Azor anticyclone dominating weather in Europe

Most of Europe is currently under the influence of a major Azor anticyclone which does not allow any trough to pass through central and southern Europe. It does not look like the pattern will change in the next 7-10 days, but GFS was offering some hope yesterday when it forecast a nice trough with serious setup potential. We will see how that develops. Meanwhile the SSTs in the Mediterranean sea are currently somewhat stagnant but will rise during this pattern of warm weather.

A lot of CAPE will be available for the storms is next days across most of Europe but given the basically non-existent shear there is no severe weather threat at least 7-10 days ahead. Azor anticyclone is just too strong currently. There could be some nice lightning displays though.

Small CAPE/large shear setups

In the spring we are dealing with a lot of situations where there is weak or marginal cape and large deep layer and low level shear. These situations can sometimes produce strong tornadic supercells providing large storm relative helicity values. I've stumbled across this interesting point made by Jon Davies on his blog. You can read it HERE.

Similar conditions are currently in southern Poland, Slovakia and further to the south-east. No reports yet. Strong SREH3 is forecast tommorow in the same area with marginal CAPE. Tornadoes are possible.