The calm before the storm(s)

Greetings from Colby, Kansas and another down day for V2!

Since I last posted, I've been to Nebraska, Iowa, back to Nebraska, and finally Kansas. On Sunday, we drove East from Grand Island, NE to an area along the Missouri River in Eastern Nebraska and western Iowa where the PIs (Principal Investigators, aka big wigs) thought conditions were favorable for the development of supercells. We spent much of the day at a truck stop in Lincoln, NE, and then moved across the river to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Kiel, Kevin and I along with the rest of the V2 armada sat in a parking lot for a few hours waiting for convection to initiate. Eventually we saw this to our Southwest blossoming over southeastern Nebraska:

convective initiation

the storm started to get going...

a small, but cool-looking precip core

We soon moved south to get infront of the storm. Spirits were high considering we had a good amount of low-level shear for supercells (change in the wind speed and direction with height that causes storms to rotate). After sitting pat while we waited for the storm to develop and cross into Iowa where we were waiting to intercept it, the mobile mesonets began doing some transects in the hilly terrrain of Southwest Iowa. The storm had a huge anvil, but unfortunately that was about it. Though there was a ton of lightning it soon died out and showed no signs of rotation.... somewhat odd considering the environment.

when you look through the storm and see the sun shining, you know something went wrong...

Though we were somewhat dissapointed in the storm's development, we spent the night in luxury at the Hilton Omaha. It was a nice hotel, but unfortunately we had little time to spend there the next day. The fleet moved on south back through Lincoln to intercept some more storms on Monday along the Nebraska/Kansas border. After some long hours waiting again in a truck stop, we chased down and intercepted a storm just north of the border near Hebron, NE. The storm was not a supercell, but did interact with a few nearby storms to produce a line of heavy precipitation with some small hail and some pretty intense wind gusts. We clocked one gust in probe 3 at over 60 mph. Some other members of the team saw a few funnel clouds and some reported "gustnadoes' which are tornado-like vortices that develop along the gusty winds that flow out of a thunderstorm. They are weaker than tornadoes, and don't feature a funnel cloud. The team also had our first run-in with messy dirt roads. Probe 4 got stuck in the mud during the storm on a dirt road south of us, however they were able to manuver their way out eventually. That night we quit early in order to drive to our location for the night in Salina, KS.

Yesterday was a travel day and the project moved west to Colby, Kansas which is in the Northwest corner of the state. This decision was a little frustrating for a lot of us, because of the reports of supercells in Texas and two tornado reports in southern Kansas. While the team possibly could have made it to the Kansas storms in time, it would have been a difficult drive given our position the previous day. The PIs also thought that it would be good to rest up the teams and do vehicle maintenace because it seems like we might be operational for several days in a row later this week and weekend given the favorable conditions in the forecast (more about that later).

We took the free time yesterday to do some bowling and visit a local bar called "Twisters". It was the only bar in town, but conveniently had a stormchasing theme so the locals got a kick out of it. It's been odd getting used to the quasi-celebrity status of being a storm chaser in a small town. The other night while eating dinner, a mom brought her kids over because they were dying for our autographs. The vehicles are especially popular with the locals, as we'll usually find people taking pictures of the probes in parking lots or on the road.

Today was another down day. I slept in and then took some time to catch up on laundry after a big breakfast. Later on we visited Sonic for some free root beer floats and got dinner at the only real restaraunt in town, connected to the Comfort Inn. I've also done a little bit of lounging around and caught the end of Ghostbusters on TV.

The rest of the week looks like it should be awesome weatherwise. There will finally be upperlevel flow as the jet stream moves south. What this means is that wind shear will increase, forcing storms to rotate. Rotation is one of the main characteristics of a supercell, and is a needed ingredient for tornadoes. The tough part will be getting enough moisture to flow up from the Gulf of Mexico to make the atmosphere unstable enough for explosive convection with low cloud bases. So far in the experiment, we've been missing both the shear for rotation and the moisture to have low cloud bases which are also needed for tornadoes. The pattern for the rest of the experiment looks alot better for both ingredients, so there is a general air of optimisim around the project.

Personally, I can't wait to get on some real storms. I've been hearing from a lot of the more experienced chasers about the circus that will result from all the amateur chasers that are out, especially after such a quiet period. Hopefuly the experience that we've gotten so far on the project will help things go smoother in the face of more dangerous storms and more crowded roads. Speaking of missions, Kevin was sadly moved from Probe 3 to P7 to help out over there leaving just Kiel and I in probe 3. We could possibly be operational for pretty much everday over the rest of the project, so I'll be really busy. I hope to update the blog as frequently as possible, but I can't make any promises. Though, If i do see a tornado I'll be sure to make a note of it!

Only about 10 days are left on the project which is really hard to believe. It's been an amazing journey so far, and it looks like it will only get better. I've learned more about severe storms and forecasting them in the past 2 and a half weeks than in 4 years at PSU. However, despite all the cool people I've met and friends I've made it will be nice to get back to Pennsylvania and catch up with old friends and sleep in my own bed when this is all over.