I'll have the Texas...

The past few days have proven uneventful for the V2 team. On Friday, we chased a few mountain driven convective cells from one side of the black hills to the other to no avail. After waiting in the parking lot for several hours we moved west, only to move east, then back to the parking lot. During downtimes there is a lot of frisbee, football, and baseball played while we wait around with instructions or for a target to develop. The highight of the day was a staged photo shoot of the mobile mesonets for the IMAX film crew. When we returned, as a thanks Sean Casey (the guy who drives the TIV on stormchasers) shared a case of beer with us. Later that night we enjoyed a local restaurant in Hot Springs where I had an excellent prime rib, and a nice beer called Moose Drool.

Part of the armada waiting in the hotel parking lot in Hot Springs, SD

The Imax film crew, these guys are borderline insane.

The next day(yesterday) we headed south again back through Alliance and Ogallala to chase a few storms that had a marginal chance of becoming supercellular. The FC (Field Coordinator) vehicle was short a navigator so i had a chance to hope on board that vehicle (basically a converted ambulance) for the day. The FC is essentially the mobile headquarters for V2 and takes care of communications and organizing the deployment of different teams on a target storm. While the storm we chased never turned out to be a supercell, in the FC we had some excellent views and i had an opportunity to see how decisions are made out in the field and get a new perspective of the project.

The FC vehicle

The view of a storm from the FC vehicle on Saturday.

After spending the night in North Platte, NE it was soon apparent that we were going to have little luck remaing up north. With the jet stream in Canada and little moisture and no energy over the northern and central plains, the decision was made to head south. Far South. Today we drove from North Platte, to Amarillo, TX; a 500 mile drive that took approximately 9 hours. I navigated for the FC again today, which is much less exciting on a travel day than during a deployment. On the way to Amarillo we accidentally came upon a fairly strong storm with lots of scud and a lowered shelf like cloud. It was an outflow dominated storm with no rotation so there was no hope of a tornado, but it was still very cool looking.

Ominous looking outflow, really not much of anything but you could imagine a tornado dropping out of it.

Once in Amarillo, we had dinner at The Big Texan, a famous steakhouse whose claim to fame is the "free 72 ouncer" -- a 72 oz. steak that is free if eaten in under an hour. Trying to avoid a nasty car ride tomorrow i opted out of the challenge. Instead I had an excellent steak and tried some fried okra for the first time. I came to the conclusion that all fried food really tastes the same so it was nothing special.

Outside The Big Texan

Tomorrow looks to be a "go" day with the chance for both CAPE over 1000 j/kg and shear maybe getting close to 30 kts. We can only hope for a supercell and maybe, just maybe a tornado either tomorrow or tuesday!