Ogallala, Nebraska

Greetings from the Mountain Time Zone!

Yesterday, the fleet moved north from Hays, Kansas to a small town in Western Nebraska called Ogallala. In order to meet up with them, Kevin and I hitched a ride North with an OU undergrad who is a member of the support team for one of the DOWs (doppler on wheels). After driving 20 hours to OKC, the 9 hour drive to Nebraska felt like nothing.

When we pulled into the parking lot of the Best Western we're all staying at, we were greeted with a meteorologist's paradise of radar trucks, mobile mesonets, and sounding vehicles. After meeting up with Paul and Yvette (our advisers) to get up to speed, we prepared for a chance to chase today.

In front of my home for the next 4 weeks: Probe 3 (the snack probe)

The TIV2 (tornado intercept vehicle) in the parking lot. You might recognize it from the show "storm chasers"

Two of the DOWs parked in the hotel parking lot.

At this morning's 10am weather briefing we got our plan of departing for the panhandle of nebraska in order to chase some weak storms in the hopes of maybe catching a microburst. Because our depart time was not until 2, this gave a few of us mesonet drivers time to experience the town we had lunch at an old diner and found a huge lake to walk around for a while:

the diner we had lunch in, and downtown Ogallala

Finally at 2 we headed out to Sidney, NE to deploy on some developing cumulonimbus clouds that gave us a little hope for at least a microburst (which is a strong gust of wind brought on by rapidly sinking air that falls as precipitation cools it). Unfortunately, ridiculously low dewpoints caused the storms to have high cloud bases, which made tornadoes all but impossible. What we did find were a few gusts of wind up to 44 mph , which blew up some dust in places. Overall, while the storms were less than exciting, it gave the team a chance to work out some kinks in our deployment strategies while collecting some potentially useful data.

our first look at the storm as we approached. It had a really high cloud base, so no expectation of anything tornadic.

It also gave Kevin and I our first experience chasing a storm. Each probe (we're in probe 3) has a sophisticated GPS equipped computer system that allows us to monitor the position of every other vehicle while seeing radar and road networks. It also enables us to message other vehicles and recieve instructions from our team leader. Data collection essentially involves driving 20 miles, then turning around and doing it again in order to get a sampling of the meteorological variables across a storm.

some virga (precipitation that doesn't reach the ground) from our target with windmills

Wednesday looks to be slightly more promising, with the chance for a severe storm or two although tornadoes are still unlikely. In all likelyhood we'll be moving North again into some desolate areas of northwestern Nebraska. Regardless, it seems like we'll finally get out of Ogallala which makes no one happy because we have a nice hotel with a hot tub here.

While spirits are somewhat low here because of the low probabilities of tornadoes over the next week, I can't help but be excited for being part of such a large group of people devoted to the weather even if we're only chasing showers.