Severe convection and in particular storms producing strong or violent tornadoes have a cool-season climatological maximum in the pre-dawn and early morning hours along teh Gulf Coast of the southeast United States.  Unfortunately, this is a time of day when much of the public is not monitoring traditional media contributing to a lack of awareness to the severe weather threat and potentially increased injuries and loss of life.  The National Weather Service Watch and Warning program would benefit if specific forecasts or watches highlighting the threat of imminent severe weather during the early morning hours could be issued the night before an event while much of the public is still monitoring traditional media.

Current understanding of the processes surrounding these Gulf Coast cool-season severe weather outbreaks is insufficient to make such forecasts confidently and current operation numerical models struggle to handle the complexities of these rapidly evolving environments.  Most cool-season severe weather events do not lack shear.  The primary forecast question revolves around inland boundary layer recovery that results in significant surface-based instability.  False alarm rates for these type of severe weather forecasts tend to be high.  The key question is whether surface based instability will develop inland during the overnight hours and whether the instability be 'sufficient' for tornadic supercell thunderstorms.  This study will focus on these key scientific issues in an effort to increase the lead time and reduce the false alarm rates for this critical cool-season severe weather forecast problem.