southeast of convection in west Texas. Several soundings indicate CAPE above 1500 J/kg with a few soundings over 2000 J/kg. Below is a short loop of GOES-16 channel differences between 1.6-2.1 microns and the NUCAPS sounding quality control.

The black circle indicates the selected NUCAPS sounding depicted below with MUCAPE of 2188 J/kg.

This sounding (centered on Edwards County) as well as neighboring soundings were obtained over fairly homogeneous terrain and surface topography doesn’t appear to be complex and therefore problematic for near surface layers. These soundings are near the edge of the NOAA-20 swath, thus they are much larger than the nominal 45-km spatial resolution at the center of the swath.

Brian Kahn