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.