back in action!

Storm near dark.

Storm as we approached.




The first storm of the day, It died soon after this.

Hello all from Weatherford, OK!

This post will be somewhat short and sadly without pictures til I have time to upload them.

Anyway, since I last posted much has happened. On Friday morning I woke up in Hays to a text message from the members of P2 asking for volunteers to drive back up to the site of our operations the night before to pick up their probe which they had to abandon in the mud. We all drove the hour and a half north to meet up with "Farmer Dave" (exactly what you would expect from a western KS farmer) who was very nice and drug their van out with his truck. We had lunch in the "cardinal bar and grill" which was the only small restaurant in town. Needless to say, everyone inside knew the story of how the probes got stuck the night before.

After picking up P2, we made the long haul south to Amarillo, TX in anticipation of operations on Saturday. That night we had dinner at a favorite spot from last year, The Big Texan. I had an amazing steak. The next day we did not operate, so I took the opportunity to get some laundry done and bought a new, nice camera at Best Buy. On sunday, we traveled to Northern Oklahoma to position for what everyone expected to be a huge day on Monday.

Monday was hyped for the past 5 days by storm chasers and modelers alike as an "outbreak" day. Essentially, in storm chaser lingo, an outbreak is a day when storms fire up over a widespread area, and nearly every storm is tornadic. We were not dissapointed.

We began the day by driving SE to position just NE of oklahoma city. This was somewhat of an unpopular decision because it was clear that storms would fire up farther west and in better chasing country. Eastern oklahoma is actually very hilly and relatively forested, so it's difficult to operate as a large group there (think south central pennsylvania). However, our hands were tied somewhat because the storms were expected to move at over 50 mph ,which means instead of chasing them, we'd have to be in position first and let the storm move through our array of radars and mobile mesonets. This also meant that we couldnt chase multiple storms. It was a one and done shot, and we all knew it.

The weather ended up just like the models described. In the early afternoon storms fired up in SW Kansas and moved into the wichita area. This was particularly concerning because two of the mesonet crew members, Andrew and Kiel both had family in wichita in an area that was only 3 miles from where the tornado occured. Later in the day, storms fired up further south in oklahoma, moving through oklahoma city and Norman. This was also concerning to many people on the project, whose homes and families are in Norman. It was very trying day emotionally for everyone. We were somewhere in the mix of being worried for friends and family, yet being excited for the historic outbreak that was occuring and our chance to see a tornado.

The storm that hit Norman (the tornado actually formed over top of the national weather center where we are based out of) eventually moved east, right into where we were set up. This storm ended up being the longest tracked tornado of the day. We moved to intercept it, but had a ton of communications malfunctions (mainly because the storm knocked out cell phone towers that power our vehicles' internet connection). My probe somewhat blindly drove south into the storm, encountering heavy rain and hail just north of the tornado's path. We couldnt see much and had no radar to tell us where the storm was. In reality, we were much safer than we thought at the time. Luckily, just when we thought we might be in real trouble, we hit Interstate 40, and blasted East as fast as possible (80 mph in heavy rain and hail). After this, we tried to stay with the storm and re-intercept it, but it moved too fast and started to fall apart. Several vehicles were in close position, but even though within a mile of the tornado couldnt see it because it was too wrapped in rain.

We eventually called of operations when the fast moving storms moved too far to our east. On the way back to our hotel, we passed through the damage path of the tornado. It was nearly a mile wide with numerous roofless houses, uprooted trees, and downed powerlines. We would later find out that that tornado was rated as at least an EF3. When we got to our hotel in Shawnee, OK we found it without electricity because the tornado actually hit the southern outskirts of the town. It was an interesting night right out of a horror movie as we tried to get to our rooms in a dark hotel by the light of cell phone and laptop screens.
Overall, there may have been over 30 tornadoes in Oklahoma yesterday, but the final numbers arent out yet. 5 fatalities were confirmed at the time of this writing, and several people on the V2 project had damage to their homes in norman.

As far as our research goes, yesterday was somewhat of a bust. Though there were tornadoes everywhere, we failed to get a complete dataset with all our instruments on one. However, given the challenges of moving a huge armada around and trying to get to a storm moving 50 mph in an area with poor road networks, we didn't do all that bad.

Today, we woke up without power still. After the morning briefing, Kiel and I volunteered to go back to end of the tornado's path to do an ad hoc damage survey. One of the radars detected a tornado where there was no reports, so we went out to investigate. We found lots of downed trees, and a small community whose town hall's roof had been ripped off by a tornado. We also talked to several locals who were very helpful in providing information the tornado's track.

We then blasted west to join the rest of the armada who had moved about 80 miles west of oklahoma city for operations this afternoon. We started chasing today, by intercepting a cell south of Clinton, OK. However, just like many cases last year the storm fired off, but quickly died as it it mixed too much dry air into it. Another storm fired up further to the north, and we pursued, but that one also died. Finally, a storm further to the Northwest near Vici, OK went up and stayed up. It soon had a tornado warning and looked very impressive visually. I was in the navigator's chair today to get a little experience, and luckily it was a slow-moving storm so it wasn't too difficult to get positioned on. Unfortunately ,by the time the storm was mature it was after sunset, so our road options were limited to one paved road. The storm actually never produced a tornado, and the meteorological reasoning behind that is actually exactly what I simulated in my Masters research, so it was cool to see it happening in real life. Essentially, as night fell, the air near the surface became cool and stable, so the storm was forced to become "elevated" As a result, the updraft near the ground was too weak to properly converge the rotation at the ground into a tornado. As we drove away from the storm after dark when it became too dangerous to continue our intercept, we encountered 2" hail, but no damage to our instruments or windshields.

Tomorrow looks to be another very active day, in many of the same places as monday. Storm motions will be a little faster again, so it could be difficult to intercept. However, we're all looking at tomorrow with great anticipation, but some concern for the damage that is likely in areas that were already hit hard Monday.

I'll try to post pictures with this entry as soon as possible! more to come, but it's 2 AM and i need some sleep!

EDIT: Here's a video i took from the parking lot before deploying on Monday afternoon.


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