Still a lot of questions about yesterday but it's worthy of some post-analysis and discussion. It was yet another example of why meteorological analysis skills of observational data will remain an important part of our job for the foreseeable future. (1/7)
SPC has really pushed for more frequent special soundings lately. These are particularly helpful in challenging scenarios such as yesterday's. The additional observed soundings and moisture channel imagery were key in understanding the trends toward a less impactful event. (2/7)
What became increasingly obvious throughout the day was vigorous subsidence that was apparent in the wake of the embedded shortwave trough that seemed more amplified in moisture channel imagery than what models had indicated ... (3/7) 
This shortwave was out of phase with the best reservoir of instability and strongest deep layer shear which resided upstream of the trough axis. Had it been more in phase, the parameter space, Corfidi downshear vectors, etc., supported big wind potential down into AL/MS/GA. (4/7)
One thing that was particularly intriguing to me was that RH continued to decrease considerably with height (re: OHX 21 UTC sounding attached) thus making entrainment of dry air more pronounced as the parcel ascended... (5/7)
This is opposite to a classic EML in which RH increases with height and entrainment is maximized at its base but lessens with further parcel ascent. Convection over/near BNA struggled much more than just east. Also, lapse rates were weak in the dry region above 500-hPa. (6/7)
The devil is in the details! We've come so far with modeling, but bridging that gap between what is really physically going on in the atmosphere and what we model by interpolating between obs and parameterizing will be a challenge. Keep those met analysis skills sharp! (7/7)
