"You guys might want to put your glasses on"

Greetings from Norman, OK!

The past two days have been "GO" days for vortex 2, and we have largely continued our streak of killing storms wherever we go. However, yesterday provided the most interesting storm intercept so far.

On Monday, Memorial Day, we chased several storms in SW Oklahoma and North Texas. Unfortunately, each of the 3 storms we followed died when we got there or shortly before. The end result was a 450 mile drive that returned us near our starting position in Childress Texas. While most people we pass fear for their safety in the face of oncoming storms, we've grown used to telling them that they are in no harm since storms tend to die as we approach. While frustrating, it is still very exciting and we see some spectacular sunsets as a result.

Sunset behind an anvil

The lack of action changed yesterday. We drove Eastward from Childress towards an area of high CAPE (convective available potential energy, which is an index of the amount of buoyant energy in the air) and very high dewpoints. With surface temperatures near 90 and dewpoints it was very very humid. We spent most of the afternoon and evening in Gainesville, TX (just north of Dallas) waiting for the first storm to go up. I was anticipating a good chance of tornadoes as my advisor said "we'd have to be stupid not to see a tornado today". (note the ironic foreshadowing) Eventually a storm did go up just West of Ft. Worth. Because dallas/ft. worth has the worst traffic next to LA in the US and it was rushour, we had no hope of chasing a storm moving over that area. We stayed north hoping that another storm would initiate closer to our position in more favorable chase terrain. After an hour or two we realized that the dallas storm was our only option so we moved towards it, hoping to catch it as it moved out of the urban area.

Near Witchita Falls we saw a few wild camels along the road.

However, on our way, the storm split and sent an left moving storm off to the north of the main right mover. The left-mover had an anticyclonic (clockwise) rotation and a hook echo. Most supercell storms have a cyclonic, or counter-clockwise rotation. The left mover soon became the dominant storm which is very uncommon as the left mover usually dies in preference to the right-mover. We chased the left-mover near Decatur, TX (to the northwest of Ft. Worth). Inside the storm we encountered golfball and larger sized hail. While we measured 1.75" hail, larger hail soon hit us that we suspect was over 2 inches in diameter. This prompted Harald to put on his goggles and encouraged us to put on our sunglasses just incase of a windshield crack.

Rising scud into the left-moving anticyclonically rotating updraft.

Some hailstones we collected.

The storm became very ominous looking with rising scud, however outflow overran the circulation and prevented it from ever dropping a tornado. It soon turned dark while we were under the storm so operations were called off. However, on our way out we somewhat accidentally ended up right underneath the heart of the circulation, where a tornado would drop in the now-cyclonic circulation of over 60 m/s (150 mph) wind shear aloft. Fortunately for us, the DOWs reported the circulation was well above us and had no hope of reaching it to the surface. Otherwise, it would have been very unsafe to be where we were, especially at night. Overall, we got very good data with 6 radars and around 10 mesonet probes, making this the most extensively studied left mover ever.

WSR-88D velocity mode, showing a cyclonic couplet with TVS (tornado vortex signature, pink wedge) just above our position (circle).

After we left the storm we moved north to Norman, OK for the night and got a spectacular lightning show behind us as we drove. Today we hung out in Norman for a down day with no VORTEX2 related operations going on because of calm weather. I took today as a chance to get some laundry done at the local laundromat, and Kevin and I got an oil change for our probe since it's gone over 5000 miles in the past few days. The off day is a great chance to relax since we've been putting in 14 hour days and over 500 mile drives per day in lately. Tonight we hope to head into OKC for some dinner and then visit the local bars with some of the OU grad students on V2. Today also marks the last day on the trip for our navigator Harald Richter, who will be replaced by an OU grad student in our probe. He was a great guy to have around and a great resource for questions that kevin and I fired at him. The weather channel did a special on him yesterday that featured him and our probe, so look for him, probe 3, and kevin and I on TV tonight or tomorrow.

Tomorrow we're heading north into eastern Kansas, and will likely use the next two days for travel and a mid-experiment discussion and review. The next chase day looks to be Saturday in the Missouri and Mississippi river valleys as we finally get into a much better pattern for severe weather and tornadoes.

It's hard to believe that there are only 2 weeks left in the experiment, and we haven't even seen a tornado yet. This looks to change in the upcoming week though as conditions improve. We're all losing track of the days of the week and are in a state of constant exhaustion from the driving. However, if you ask anyone out here (including me) they'll tell you we're having the time of our lives!