We're not in Kansas anymore

Hello all! Sorry it's been awhile, but it's been a busy week for VORTEX2. While we haven't seen anymore tornadoes, we have been on a lot of strong storms that have been tornado warned, and some that even produced some questionable (and not so questionable) tornadoes that we didn't actually see.

After getting our windshield replaced in Cheyenne, we headed East and met up with the rest of the armada in Kearney, Nebraska. On the way to Nebraska we saw some impressive storms but by the time we got on them they had significantly weakened.

On sunday, conditions were favorable for supercells along the Eastern Nebraska/Kansas border. We headed out from Kearny to Lincoln, then on to Auburn, NE. After some time sitting around Auburn a few of us noticed some storms developing a little farther south in Kansas. I assumed we would then head south to chase them, but we recieved some counterintuitve instructions to head into Missouri and wait for the new supercells to cross the Missouri River before intercepting them. The reasoning for this was that the field coordinator thought the storms were moving much faster than they actually were, so he thought we might have to get much further ahead of them than we actually did. In reality, we had over 2 hours to chase the storms in the flat country of Kansas, rather than the more difficult hilly and wooded terrain in Missouri. This was the first of a series of perplexing decisions from the higher-ups this week.

Anyway, we chased in Missouri and eventually let the storms come to us. The storm we chased was impressive and tornado warned for several hours. Though there were some tornado reports, most of the V2 crew are skeptical considering not one of us actually saw one form. That night we headed to Topeka. On the way, we discovered a tornado had touched down after dark right near the Wendy's we had eaten dinner at less than an hour before!

The next day was just a travel day as the weather didn't look all that great. The fleet moved to Salina, KS to position for what looked like a great day near Witchita on Tuesday. On Tuesday morning we headed south and hung out near Witchita to wait for storms to develop in our first Moderate Risk day for tornadoes. Unfortunately, as the day went on conditions looked less and less favorable for tornadoes so we kept heading west hoping for a storm to pop up. Our journey west took us through Greensburg, KS which many of you may remember took a direct hit from an EF5 that wiped out the entire town. It was sobering to realize the damage that a tornado can do to a town, even a year later the devastation was still evident. Eventually we ended up chasing a supercell that developed near Dodge City. At times it looked great. Kiel and I drove right under the rotating wall cloud at one point ( a stupid idea, but it worked out fine considering we're both still alive).

rotating wall cloud right before we drove under it.

After spending the night in Witchita, we again chased storms in southwestern Kansas on wednesday. The day was mainly cloudly and rainy, but eventually we hit a patch of sunny skies that we needed to heat up the ground and give us the explosive energy for thunderstorms. Some weak supercells developed in a line near Hugoton, KS that we chased on. Some of the features of note included a shelf cloud and some impressive mammatus clouds. Dark came, so we quit on those storms, but a brief tornado was reported and confirmed by photos after we ended on the storm. The 2 hour ride back to Dodge City was full of rain and wind, but eventually we made it back to our western themed hotel to have dinner around midnight in the hotel restaurant which they were nice enough to keep open for us.

shelf cloud

mammatus clouds

Today was a mess. All in all, it will probably go down as one of the most indecisive days of the experiment by the PI's which led to some low morale among everyone. This morning, things looked really great near Amarillo in the TX panhandle, so we all woke up early and headed south. After driving three hours, we got the message to hold up as new targets were being evaluated. We waited between two targets (both of which were about 3 more hours away) further south in TX or back north in Colorado for a valuable hour. Eventually it was decided among the PIs (reportedly by a coin flip) to back track and go back North to south eastern colorado. Although the decision was widely agreed to be a bad one at the time, we lucked out and got onto some very impressive storms near La Junta, CO. At times it looked like a pair of supercells right next to each other would both produce tornadoes simulataneously, all within our view. However, this dream scenario never really played out. The storms were very impressive to look at and had a lot of medium sized hail that piled up about an inch on most of the roads. One of the storms reportedly had a breif tornado, but we missed it again!

Today's storm as we approached. There's the barrel updraft, wall cloud, and rainshaft.

rain and hail pouring out of the storm as it became sort of a heavy-precip storm.

VORTEX2 only has 2 more days left, and it looks like we probably won't see another tornado. However, it's been an exciting ride and in the past 4 weeks I've seen more of the country than most people see in a lifetime. While the first year of this experiment will be considered by most to be a failure in that we only successfully deployed on one tornado, I think we collected some useful and valuable data on a wide range of storm types. We definitely will have a lot to work with on storms that DON'T produce tornadoes. This is important because it will help us understand why some storms produce them, and others that look like they might ultimately don't. In anycase, we've generally been on the most impressive storm in the plains each day, so it isn't like we've been missing tornadoes. The weather just didn't cooperate with us in one of the most quiet years anybody out here can remember.

I never thought my first tornado would be in Wyoming...

Finally! V2 intercepted a tornado!!! more on that later, a lot has happened since my last post.

Yesterday, the fleet moved from Colby, KS into Colorado to intercept some supercells that might form on the Rockies and move east over the front range. Initation began along the Laramie range in Wyoming, so we drove north to meet it. The first target was a small supercell to the east of Cheyenne, WY. The storm had some nice lowerings and a few of our probes reported a landspout tornado, though this was unverified and we're all a little skeptical on that one. While doing our transects we did run into a dirt road full of cows (none of them flying, sorry dad).

cows in the middle of the road

That storm soon died out, but another one formed to our Northwest, above Cheyenne. We quickly moved west on I-80 to intercept it. As we approaced Cheyene, the radar indicated rotation at low levels in the storm and a lowering in the cloud base was visible from miles away. I was honestly scared for Cheyene at the time, in that any tornado would blow through the downtown area. We followed P1 into the "bearcage" - the area inside the hookecho where rotation exists in the storm a!nd a tornado would form. However we were in downtown Cheyenne, so we realized any intercept would be really messy. We pulled out of Cheyenne back east on I-80 and hit massive amounts of hail. At times it looked like winter with over an inch of pea sized hail all over the roadways.

hail on I-80

That night we headed back south to colorado to position for new storms today. Overall we travelled nearly 500 miles in over 4 states yesterday. On the ride back to Sterling ,CO we saw an excellent display of lightning and clouds in the storm that was now dying.

This morning we left Sterling to go north again into wyoming. Today was a 10% tornado risk day with a tornado watch over wyoming and the nebraska panhandle. After some time in nebraska waiting for storms to go up, we finally got a target to our northwest in Wyoming. The storm was visually stunning as we approaced it with a beautiful wall cloud that looked like it would drop a tornado any second. We got up right under the rapidly rotating wall cloud and watched curtins of rain descend and rotate less than a mile away from us. Our instructions were to drive through a canyon below the wall cloud, but we made an executive descison not to follow them because we had no visibility on the storm. It was a good decision because our new route gave us a perfect view of a forming tornado that moved right down the road we were supposed to be on!


if you look hard, you can see the tornado (my camera has bad resolution, it looked better than this)

First, a funnel cloud dropped out of the base reaching half way to the ground with some visible debris on the ground, A TORNADO! this first weak tornado died quickly. It wasn't long before our probe got lost in hail and had no view of the rotating wall cloud. (this sounds unsafe, but we were on teh back side of the storm so not in harms way). When we turned around after our transect, we encountered some golf ball sized hail. While i was driving i noticed a dark spot in the rain/hail curtain in front of us. After driving a little further i soon realized i was looking at a fully formed cone-shaped tornado about a mile ahead of us. The tornado at this point was possibly a quarter mile wide. At this point we had good viewing of the tornado for several minutes but encountered steadily bigger hail getting thrown out of the updraft. We were forced to slow down and eventually stop when our windshield took on heavy cracks all over as we got slammed by baseball sized hail.

notice the hail bouncing in the grass, and our windshield

we actually took bigger hail than this, but i didnt feel safe getting out of the car in that stuff.


We came upon probe 1, which was stopped at the side of the road with a much uglier windsheild than ours and lots of their instruments pulverized. We stayed with them and got out of our car to observe the tornado "roping out" - or thinning and bending as it dissipated. We then followed probe 1 behind the storm to watch it for further development, however, we couldnt go in because both our windshields clearly couldnt take any more hail. At one stopping point, we realized we were parked infront of an underground nuclear warhead silo (Wyoming and nebraska are where the US government keeps their nukes). We were soon visited by some military security in a pick up truck asking us to leave the premises immeadiately!


After taking a few more pictures of the storm, we took probes 1 and 3 back to cheyene where we are now to await replacement windshields tomorrow. The rest of the armada followed the storm east into nebraska where it produced another tornado after dark (so the weather channel tells me from my hotel room in Cheyene).

This was probe 1 after the intercept, we took similar damage in
probe 3.

All in all it was an amazing day. The tornado was on the ground near La Grange, WY for over 24 minutes. It moved slowly, allowing V2 to sample it the whole time. It was under mobile radar coverage at all times. The tornado pods took a direct hit from the tornado, as well as the TIV. Sticknets were well positioned and the mesonets had it surrounded. Personally, our misison was a great success in probe 3, as we got all the data we could have asked for in the spot we were supposed to be in. This was the most intensively observed tornadic supercell in history--and somehow I managed to be part of it!

Personally, i couldnt stop smiling all day as this storm was amazing. Being in 3-4 inch hail itself is exciting not to mention when you can see a tornado less than a mile away!!! On the drive back, Kiel commented: "can you believe we get PAID to do this?!" It was a great day, and tomorrow we will try to join up with the rest of the armada as soon as we get a new windshield.

The experiment ends next saturday, and every day between here and there looks like it has the possibility of tornadoes. The first 4 weeks, though slow have prepared us for what looks to be an awesome time!

The calm before the storm(s)

Greetings from Colby, Kansas and another down day for V2!

Since I last posted, I've been to Nebraska, Iowa, back to Nebraska, and finally Kansas. On Sunday, we drove East from Grand Island, NE to an area along the Missouri River in Eastern Nebraska and western Iowa where the PIs (Principal Investigators, aka big wigs) thought conditions were favorable for the development of supercells. We spent much of the day at a truck stop in Lincoln, NE, and then moved across the river to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Kiel, Kevin and I along with the rest of the V2 armada sat in a parking lot for a few hours waiting for convection to initiate. Eventually we saw this to our Southwest blossoming over southeastern Nebraska:

convective initiation

the storm started to get going...

a small, but cool-looking precip core

We soon moved south to get infront of the storm. Spirits were high considering we had a good amount of low-level shear for supercells (change in the wind speed and direction with height that causes storms to rotate). After sitting pat while we waited for the storm to develop and cross into Iowa where we were waiting to intercept it, the mobile mesonets began doing some transects in the hilly terrrain of Southwest Iowa. The storm had a huge anvil, but unfortunately that was about it. Though there was a ton of lightning it soon died out and showed no signs of rotation.... somewhat odd considering the environment.

when you look through the storm and see the sun shining, you know something went wrong...

Though we were somewhat dissapointed in the storm's development, we spent the night in luxury at the Hilton Omaha. It was a nice hotel, but unfortunately we had little time to spend there the next day. The fleet moved on south back through Lincoln to intercept some more storms on Monday along the Nebraska/Kansas border. After some long hours waiting again in a truck stop, we chased down and intercepted a storm just north of the border near Hebron, NE. The storm was not a supercell, but did interact with a few nearby storms to produce a line of heavy precipitation with some small hail and some pretty intense wind gusts. We clocked one gust in probe 3 at over 60 mph. Some other members of the team saw a few funnel clouds and some reported "gustnadoes' which are tornado-like vortices that develop along the gusty winds that flow out of a thunderstorm. They are weaker than tornadoes, and don't feature a funnel cloud. The team also had our first run-in with messy dirt roads. Probe 4 got stuck in the mud during the storm on a dirt road south of us, however they were able to manuver their way out eventually. That night we quit early in order to drive to our location for the night in Salina, KS.

Yesterday was a travel day and the project moved west to Colby, Kansas which is in the Northwest corner of the state. This decision was a little frustrating for a lot of us, because of the reports of supercells in Texas and two tornado reports in southern Kansas. While the team possibly could have made it to the Kansas storms in time, it would have been a difficult drive given our position the previous day. The PIs also thought that it would be good to rest up the teams and do vehicle maintenace because it seems like we might be operational for several days in a row later this week and weekend given the favorable conditions in the forecast (more about that later).

We took the free time yesterday to do some bowling and visit a local bar called "Twisters". It was the only bar in town, but conveniently had a stormchasing theme so the locals got a kick out of it. It's been odd getting used to the quasi-celebrity status of being a storm chaser in a small town. The other night while eating dinner, a mom brought her kids over because they were dying for our autographs. The vehicles are especially popular with the locals, as we'll usually find people taking pictures of the probes in parking lots or on the road.

Today was another down day. I slept in and then took some time to catch up on laundry after a big breakfast. Later on we visited Sonic for some free root beer floats and got dinner at the only real restaraunt in town, connected to the Comfort Inn. I've also done a little bit of lounging around and caught the end of Ghostbusters on TV.

The rest of the week looks like it should be awesome weatherwise. There will finally be upperlevel flow as the jet stream moves south. What this means is that wind shear will increase, forcing storms to rotate. Rotation is one of the main characteristics of a supercell, and is a needed ingredient for tornadoes. The tough part will be getting enough moisture to flow up from the Gulf of Mexico to make the atmosphere unstable enough for explosive convection with low cloud bases. So far in the experiment, we've been missing both the shear for rotation and the moisture to have low cloud bases which are also needed for tornadoes. The pattern for the rest of the experiment looks alot better for both ingredients, so there is a general air of optimisim around the project.

Personally, I can't wait to get on some real storms. I've been hearing from a lot of the more experienced chasers about the circus that will result from all the amateur chasers that are out, especially after such a quiet period. Hopefuly the experience that we've gotten so far on the project will help things go smoother in the face of more dangerous storms and more crowded roads. Speaking of missions, Kevin was sadly moved from Probe 3 to P7 to help out over there leaving just Kiel and I in probe 3. We could possibly be operational for pretty much everday over the rest of the project, so I'll be really busy. I hope to update the blog as frequently as possible, but I can't make any promises. Though, If i do see a tornado I'll be sure to make a note of it!

Only about 10 days are left on the project which is really hard to believe. It's been an amazing journey so far, and it looks like it will only get better. I've learned more about severe storms and forecasting them in the past 2 and a half weeks than in 4 years at PSU. However, despite all the cool people I've met and friends I've made it will be nice to get back to Pennsylvania and catch up with old friends and sleep in my own bed when this is all over.