DLH - GFS CAPE forecast degrading all-sky CAPE

During my mesoscale discussion I blogged about how the all-sky CAPE did not seem to match up well at all compared to SPC mesoanalysis. I compared the all-sky CAPE to the clear-sky only CAPE & noticed that the most questionable areas were blacked out on the clear-sky product, & thus filled in with GFS data. Looking at the 12Z GFS CAPE data it was obviously too high with 2500 J/kg SBCAPE over NW MN & over 3000 J/kg over SE MN. It took me a while to identify that the GFS CAPE was too high & thus the all-sky LAP CAPE would also be too high because I really do not use the GFS much when doing a short-term mesoscale analysis. I think it would be much more useful to fill in the missing clear-sky data with RAP/HRRR/or some other hourly updating field vs the every 6-hour GFS.

22Z LAP all-sky CAPE:

22Z clear-sky CAPE:

Peter Sunday