A little late to the topic, but I had to finish studying a bit over the weekend! Currently there are several tornado warnings in the Southern Plains, and quite a few storms have already produced tornadoes. These storms are moving extremely fast, but the atmosphere is VERY unstable. NWS launched another weather balloon in Oklahoma City because of the severe weather situation (close to 4000 J/kg of ML CAPE). This morning this area was held in check by the low lying clouds, and with atmospheric warming this afternoon and a progressing Low Pressure system coming out of the rockies; warm, moist air was pushed northward. A dryline developed, and is now about 40-50 miles (rough guess) west of Oklahoma City. The 22Z dewpoints were approaching 70 degrees at Oklahoma City as well. The wind shear could be described as amazing. This enhanced southerly flow thanks to our friend the Low Level Jet, is producing a SSE wind at the surface, and with heights winds turn to the west. The storms that pop, do so quickly, and they become severe warned a very short time afterwards. These storms will tend to be long track supercells because of the "rich" environment, and the tornadoes could be very strong. I want to take a special look at the OKC sounding; the Lifted Index is very unstable, and the lapse rates are steep. As well, look at the amount of positive area on the right side of the environment's temperature. With such a small cap, it doesn't take much to break this cap, and if convergence is strong enough (which it is), then the storms will explode once they rise above that cap. This is the type of day that storm chasers live for!
