make it hurt.

Hello again everyone!

I apologize again for the long break since my last post, but things are pretty hectic out here at times. Since last thursday when we were in oklahoma, we've done a lot of driving and seen a few more tornadoes!

Last Friday was a travel day. We drove north from the oklahoma city area to Colby, KS. The following day we drove West from Colby into northeast colorado with the hopes of catching some thunderstorms that developed in the mountains. We ended up sitting in Kimball, NE for a while and then moving up to the wyoming/nebraska border in the same area where we had success and saw our one tornado of the project last year. Unfortunately the weather was not as cooperative that day as it was last year. We ended up chasing a supercell that produced a brief tornado before we got there. However, P3 didn't even see a drop of rain because the roads were few and far between. We ended up meandering across the nebraska panhandle on dirt roads south of the storm all afternoon, not even getting a drop of rain on our windshield all day. The worst part of the day was a long 3 hour drive to North Platte where our hotel was booked that night.

On Sunday we woke up in North Platte only to find that a down day had been declared. At the time this was welcomed by everyone since it had been a long 2 week stretch without much of a break. This gave us time to do some repairs to the vehicles and get a few good meals (and beers!) in. I had a great prime rib at a place called "whiskey creek steakhouse". However, while we rested in Nebraska, a long lived supercell produced a whopper of a tornado in South Dakota that we missed. It would have been a tough storm to get to, especially considering how tired we all were from the days before.

After another fun night in North Platte, we headed south on Monday into western Kansas. After a few hours of waiting in Garden City, we soon found a target storm north of town. The storm showed some signs of rotation, and at times looked like tornadogenesis would be imminent. Unfortunately for the project, it never quite got up the energy to drop a tornado. The most memorable part of the day wasn't the storm though, but a slight detour while chasing. Because the storm was in a bad road network ,we were forced to use some dirt roads. I was driving that day and unfortunately the road we were on quickly turned to mud from where the storm had rained on it before. Even at a modest speed of 30 mph, our van fishtailed and before we knew it we were temporarily parked in plowed-under cornfield! In a flash, Kiel got out and pushed while I gunned it in reverse, and we were back in business in less than 30 seconds. This, along with a reputation for getting into hail have earned our probe the (somewhat self-named) nickname the "pro-probe".

This is what a minivan looks like after it's been driven into a cornfield....

After spending another night in Colby, Tuesday brought a navigator change in Probe 3. Since it was the halfway point of the project, Kiel headed back to Norman and was replaced by my new navigator, Ryan Sobash. Ryan is a little more laid back, but we get along great and will surely continue the storied tradition of Probe 3! That day we chased storms back in western nebraska along I80. The day started out with high hopes since it was a moderate risk day. It was very windy, even outside of the storms that went up. We clocked a 60+ mph wind gust in clear air! The storms that fired up that day were all fairly boring, but we managed to get into a little hail as always and it was a good warm up for Ryan.

Wednesday was the most successful day of the week. After waking up in Ogallala, NE (a town I have fond memories of from last year), we headed into eastern Colorado. There wasn't much expectation going into the day as there was little shear and even less instability. However, while we were thinking of packing it in for the day and getting to our hotel early, storms fired to our south. It wasn't long before tornado reports came streaming in on the storms, and we quickly went down to meet it. The storm produced a reported 10ish tornadoes in its lifetime. I manged to catch a glimpse of two of them (this brings my tornado total for the trip to 9). One was pretty far off, but the second touched down within a mile of our car as were driving towards the circulation. Both were relatively shortlived, but after the second dissipated we drove under the circulation into a respectable hail core. The storm also produced some great rainbows. By the time operations were called off we had already driven over 500 miles that day. But that was just the beginning.... in order to position for thursday and friday we had hotel rooms booked in Loveland, CO which is just north of Denver-- 300 miles away!!! When we got to our hotel in denver later that night around 1:30 AM mountain time, we had driven 801 miles. To put that into perspective, 800 miles is roughly the distance between Philadelphia and Jacksonville, FL!

double rainbow in Kansas

Dissipating tornado

Another awesome sunset!

The next day we woke up to find the Rocky Mountains 10 miles to our west... hardly tornado alley! After a quick drive to Fort Collins for a great lunch at a local microbrewery and a reunion with some old penn staters, we drove out northeast of denver to chase a storm. The storm had tremendous amounts of hail. There were some reports of 6-8 inches of hail accumulating on the ground. We drove to the storm through about 4 inches on the roadway ourselves. It got so bad ,that they had to bring snowplows out to get the hail off the roads. We stayed on the storm all afternoon. At times it looked like it might get its act together and produce a tornado, but it never quite got there. The main reason is likely that it was just too dry and the base of the storm was too far from the ground. We stayed in Loveland again that night, which was of no complaint to anyone since they had us in a brand new Embassy Suites which is easily the nicest hotel we've stayed in thus far. Our room had it's own living room with two flat screen TVs!

DOW7 cleared the way for us through several inches of hail on the road


The mesocyclone--this puppy threw out 2 inch diameter hail


The view from the hotel parking lot back in loveland.

Yesterday was a travel day north from Loveland to Spearfish, SD which is in the northeast portion of the state. I was somewhat reluctant to drive so far north given the long distance driving of the past few days... but it still beat going to Montana, which was on the table for a while. The 6 hour drive north through wyoming was very boring. I think eastern wyoming may be the most desolate part of the US. The very end of the drive was nice though. We drove through the black hills of south dakota (again, familiar territory from last year!) where there were still patches of snow on the ground. The road led through a narrow canyon filled with lots of cool rocks and pine trees and an awesome trout stream called Spearfish creek -- I wish i had my fishing rod!

This morning when we awoke, we thought we'd be chasing in northern South Dakota, but overnight the models trended towards no storms and the forecast looked bleak. Since we were so far north the big wigs didn't want us to be out of position for stuff later this week, so they declared today another travel day south into nebraska. On the way south we stopped by Mt. Rushmore. I had already been there last year (never thought i'd go there two years in a row while stormchasing no less). It looks the same... but no one else had been there yet so I was glad for a second visit. We also stopped by wind cave national park, but got there too late for the last cave tour. So the past two days have largely been a sightseeing tour, but it's nice to see trees and mountains again after being in the flat plains for 4 weeks.

back at mount rushmore

The weather has turned quiet since the first weeks of the project, and we've ended up chasing marginal storms much like last year. The long travel and lack of storms brings to mind a common phrase from last year referring to the marathon drives: "make it hurt" And it has hurt.... The total driving distance for vortex2 in 2010 is now over 9000 miles in 4 weeks. That's an average of 2250 miles a week. For those of you keeping score at home, that's like driving across the entire country once a week! It's been rough lately, but every storm makes it worthwhile.

Big week for Vortex 2

Hello everyone! and sorry for the long delay, but I've been busy.

When I last posted, I had seen one tornado in my life. The count is up to 8 now.

To pick up where I left off, last wednesday we chased a storm south of Clinton, OK. I navigated again that day, and it was a somewhat stressful deployment. The storm was HP, which means it had heavy precipitation. As a result, it was very difficult to see anything going on within the storm. This caused some problems with navigation because we were in an area where we couldnt see very well on a storm that had reported tornadoes. However, as long as we were in the rain, there was no real threat of a tornado, but we had to be cautious that we didn't pop out of the rain/hail core to find a tornado bearing down on us! I didn't see the earlier tornadoes, but towards sunset we saw a funnel crossing over interstate 40 that was later confirmed to be a tornado (tornado 1).

After a long drive that night down to Wichita Falls, TX we spent the next day travelling down to Midland TX for deployments the next day. On Friday we headed out to west Texas. There was intense instability in the atmosphere that day which lead to very vigorous convection. While some teams ate a quick lunch the mobile mesonets deployed on a storm. It's a good thing we skipped lunch, because as the first team on the storm, we spotted two tornadoes, one of which was on the ground for over 10 minutes (tornadoes 2&3). Unfortunately, the radars were not deployed and many teams missed these tornadoes, but we stayed with the storm for the rest of the afternoon, even though they failed to produce any more tornadoes.

On Saturday, we drove up to New Mexico (the first time I had been there). It's a lot like west texas, but much more desolate. We spent some time in Carlsbad, NM waiting for convection to develop, and it seemed like it never would. However, storms fired up eventually, and we spent a few hours on a very high-based LP (low precip) storm that never really produced a tornado, but was very photogenic.

backside of the storm in Artesia, NM

Sunday we travelled north from Midland to Lubbock. Lubbock was a nice town, and is home to Texas Tech university. A few of the Tech students on the project showed us around town that night and we had a great time at the local bars. The next day, we returned to the same area of Eastern New Mexico and saw another storm that had much more precipitation and organization than the storm we saw there a few days before. Though it didn't produce a tornado, there was much more hail and precipitation with this storm. Later that night we travelled through Roswell, NM on the way home, where we were treated to an awesome display of mammatus clouds at sunset (not to be confused with UFOs!) sunset in Roswell, NM

After spending the night in Clovis, NM we drove into the texas panhandle on tuesday. After some typical afternoon waiting, a storm fired up near Channing, TX. We followed the storm for nearly 4 hours, over which time the storm produced numerous tornadoes. However, the storm was very atypical and each of the tornadoes was ragged and lasted under a few minutes. In this storm I manged to spot 3 tornadoes (tornadoes 4,5,6) For everyone involved, this was a great deployment. The mobile mesonets had the storm surrounded. The storm got angry and threw out baseballs at us. IN P3 we were in the worst parts of the storm, but some how managed to avoid losing a windshield. Two other probes werent so lucky. Probe 4 took some cracks to its windshield, while Probe 2 lost a side window in the sliding door of their minivan. On the way home, Kiel and I were delayed as we responded to one of the other team members who hit a deer with their minivan. After picking them up and bringing them back to the hotel, it was nearly midnight till we got back to the hotel in Amarillo.

the mesocyclone from inside the "bear's cage" --the area of the storm between the hail core and the mesocyclone. If a tornado forms, it's going to happen under this lowering. The flourescent green is from hail. It was even more vivid in person.

The first tornado in the texas panhandle, it may have lifted from the ground by now, but it was confirmed with a brief touchdown.

Another tornado in the same storm, it's pretty ragged and was short-lived.

HAIL! this is what the view from our probe often looks like.


sunset behind the anvil of a great storm!

Yesterday, we drove into western oklahoma for a High risk day. With conditions very favorable for tornadoes, we were all very hopeful for a long lived storm, with a long tornado that we could get a great deployment on. It wasn't long before explosive convection developed into a supercell. As we were driving towards the storm a tornado developed infront of our eyes (tornado 7), but soon dissipated. We spent the rest of the day in the hail core. Though there weren't any baseballs, there was ALOT of hail, covering the roads at times. (see the video!). The storm later produced a large tornado, but we didn't see it in P3 because we stayed a mile or two north of it in heavy rain and hail for much fo the deployme nt. In this storm, we didn't have as good of data collection due to poor road network and fairly fast moving storms.

In western, OK a tornado touched down as we approached the storm.

A view of the storm from very close.

Today we had a travel day, driving 8 hours north from oklahoma city to Colby, KS. It looks like the next few days will be fairly quiet, but we should have some chances for storm intercepts in the high plains of western kansas and eastern colorado.

Personally, It's been a thrilling week where I saw 7 tornadoes in 7 days. However, it's also been tiring. With long days of driving and chasing there's been little time for more than a few hours of sleep, and less time for relaxing and any sort of excersize. I think we're all in need of a down day or two to do some laundry and get some work done, but as long as there are storms we'll be out chasing them!

Interview today

Here's a link to an interview I did this morning for an Austin, TX local news station:

http://news8austin.com/content/weather/270991/storm-ready--lessons-from-a-mobile-research-center


More on today will come later (for a little foreshadowing... I saw a tornado today!!!)

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.


Cancel

Hello from Hays, KS!


Past few days have finally seen some action for VORTEX2. Yesterday, we drove north from Woodward to Hays. On the way we stopped to do some calibration of instruments. Essentially we pulled off on the side of the road to check the readings from all of our thermometers to detect any biases. After checking everything out, we finished up our drive north. Once in Hays we kicked off our cinco de mayo celebrations right with a few margaritas and mexican food at a great little restaurant near the hotel.

instrument testing in Kansas

Today was our first operations day. A low pressure system and warm front set up over northern Kansas. After a day of uncertainty sitting in the parking lot at the hotel, the steering committee finally decided on a target to the northwest, rather than a target farther to our east. We drove up to WaKeeney, KS and saw some storms going up towards the Nebraska border around dusk. We managed to intercept a weak supercell with small (quarter-sized) hail and frequent lightning. Despite good wind shear, there wasn't much hope for tornadoes because the low-level air was too cool and dry. However, the fleet didn't get away unscathed. Probes 2 and 7 ended up getting stuck on dirt farm roads that become flooded out. The rest of us headed back to Hays while they were being rescued by local farmers and their probes were winched out by some of the more hardy vehicles in the armada. At the time of this writing, they still hadn't returned to the hotel (1 AM). Our probe managed to avoid the mess because our mission put us on some drier and better-paved roads. It's fortunate though that neither of the stuck probes was in the path of anything dangerous!

In front of the Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV), from the discovery channel show

The hotel parking lot in Hays, KS. Notice the DOWs are with us now.

The next two days should be travel/down days as there isn't much of a chance for severe weather in our domain. It looks like we'll be travelling south again, maybe to the Texas panhandle. Sunday-Wednesday look very very good for severe weather. The storm prediction center back in Norman has already forecasted that Monday has the potential to be an outbreak day with a chance for very large hail and significant tornadoes. So after a quiet first week, we should be very busy next week! I'll try to post more in the upcoming days, and have more pictures of weather.... I'm waiting to stop by a bigger town with a Best Buy so I can buy a nicer camera!

hiking in Oklahoma?

Greetings from Woodward, Oklahoma!

This weekend's weather was quiet and so was VORTEX2. Without any storms to chase there was plenty of time to test software and instruments as well as explore some of what Oklahoma has to offer. On Saturday we moved over to the other side of Norman to a new hotel before Andrew, Julie, Derek, Richard and I took a probe up to Oklahoma City to see the Triple A Oklahoma City Redhawks play. The game was fun with great weather, even though the redhawks were blown out. It was even Star Wars night at the ballpark, with the guy who played Chewbacca signing autographs.

Yesterday, there was some hope of a practice mission, but the coordinators felt that we were well enough prepared that this wasn't necessary. So with another beautiful afternoon to kill, some of the OU people suggested a hiking trip. I was skeptical, considering Oklahoma's reputation for flat plains. However, there is a nice range of small mountains about an hour's drive Southwest of Norman called the Wichita's.

hiking in the Wichitas

After a few hours of hiking, we stopped by a world famous burger/steak place called Meers. It wasn't much from the outside, but the inside had a great western feel. The best part, by far, was the burgers and beer. You can't often say you saw where your dinner lived yesterday, but you can at this restaurant. Across the street is a ranch of Longhorn cattle, which supply the restaurant's burgers. It was easily the best cheeseburger I've ever eaten. The restaurant also has a special beer brewed for it that compliments the fresh beef, called Meers Gold.

Meers Beer

Where dinner lives.

Meers from the outside

After an early forecasting meeting, V2 decided to head up to Woodward, OK today in order to position for future targets later this week. There isn't much hope of severe weather, or operations, until Wednesday at the earliest, but the long range models suggest a busy week after that. Woodward is a nice, but small oklahoma town. We'll have another down day tomorrow and plenty of time to see some more local sights. I've heard there's a series of Caverns north of town that we'll likely investigate. But, until then it's time to investigate the hotel bar!

.Hanging around the vehicle bay at the National Weather Center in Norman before leaving this morning.

VORTEX Eve!

Hello all from Norman, Oklahoma!

Today we arrived in Norman, Oklahoma at the National Weather Center (home to the National Severe Storms Laboratory and the OU School of Meteorology). After a bright and early flight from State College to Oklahoma City, the PSU team assembled. We had a nice lunch with some PSU alums now at OU before having our mobile mesonet meeting. It was great to see some old faces from last year, as well as some new ones.

Now that all the reunions are done, it's time to get this show on the road. The weather doesn't look too promising for tornadoes this weekend. There's an outside chance we may chase storms further south in Texas tomorrow, but it's most likely that we'll do some test/training operations around Norman. Though there was intense weather in Arkansas tonight, we don't chase there because it is too hilly and forrested (it's hard to use radars with trees in the way!). Beyond this weekend, things look slightly better, but it's too hard to tell. In general, everyone is just very excited to be here.

That's all I have for now, I'll be sure to post more as more happens. Unfortunately, when I was packing tonight I realized I lost my camera's USB cord, so i'll be unable to upload pictures for a little while until I buy a replacement.