The Suck Zone

High risk, low yield

2011-05-24T00:00:00-04:00

Trip meter: about 500 miles
Time: 11 hours
From: Oklahoma City, OK To: Tulsa, OK
Summary: Missed all the big storms in the tornado outbreak

D’oh.

I sat in El Reno with Lou Rou until early afternoon until cells began to initiate around 2 PM, then we sped towards the dryline. The first cell that went up was a doozy, quickly becoming severe. It was tough to see with all the hills and trees, but we could make out a rapidly rotating wall cloud. However, it retreated to the northeast, and where we stopped there were no roads to follow it. As we were repositioning, it dropped a large tornado, just out of sight.

In trying to catch up with it again, I split off from Lou and attempted to get a better position, but he turned out to have made the right call, and saw the second and final tornado this cell produced. I got a whole lot of nothing.

The rest of the day was spent driving through rain. For hours and hours, I tried to break through the massive line with embedded supercells, but system was moving so quickly that it was impossible. I never was able to get in a good position to see anything except a lot of heavy rain and wind.

I did not see any of the damage from the major tornadoes today, as I was further north, but I did drive through Geary, OK, where a tornado had passed west of downtown. Most of the damage was to trees, but I did see a few damaged houses as well, and power was out throughout the whole town. Drivers in town were very good at moving out of the way for emergency vehicles and treating dark stoplights as four-way stops.

The real fun began around 7:30. One cell had been able to form south of the line, and it was bearing down on the town of Beggs. I was north of it at the time, and thought I had enough time to cut in front of it. If I were 15 minutes earlier, I could have been in perfect position. As I came upon the mesocyclone from the north through the driving rain and hail, I had to stop and let it cross the road a few miles in front of me. It was far too dangerous to approach the area of circulation from this position; I could have literally driven into a tornado.

I later learned that this cell produced a tornado that caused damage in Haskell, and I thought I heard that one was reported in Beggs, as well. I definitely made the right call by turning around, and don’t regret missing that tornado one bit.

So yeah, that was my big outbreak day. No pictures, some shaky video footage, but in the end I arrived in Tulsa intact.

Okeene tornado

2011-05-23T00:00:00-04:00

Photo gallery
Trip meter: about 500 miles
Time: 12 hours
From: Springfield, MO To: Oklahoma City, OK
Summary: Saw the full lifecycle of a supercell that dropped a brief tornado near Okeene, OK, and intercepted some other nice cells

Another day, another tornado. I could get used to this.

The severe parameters were insane for today. 5000 J/kg of CAPE in central OK, along with strong deep layer shear and surface dewpoints approaching 70 degrees. What more could you ask for?

At breakfest in Springfield, I talked to a trucker whose truck was totaled by the tornado yesterday. He was in his sleeper cab riding out the storm when it got flipped on its side. He showed me pictures of all the trailers laid over, and one was even laying on top of several others! He is lucky to be alive.

About an hour into my drive, I passed by Joplin, MO, which was devastated by the EF-4 yesterday. I did not pass through town, but I did observe quite a bit of damage from the interstate. Overturned semis, road signs and billboards completely gone, and many trees snapped completely in half. And I think the tornado only just skirted the interstate.

Beyond that, I continued southeast all the way to Enid, OK. Cells were firing along the dryline at this time, so I dropped south a little to get in better play for the triple point. A cell popped up near Fairview, and it was pretty close, so I decided to sit and watch it for a bit.

Well.

In about fifteen minutes, this little blip on radar transformed into a classic supercell thunderstorm. This storm was the only thing decent for miles, and it was not long before the chaser hordes converged on the severe-warned cell.

The cell was in its prime, and it had a brief “spin-up”. A rotating lowering dropped down from the high base and tried to form a funnel, but failed, and the lowering disappeared.

It was only a matter of time before the cell did the same thing again, and this time with a rousing success. A skinny, elongated funnel formed, with very visible circulation at the ground. The ground circulation trailed behind the funnel quite a bit, though storm motion was quite slow (about 25 MPH). I was in the perfect position the entire time, and it was a beautiful sight. It appeared to occur over open land, likely causing no damage.

This storm was in its death throes, and slowly weakened, losing its tornado threat. When you’re in chase mode, you don’t get a break! There was another awesome-looking cell forming to the south, near Watonga, so I went after it. This cell was all by itself, and its updraft was very impressive.

As I got into position, the storm’s crazy structure became apparent. There was a bell shape to the updraft base, and the whole storm was wrapping up and tilting over.

There was even a nice, low wall cloud.

The storm tried and it tried, but it just could not produce a tornado.

This cell went kaput, so I tried one more intercept on a high-precipitation beast up near Kingfisher. This storm was a massive hailer, with a 65+ dBZ core and an intense velocity couplet.

The storm motion was to the southeast, which was really confusing at first, because storms typically travel to the northeast. This threw me off several times today, and I was once again reminded of the fact as this monster shooed all the chasers south out of Kingfisher. The town was right underneath the rain-free meso as I was leaving, which was a little freaky, as there was major precipitation on three sides. 3-inch hail was reported with this cell. Ouch.

I got one more surprise when I was reviewing the day’s video footage. When I was filling up in Kingfisher, I was taking video as lightning struck nearby. I jumped in the air, freaking out that I was trying to pump gas. Now I knew this stroke was very close because I heard a crackle and a pop right before the flash of light. Only when I watched the video did I realize just how close it had come.

You can clearly see the lightning bolt in the left part of the frame, striking a puddle on the side of the road not twenty feet away. I’m almost certain that this isn’t an artifact of the camera, or some kind of reflection in the lens. Freaky, huh?

Today marks tornado #5 for me. The storms were fantastic, the people were nice, and the tornado was the icing on the cake. In all, not a bad day to spend on the plains.

Tomorrow has all the makings of a tornado outbreak. The SPC is already considering upgrading to high risk, which only happens a few days a year. They’re really serious this time. Tomorrow will be the last day of my chasecation, and it’s bound to be a memorable one.

My first solo tornado!

2011-05-22T00:00:00-04:00

Photo gallery
Trip meter: about 650 miles
Time: 13 hours
From: Joplin, MO To: Springfield, MO
Summary: Caught a brief tornado that caused damage in Waverly, MO

Today must have been the most stressful, most rewarding, most exciting day of my chasing career. I finally made all the right calls and got lucky, bagging my first tornado on a solo chase.

I was not planning to chase today. I was going to drop Jess off at the Kansas City airport and start for home. All it took was one glance at the SPC outlook to change all that. We raced up to KCI, late as usual, and I left Jess at the airport around 1 PM. It was super unfortunate that she had to leave on this stellar storm day, and it was really tough to see her go.

I went north, just as cells in the area were beginning to initiate. Just like on Friday, they kept forming in one spot, right near Kansas City, and followed the same path to the northeast. The difference today was that these storms were popping up as supercells.

I spent much of the day driving in circles. The first cell I attempted to intercept was a cell that quickly put a tornado on the ground. Unfortunately, I was on the exact wrong side of the storm at that time, and was unable to see anything. It was only a matter of luck that I was able to squeeze into the area of the storm called the “notch”, which is a rain-free area to the southwest of the main updraft. It offers the best look at the wall cloud without any pesky precipitation getting in the way. Hill after hill yielded teasing peeks at the wall cloud, which was blocky and extremely low. The initial tornado reported with this cell must have lifted, but strong rotation was clearly evident, and I saw a brief funnel dip down as I was closing in.

Finally I found a good place to stop and observe the cell from the south as it moved ever so slowly to my north. The funnel was still evident, though it had lifted a bit.

Finally it dropped down and made a nice cone shape. Again, road options were not great, so I only had a few minutes to observe the tornado before it was obscured by rain. I saw dirt being kicked up on the ground, making this funnel officially a tornado on the ground.

I followed directly behind it, passing through the town of Waverly, which had been hit by the tornado. I observed a few downed trees, some of them in the road. One tree has also fallen on the roof of a house, though damage did not look extensive.

I followed behind the storm for a while, but the wall cloud was obscured by rain. Due to the poor road network, I was unable to get into position to see anything else from this cell. A nice juicy cell was next in line, however. The forward flank downdraft from the new cell was going to kill the current storm, so I abandoned it and headed for cell #2.

I got lucky and skirted the core of the second tornado-warned cell, which had a funnel cloud reported on it by I-70. By the time I got into position, however, it had weakened and was no longer a tornado threat.

I raced the final cell of the day to the northeast, on the northern end of the MCS that was beginning to develop. The cell was moving away and was just too far to catch it in time, and its tornado warning expired as soon as I reached it. I almost got stuck because the road was closed, but again got lucky and popped out the northern end of the MCS without incident.

I waited for the mess of storms to pass out of the area, then went back south, headed towards Springfield, MO, where I am spending the night. I stopped several times to take in the post-storm goodies: mammatus clouds, some lightning, and even a full double rainbow stretching all the way across the sky.

It’s tough to get excited during the day because you have a lot of different things to focus on when chasing alone. After the fact, looking back on all the pictures and videos, it all seems very surreal. I’m very proud to have caught my first tornado on my own, though it is unfortunate that it caused damage. The tornado that tore apart Joplin today is also hugely unfortunate, and my heart goes out to the victims who will be struggling to pick up the pieces. I’m passing through Joplin on the way to Oklahoma City tomorrow, and I am not looking forward to surveying the damage. One SPC report says: “Over 20 semitrucks and cars flipped off I-44. All interstate signs gone and damage.” I sure hope the road is open…

Anyway, tomorrow looks like another big day. I’m headed to central/western Oklahoma for early afternoon. There is lots of instability, so things are going to happen early and quickly.

Cold front shenanigans

2011-05-20T00:00:00-04:00

Photo gallery
Trip meter: about 450 miles
Time: 12 hours
From: Salina, KS To: Wichita, KS
Summary: Caught some severe thunderstorms in central KS on a “nothing” day

Today was a fun, relaxing day. Not much was forecast to happen in Kansas, and the higher probability of tornadoes was to be found in the Ark-La-Tex region, which is really far and completely not worth driving down for. We figured we’d play the weak dynamics up in Kansas and see what happens.

So, with low expectations for the day ahead, we moseyed out of Salina this morning full of IHOP french toast. We made it to our first target, Great Bend, a few hours later. The cold front had positioned itself directly to our west, near Dodge City. It was only 12:30 and towering cumulus were already beginning to form.

Some showers popped up north of I-70, so we went back north to Russell. By the time we got there, new stuff showed up on radar back to our south, so off we went, retracing our steps. This was annoying at first, but it turned out to be the right call.

We spent the rest of the day driving in circles and going back and forth on the highways around the towns of St. John and Pratt. That spot was golden, as storms initiated over Pratt and then slowly slid to the northeast along the cold front. Because they all moved in a line, we could essentially stay in one place and watch them pass by like a conveyor belt. They were slow and easy to follow and photograph. It made for a fun chase.

Nothing else was happening in Kansas at this time, and many chasers ended up converging on these storms. It wasn’t crowded at all, and people were acting safely.

Early in the day, we stopped alongside chasers Nathan Truninger and Aaron Barthol to observe our first storm. Our data access was very poor at this point, so we joined up with them so they could help us navigate. We ended up chasing with our new friends the rest of the day. Coordinating our chase over ham radio was a fun challenge, and it was good to have someone along to help make decisions. We had dinner with them in Wichita, and will possibly chase with them again tomorrow.

These storms were not particularly dangerous, and although they were severe-warned, these were marginal warnings at best. There was very weak rotation present, if any, in today’s cells.

In all, it was a surprisingly good day. We made all the right calls today, and it paid off. We were on the storms early, from initiation to dissipation. There was a little excitement (stray hail stones, and almost getting stuck on some slick roads), but today was mostly stress-free. It hardly felt like 450 miles of driving. Nathan and Aaron are great guys and were a pleasure to chase with.

Mistakes were made

2011-05-19T00:00:00-04:00

Trip meter: 400+ miles
Time: 13 hours
From: Enid, OK To: Salina, KS
Summary: Poor decision-making and lack of reliable data led to a day of missed opportunity

For a successful chase day, everything has to go right. In addition to sheer luck that atmospheric paramters will come together in the correct quantites and ratios to warrant severe weather, every decision must play out perfectly.

We camped out in Pratt, KS in the early afternoon, with the dryline off to our west. Storms began firing around 4 PM about an hour to our north, by I-70. With the NNE storm motion, we figured these cells were out of reach. In reality, if we had just gone for it and busted north, we probably could have arrived in time to see one of the cells drop a confirmed tornado. Instead we messed around with stuff that might have gone up near us, backtracking several times. Unfortunately, as ripe as the sky appeared overhead, these cells never became anything.

Moral of the day: if storms begin to form where they are supposed to form, don’t think twice about going for it, even if they seem out of reach. They probably aren’t.

By the time we finally made it north (with almost no data up to this point), the storm had retreated even further north, out of reach. When we passed both the TIV and Silver Lining Tours headed in the opposite direction, we knew that had missed the action. We called it a night and had dinner at Taco Bell in Salina, KS, reserving a room there.

After we ate, there was one more new storm that had formed on the flanking line of the big one, and it was easily within reach. We booked it north, just for fun, because we had nothing to lose. A funnel was reported with this storm near Minneapolis, KS, but we got there just too late to see it. Instead, we got to drive back and forth through the heavy precipitation core, promptly turning around as we entered marble-sized hail.

It was getting dark. One of our shorter road options back to Salina ended up turning to dirt. We were eager to turn in, so we decided to brave it. The road looked pretty solid. Major mistake. We crawled along for about two miles on this mess of a road, freshly-slick from the torrential rain an hour earlier. Things were going fairly well, if a little hairy, until we reached a part of the road that had not been traveled recently. The car instantly sunk an inch into the mud, and was sliding all over the place. With some careful maneuvering, we were able to about-face and retrace our steps back to pavement. Getting stuck out there was the absolute last thing we needed.

We made it back safe and sound, with not much to show for our trek today. Oh well. Two more days left.

Colorado or bust

2011-05-17T00:00:00-04:00

Trip meter: 510 miles
Time: 12 hours
From: Norman, OK To: Woodward, OK
Summary: Not much

The past couple days have not been kind to storm chasers. A cold front that swept across the plains last week scoured all the moisture from the air, leaving behind a dry, cool, stable air mass. This has limited any potential for severe weather.

We decided to make the best of the downtime. On Saturday, after picking up Jess at Kansas City, we drove to St. Louis, where we saw one of my favorite comedians, Brian Regain. His show was a riot, and well worth the trip. Sunday was spent at Six Flags St. Louis. Now this was a truly interesting day. The weather was drizzly all day, which meant that practically nobody was at the park… except us, and the other crazy people. The park was so empty, they even let us stay in our seats on the roller coasters, because nobody else was waiting in line to take our place. When all was said and done, we did 12 rides on 6 of the coasters. We would have done more, but a few of them were closed.

The models showed the potential for severe weather increasing as the week went on, so we decided to spend Monday travelling. 520 miles later, we ended up in Norman, OK. Some friends of mine from the NOAA Hollings program, Stephanie and Kristen, are graduate assistants at OU. It was great seeing them, catching up, and reminiscing about all our times in the summer of 2009.

Today, Tuesday, was a very marginal chase day. Moisture in the area was still extremely limited with dew points in the low-to-mid 40’s. The only real potential for severe weather was in the higher elevations of the high plains, which is an environment that can support storms with such low moisture.

Well, suffice to say, we did not make that play. We were banking on some dryline action in the OK/TX panhandle region. Alas, most of the day saw cirrus cloud cover that limited heating and created a pool of stable air. If any anemic storm had even initiated along the dryline, they would have quickly dissipated.

Today was a bust.

We drove from Norman, OK, all the way out to Guymon, OK. There were several other groups of chasers around, too, so we weren’t the only ones wishing for a miracle. We had dinner in Guymon and headed back east to Woodward, where we are spending the night in good position for tomorrow.

We weren’t counting on much happening today, but the lack of anything at all combined with a long drive made for a frustrating day. If it is any consolation, all the hotels in Woodward are booked full because of the number of chasers who were out here getting a tan with us. Cloud 9 tours is staying in our hotel, and we ran into College of DuPage at lunch. We also heard the California University of Pennsylvania is in town. Misery loves company!

Missouri madness

2011-05-12T00:00:00-04:00

Route map
Photo gallery
Trip meter: 730 miles
Time: 14 hours
From: Zanesville, OH To: Springfield, MO
Summary: Caught a tornado-warned cell in southwestern MO on a marginal day

So the SPC put in a slight risk area down around the Ozarks. I woke up in eastern Ohio. “Challenge accepted”, I thought to myself as I rose out of bed at 6 AM. I finally hit the road at 7:30 and drove and drove and drove and drove.

Columbus? No problem! Indianapolis? Been there. St. Louis? Done it.

The setup looked questionable all day. The day started muggy, but dried out as the temperature rose into the upper 80’s. There was some ongoing convection from the night before, but it dried up as the sun rose higher. By 4 PM I had made it through St. Louis without incident, but the sky still resembled a calm spring day. I had no real target for the afternoon, since it was essentially a race to get as far as possible into the area of good air.

Four o’clock rolled around and the radar scope started lighting up with a dozen little cells. I could see them going up off the distance, amidst the haze. I continued trucking southwest on I-44.

Right before Lebanon, a road sign flashed: “ACCIDENT AHEAD. 45 MINUTE DELAY.” No way. This can’t be happening, not now. I pulled off and attempted to detour around the accident by venturing onto the local backroads, aiming for Springfield, MO, so I could rejoin the interstate there. It was soon that I realized the comedy of errors playing itself out:

MISTAKE #1: I had forgotten to fill up the gas tank. I barely had enough gas left to limp into Springfield.

MISTAKE #2: Those roads are windy. And tree-y. You can’t see anything back there.

MISTAKE #3: Good luck getting cell phone reception, much less a reliable data connection.

So there I was, chasing half-blind with some old radar data and windy, barely-paved roads. I caught myself laughing at the absurdity of it all.

Well, it turns out some of those backwoods towns are more substantial than I thought, and I was able to fill the gas tank. I glanced at the radar and saw a small cell about 20 miles to the west that had uncharacteristically split into two storms, with the right-hand taking a hard right-turn and strengthening. This “right-split” storm is commonly seen in highly-sheared environments, but not in a marginal day like today. This gave me a good feeling, and its motion was slow and in the right direction. Seeing no better options, I continued west, directly towards it.

Bam! Not two minutes later, the storm received a tornado warning! Elation. It might have been small, but it looked good on radar, and had a little bit of a weak velocity couplet, indicating a rotation mesocyclone. Things were looking up! Haze was obscuring the storm, so I hoped I could get there in time.

The structure made itself apparent as I meandered through some small towns and into more open country where I could see the dang thing. Overall, it had a nice look to it.

There was some wild motion underneath it. I was still rather far away, but I saw some dust or condensation rising into the base, originating from the ground. It was in a narrow spot, and I thought at first it could have been the start of a rotating funnel, but nothing else ever became of it. It was likely just some dirt being kicked up by a localized downburst.

I had gotten to the cell as it was dying. I let the storm pass directly to my north and felt the cool downdraft as it passed me by. I jogged in front of it once more, but there was no more cool structure to see, so I set my sights on Springfield.

Today, I accomplished 100% of what I had planned, and I was on one of only two tornado-warned cells in Missouri. After a 700 mile drive to get there, consdiering everything that might have gone wrong in between, I’d say this day was a complete success.

Did I get a little lucky? Of course. But when you’re chasing, sometimes that’s all you’ve got to rely on.

Some barbeque and a Boulevard later, I’m ready to dream of gumdrops and supercells. Good night!

Oh, Zanesville, OH

2011-05-11T00:00:00-04:00

Trip meter: 680 miles
Time: 13 hours
From: Amherst, MA To: Zainesville, OH

Today was the perfect travel day: good weather, no traffic, and great mileage. I even surprised Jess by dropping by to see her at work. I spent a lot of time chatting it up with amateur radio operators across the country. I even got to work simplex (point-to-point, as opposed to through a repeater station), which is always a treat. It’s fun to talk with hams about storm chasing as a hobby. Of all the groups of people I talk to, they really seem to “get it” the most.

I had scheduled 500 miles for today, but having reached this milestone at 6 PM, I looked at the forecast and reconsidered my options. I drove another three hours and wound up in good old Zanesville, Ohio, a town whose name was eerily familiar. Only once I pulled into the hotel parking lot did I realize that I stayed in this exact Comfort Inn in 2009, also at the end of my first travel day.

So, here is the new plan. If I leave around 7 AM tomorrow morning, this puts me in position for a possible chase day! The Storm Prediction Center has forecast a broad slight-risk area for tomorrow, stretching from southern Texas all the way into Iowa. This will be a cruddy setup to chase, and I’ll have to get up early, but I’m out here to chase, not to sleep! If I play my cards right and get a little lucky, tomorrow could be really special.

I’m targetting St. Louis for late afternoon. Hopefully I can get through there before rush hour. This gives me two major insterstate options: I-70 due west, and I-44 to the southwest. I think I-44 will bring me into better air, but it depends on what the storms in the area (currently-ongoing) do overnight.

No matter where I end up tomorrow night, it will make for an easy travel day to Kansas City on Friday so I can pick up Jess at the airport on Saturday morning.

Bring it on, May 12! Let’s see what you’ve got!

Time for another chasecation

2011-05-07T00:00:00-04:00

May is upon us! We’ve already seen a very active year, as April saw one of the largest tornado outbreaks in history. Since then, the troposphere has been quiet.

Too quiet.

Nerve-wrackingly quiet.

Regardless of the state of the lowest part of our atmosphere, I’ll be out there chasing it next week, sunny or stormy. Joining me for her first chasing experience will be my partner in crime, Jess. On Wednesday, I’m leaving Amherst, MA for Kansas City. Jess flies there on Saturday morning, and from there our weeklong trek begins.

After I complete my last exam on Monday morning, I will make final preparations for the chase. I will also make a ritual animal sacrifice or two, to appease the gods responsibile for tornados: Moisture, Instability, Lift, and Shear.

Tour 5 conclusion

2010-06-12T00:00:00-04:00

So, there you have it: three vans, six days, more than 2000 miles, nine supercells, and three fantastic tornadoes. The best part of trip, however, was the time spent with two dozen people who share my passion for chasing and observing severe weather. Whether crammed in tour vans backtracking roads we’ve seen before, or congregating at the truck stop in Limon, CO, I always had great pleasure talking and spending time with everyone on the tour.

I especially commend Roger, David, and our drivers Matt, Chris, Bill, and Anna. Everyone kept us safe and did a great job driving through some of the planet’s worst weather. Roger’s decision-making ability really came through this year – just like in 2006 – when making the right call meant the difference between a bagged tornado and a busted chase. Roger also handled the van break-down very well, keeping himself composed, methodically troubleshooting, and then ensuring that everyone was still able to see storms that day.

As much as I enjoyed seeing monster supercells and my first tornadoes, there was a lot to look at on the ground, too, if you remembered to look down. I’m talking about chaser convergence. By early afternoon, sleepy interstate towns quickly become overrun by vehicles festooned with antennas, and instruments. Lines grow outside restrooms and fast food counters as the camera-clad hordes prepare, not knowing when they will leave or when they will have the next chance to stop.

Outside, mobile doppler radars gas up as some grad students toss a football with their professor. One of the DOWs breaks down again and is towed away. Other students work on the mobile mesonets, cleaning windshields and scaling hail-dented minivans to repair weather instruments. A film crew records the scene as filler footage for a documentary. A bearded man dons an orange jumpsuit, knee pads, and some sort of harness. He stands beside a lifted black truck outfitted with hail guards and an IMAX camera mount. Bull horns mounted on the grill complete the ensemble. Whoever gave this guy an IMAX camera must be out of their mind.

Meanwhile, sitting alone in the corner of the rest stop is Howie Bluestein. He spreads tuna on some bread as he looks over the surface observations and model output on his MacBook. Roger Hill and David Gold go over to say hi, just as Chuck Doswell walks in and pats David on the back. These old-timers have run into each other in tiny Great Plains towns for so many years, and will continue doing so until they’re no longer physically able. Come the end of the chase day, they will gather in local establishments and share fish stories of gorilla hail, mile-wide wedges, and the one that got away.

This is the real chasing community, the one that will still be here when the thrill-seekers and television cameras are gone. For a few weeks of the year they are nomads, roaming the Great Plains anticipating the next storm that will be unique from the hundreds they’ve seen before. They will find these storms and chase them, because there’s always one more day to forecast, one more storm to chase, and one more tornado to tally.

And there’s always next year.

MCS = Mess of Crappy Storms

2010-06-11T00:00:00-04:00

Photo gallery
Time: 12 hours
From: Sidney, NE to Denver, CO
Summary: Chased one cell south of Denver that became HP and never recovered

Not a whole lot happened today. We hung out alngside VORTEX2 in Limon, CO for lunch. I got to introduce myself to Dr. Bluestein, which was pretty exciting. As Roger and David were talking to Howie, Chuck Doswell also came in for Subway. It’s nice to see that, amongst all the chaser hordes that crowd the roads these days, long-time chasers can still meet up like they’ve been doing all these years. It makes me wonder what the chasing community will look like in twenty years, when we are the old-timers that others look up to. Will chasing continue to explode in popularity, as it did following the release of Twister and the TV show Storm Chasers? Or will our numbers dwindle as people realize the hobby isn’t as glamorous as the media makes it out to be?

But I digress. I sat with David during lunch and he went over his forecasting methods and his predictions for the day. What he saw was a large number of storms erupting simultaneously, because the cap was present, but very week. Typical afternoon heating to temperatures in the low 80s would be sufficient to overcome convective inhibition (CIN).

Well, his forecast panned out, and soon a nice storm was tracking over the Denver downtown. There was a report of hail six inches deep on the ground, closing I-70 west of the city. It was the first tornado-warned cell of the day, and we went after it.

However, soon its radar appearance was unfavorable, and we decided to chase a fresh cell to the south that was rapidly intensifying. VORTEX2 decided the same thing.

We positioned in front of it and watched it for a while. It was pretty and had a deep green precipitation core full of hail, but it was not terribly organized.

It had some nice rotation to the base, but eventually the precipiation took over and the cell took on a high-precipitation characteristic.

The cell chased us back to Limon (again) and we decided to bust north on I-70 through the core to try to reach a new cell further north. We were going 30 MPH on the interstate with zero visibility and strong winds. Hail covered the ground in huge piles that looked like melting snow. Even now, driving back north to Denver a few hours later, the shoulders of the road still have a few inches of hail. Well, Roger changed his mind, and we went back south and then east to try to get back in front of the Limon storm again, because it was looking better again on radar.

Well, that all changed. As we got close, it was clear that the cell had not recovered from its initial core dump and had no chance of producing any tornado. It was also merging with a new cell that was slamming into it from the south. It was becoming dark and late, so we threw in the towel and are now making the two-hour trek back to Denver.

So, today was a bit of a downer, but after yesterday’s incredible experience, I think any day short of an outbreak would have been disappointing. At least we didn’t miss much of anything. That Denver cell we abandoned apparently produced a short-lived tornado, and some out-of-reach cells in Kansas were also quite active, but despite all the tornado warnings and tornado “reports” from the public and spotters, there was not much to see here.

So that’s that. Tomorrow I get to screw up my sleep cycle again by flying back home. My summer job starts on Monday. I’ll have a wrap-up post tomorrow, and in the coming weeks I’m going to put together all my video into a presentation.

Tornado duo

2010-06-10T00:00:00-04:00

Route map
Photo gallery
Trip meter: about 400 miles
Time: 14 hours
From: Ogallala, NE to Sidney, NE
Summary: A monster cyclic supercell dropped two beautiful cones and roped out beautifully

Today will stand for a long time as the most incredible day of my storm chasing career.

We sat in Sidney for lunch and waited and waited and waited for something to happen. Roger and Chris retrieved van two from Ogallala, where its starter had been replaced. We didn’t leave until about 4 PM, and we booked it west and then south on Route 71, again passing the foreboding “NO GAS FOR 75 MILES” sign. We stopped and observed one supercell on the CO/NE border, but it was nothing special.

Storms were going bonkers further south, and so away we went. There were a few superells in a line and none could keep its structure, except for one. This southernmost cell in the cluster is known as a “tail-end Charlie”. On radar, it was a beast.

At about fifty miles away, we could make out the smooth updraft base of the cell. Suddenly a small protrusion appeared out of the bottom and began extending towards the ground. Very quickly, this funnel reached towards the ground in a classic cone shape. Tornado number one of the day was on the ground, and boy was it a beauty. Backlit by the setting sun, the high-contrast funnel was clearly visible for miles around. It sure beats the rain-wrapped thing we saw earlier this week.

We couldn’t stop driving to take pictures, because this cell was ramping up and was only just starting its show! Tornado one lifted very quickly without roping out, just rising straight back up into the wall cloud after being on the ground for a few minutes.

Much closer to the cell we got a chance to stop amongst the horde of chasers and VORTEX2 vehicles, and before long the supercell cycled and dropped its second tornado. It had nearly the same appearance as the first tornado, though it grew wider at the base. Absolutely stunning.

Tornado two was on the ground for a few minutes more and then gracefully roped out. We nearly missed the rope-out stage because the funnel was so skinny.

The cell chased us back east as we stayed in front of it, stopping a few times to take in the beautiful storm structure. It may be a long time before I see another supercell quite this well-organized. The entire motion of the storm was absolutely intense, and its rock-solid appearance was stunning. Roger called it the “best structure of the year”, a “nine out of ten” supercell.

As night fell, the lower-level jet ramped up and began feeding this storm even more. As we trekked north and east around the forward flank core, there were at least two more tornado reports back on the rear flank where we could not see. As we got in front of the cell we were treated to a fantastic light show as near-constant lightning lit up the whole updraft and underside of the storm. You could make out every piece of storm structure even in the pitch black. It looks like daylight in my photos, but only because there was so much lightning going on. Phenominal.

Roger and the guides keep going on about how people get addicted to storm chasing and keep coming back year after year.

Now I know how that feels.

I don’t even know what else to say beyond this point. The photographs are the true storytellers today.

It’s almost midnight now, as we head back to our hotel in Sidney. We stopped at a gas station for dinner, and I bought a sandwitch composed of some chicken product and cheese product crammed between two pieces of bread product and stuck under a heat lamp all day.

It was the most incredible dinner I’ve ever had.

Van no-go

2010-06-09T00:00:00-04:00

Route map
Photo gallery
Trip meter: about 400 miles
Time: 13 hours
From: Limon, CO to Ogallala, NE (again!)
Summary: We had once chance and caught the only big cell in the tornado watch

Today was the chase day that almost wasn’t.

We spent most of our day traveling north from Limon towards better instability. We stopped for a while and had lunch in Fort Collins, then stopped again the rest of the afternoon in Pine Bluff, NE.

Big cells popped up in Nebraska way off to the northeast, and we targeted them as we stopped in Pine Bluff for what was supposed to be a quick gas and bathroom stop. The gas station attendent was high as a kite and took forever to process the gas payment. By the time the numbers had worked through his pony-tailed skull, those cells had rapidly weakened on radar. We decided to stay put for a few hours.

Skies were clearing and it looked like nothing would develop. Finally, the atmosphere destabilized enough directly to our north and some blips appeared on radar. We drive a few miles east to Kimball to sit just a little longer.

Roger came on over the CB radio. “We only have one chance today. I want to wait for just one more radar scan, folks. If this storm intensifies, we’re going for it.”

We waited. The new scan came in, and it looked favorable. “Let’s go!” The chase was on. Vans 1 and 3 began to pull out of the parking lot. Bill turned the key of Van 2, and nothing happened.

He turned it again. Still nothing.

He reached for the CB mic. “Roger, van 2 won’t start.”

Roger came back, “Are you kidding?”

And that was the death of van 2 for the day. The van had electrical power, and they tried jump-starting it, but the engine was not even turning over. Meanwhile, we were watching the storm in the distance go absolutely ballistic. The backlit updraft tower was rock-solid and completely vertical, and soon formed an anvil. I was literally pulling my hair out watching this happen as van 2 sat stranded.

Luckily, Dr. Dave Gold had shown up in his SUV, and the eight occupants of van 2 piled into the other vans and Dave’s car. We left the van in a dirt parking lot and were off chasing the day’s only cell.

As we approached, it was apparent that this was a nice supercell with textbook structure. However, it was sucking in a lot of scud and had the apperance that it was ingesting cold air. It had a great lowering that soon got its act together and resembled a healthy wall cloud that was rotating broadly.

This was an exceptionally beautful cell. The large updraft base was matched by the heavy precipitation pouring down the forward flank downdraft. Mid-level winds sculpted the updraft into two stacked plates. The ragged wall cloud was constantly shifting its shape and ingesting cloud after scud cloud. It was really mesmorizing to watch the whole storm mechanism work as a whole, as if it were a piece of precise yet powerful machinery.

As the forward flank downdraft ramped up and began dumping rain and hail, you could watch as the cold air was striking the ground and being sucked back up into the updraft. The upward motion was very rapid, and if it had been timed with an RFD downburst, a tornado would likely have resulted. However, the RFD never came, and within five minutes the cold air had completely choked off the updraft and the wall cloud completely disappeared.

Roger took van 1 into the core to try to pick up some big hailstones for Boeing, but there was nothing larger than golfball-sized and he abandoned this mission. We met up back at the broken van and transferred our luggage, had dinner in Sidney, NE, and made out for (surprise!) the Days Inn of Ogallala.

We’re crammed in the van on the way there now. The tornado watch never really panned out, and we got the only big storm to go up in the entire watch area. While today didn’t turn out to be a phenominal severe weather day, it couldn’t have turned out any better! We got some great pictures of a very photogenic storm, and were very lucky we didn’t miss the storm completely with the mechanical difficulties.

Tomorrow looks to be a great day, so I hope they can get van 2 fixed in time.

Surprise!

2010-06-08T00:00:00-04:00

Route map
Photo gallery
Trip meter: about 440 miles
Time: 12 hours
From: Ogallala, NE to Limon, CO
Summary: A near-bust ends with a tornado-warned supercell at dusk in eastern CO
Interesting town names: Last Chance, Punkin Center

Whee! Today was a long day that ended with a nice treat.

I won’t go over the forecast, but it is sufficient today that the setup was marginal at best. There were two main plays: eastern CO and western KS / eastern MO. Well, there was no way we were driving way out to Missouri just to drive back to Colorado tomorrow. It’s a good thing, too, because the Kansas storms, while tornadic early on, quickly morphed into a giant linear unchaseable mess.

We went south from Ogallala on I-76, again to Fort Morgan, but this time we went due south. We had lunch in Limon, CO, where VORTEX2 had again taken over the town. I sought out the University of Michigan crew and again found Ari and his peers in the UMich scout van, and we got to shoot the breeze a bit before heading out.

Then we went south all the way to Pueblo. We stopped a few times and almost turned around back north towards the slightly better air, but finally ended up in Pueblo with nothing to show for our travel except some stupid stratocumulus clouds. Our hotel was booked back in Limon, CO, so we were to head back there after dinner in Pueblo.

Let me tell you, the stretch between Fort Morgan and Pueblo was some of the most remote, desolate land I have seen in a long time. There were blink-and-you-miss-it towns with populations in the dozens. There are no real crops to speak of – just wide open land, some barbed wire fences, and the occasional cow. The sign at the start of Route 71 south proclaimed “NO GAS FOR 75 MILES”. Yikes.

But I digress. As we were trying to figure out how to pay the bill at Cracker Barrel in Pueblo (mmm, meat loaf), suddenly everyone was gone. Roger had taken once look at the sky, and that was all he needed to change his mood from indifference to childlike excitement. There were some storms forming off the Palmer Divide and we booked it back north in the event that one survived.

Well, one cell was able to take over, and boy it was a beauty on radar for a few scans. It had a nice updraft and a low shelf cloud that we could make out as we got closer. It had moderate rotation and even a tornado warning due to a sheriffnado – a tornado reported by law enforcement. Now, we had been watching the cell the entire time, and while there were many suspicious lowerings, they were ragged, and there was no way a tornado had dropped out of that storm.

We stopped for a bit to photograph the storm, but light was fading quickly and it was very tricky. As it turns out, the NWS had also issued the warning based off of a video feed on Severe Studios from none other than Bill and Anna Stromberg, who were driving with us in van #2. Again, there was no tornado on this storm, but with a low-resolution streaming video, it is understandable how scud could be mistaken as such. Roger tried to convince the NWS that they were in the wrong, but it took a call from Bill and Anna to set things right.

The storm took a hard right turn and dove southeast as it intensified, and it crossed Route 24 right alongside us. The result? We got to drive through both the rear flank and forward flank of the storm. For a good 10 miles we dealt with heavy rain, marble- and ping-pong-ball-sized hail, and gusty winds. You could barely hear yourself think from the sound of hail pelting the van, and I commend our driver Matt and the other drivers for safely maneuvering through that storm. Visiblity could not have been more than 50 feet in front of the vans, even with high-beams on. You’ll have to watch the videos I post later to get the full effect. Route 24 paralleled the storm and took us straight back to our hotel reservations in Limon.

So, there you have it: a marginal day almost busted, but in the end produced a nice, marginal supercell – the best in Colorado for today, and we were lucky enough to see it… really closely! I’m quite happy.

Tonight we got in pretty early – 9:30 PM – so we got a chance to relax a little and hit up the local establishment across the street to have a few drinks and share some storm stories with the locals and some other chasers. Also, Justin kicked my butt at pool.

Tomorrow, well, that’s a totally different story. Roger has had this excitement in his voice whenever he speaks of the last days of this chase tour, and starting tomorrow we can expect a lot of great action in the CO / KS / NE / WY area.

Tornado!

2010-06-07T00:00:00-04:00

Photo courtesy of Roger Hill

Route map
Photo gallery
Trip meter: About 470 miles
Time: 10 hours
From: Ogallala, NE to Ogallala, NE
Summary: Tornado virginity taken by a rain-wrapped cone approaching at 40 MPH from 1/2 mile away

Finally.

We took our time again this morning. Hannah, Justin, and I got to sit in with Roger for about an hour to pick his brain as he explained his daily routine for checking the weather models and making target forecast fot the day. Then we did a little Weather 101 lesson on the Days Inn lobby with the whole tour as he went over the basics of supercells and severe weather forecasting.

Then he went over the day’s forecast. Outflow from an overnight MCS was set to meet up with a warm front approaching east of a surface low in NE CO. The warm front was to bring high temps in the 90s and provide the lift necessary to break the nuclear cap. We left for Fort Morgan at about noon.

We stopped at Fort Morgan and watched in awe as dewpoints were rising rapidly. 82 over 66 was a typical temperature-dewpoint spread in eastern CO, which is a phenominal environment for supercells. We decided to go further north for lunch in Kimball. VORTEX2 was there as well and we were picking them up on the radio.

Well, storms started firing way north where the cap was quickly weakening and instability was more than sufficient. We went north of town and sat for a while, considering our options. North was looking too good. V2 had the same idea. The whole armada cruised by going north towards Scottsbluff, and we followed suit.

We meandered through Scottsbluff and the national monument (beautiful) and went north towards our first cell of the day. Storm motion was pretty brisk, about 35-40 MPH. We sat for a while in Torrington and watched it develop.

However, our cell was gusting out and quickly dying. You could see that the outflow was kicking up dirt along the ground and cutting off the inflow. We drove back east in front of the storm. It looked like our day was done.

But there was One More Thing.

This little cell that had popped up along the outflow of our storm suddenly showed great structure and was intensifying quickly on radar. Meanwhile our storm was choking itself off and petering out.

We sat directly south in sight of both cells near Torrington, with Roger trying to make up his mind. “Let’s stop here for a second. I just want to see one more radar scan.” That was all he needed to see, and we quickly got on the western storm. Surprise: V2 did, too. The storm had taken a hard right turn and was diving southeast right along our road, Route 26.

We booked it back west and tried to find a north road option. With the heay rain now wrapping around the mesocyclone, the storm was taking on a high-precipitation (HP) characteristic, and the only way to see a tornado would be directly to the east of the cell, in the “notch”. We went back to Scottsbluff and took Route 71 north to get a good look.

This storm was a beast, without a doubt. It was churning through the air and blasting everything in its path with severe wind and gigantic hail.

With that special tone in his voice, Roger informed us it was time to leave. Now. The thing raced us back south as we skirted around Scottsbluff. The core of this thing was green as a gemstone.

Wait, what? Tornado warning? On the ground? Indicated by a trained spotter? There was no way anybody could see a tornado back in that mess. Roger was skeptical. We stopped east of town on Route 26 alongside a V2 DOW and got out. “Stay near the vans! Don’t go wandering off!”

We squinted into the churning gullet of this cell, which was completely obscured by precipitation. Then Justin though he saw a power flash. Then I saw a bright green power flash. Then Karen yells, “tornado!” aaaaand it’s time to go.

Buried deep in that downpour less than a mile away was a large cone tornado headed directly for us. We couldn’t see it until it was nearly on top of us. I didn’t have time to take pictures, but the video captures it all. We trucked along Route 26 west of Scottsbluff as the tornado was about the cross the road perpendicular to us. The RFD really picked up and rain pelted the van as trees and grass bent over under the wind. At this point the tornado was nearly on top of us. It was probably only a half mile away and yet we could barely make out the outline of the funnel.

Roger screamed on the radio as we then busted west and the tornado was bearing down directly behind us. “We’ve got to move! Quickly! Really quickly! There’s a cone tornado in there, I can see it!” We did our best jockeying around other cars caught in the mess, trying to keep the SLT convoy together.
—he
After a few more miles we were clear of danger. We stopped a few more times and let the storm catch up to us as we took some more pictures. Lightning activity picked up as the cell finally gusted out and merged into a giant linear system that raced us all the way back to Ogallala. Ogallala, of all places.

I don’t even know how to feel right now. Exhaustion. Accomplishment. Exhiliration. It’s all flooding over me. I think it may take a day or two to fully sink in. Until then, enjoy the pics, and I will try to get some video up soon as I can.

9:30 tomorrow! Let’s do it! Again!

Day 1 - The Three Little Supercells

2010-06-06T00:00:00-04:00

Route map
Photo gallery
Trip meter: about 350 miles
Time: 10 hours
From: Denver, CO, to Ogallala, NE
Summary: We jumped around on three supercells in WY and NE and got to punch some cores

Our first day out with SLT panned out really well and we got a lot more of a show than we were expecting. The setup was originally a slight risk area with some strong upper-level winds and sufficient moisture. The main problem was going to be getting the bases of storms to lower and tap into the good surface moisture that was hanging out below the capping inversion.

We drove just outside of Denver to Aurora at around 11 AM MST, grabbed some lunch, and hung out in a parking lot there watching things develop. What quickly became apparent was that any cumulonimbus towers going up were very high-based (8000 feet!). We were originally planning on playing the Denver Cyclone, an orographic phenomenon that results in a broad low-pressure system around the Denver area. We planned on catching the storms forming on the northern edge of this low, where westerly winds combine with upslope flow to generate lift for new updrafts.

Some cells finally started to get their act together and we drove up north of Cheyenne, WY, and watched the first supercell of the day approach from the northwest. It had a nice wall cloud for a bit, and it even had an RFD cut that spun up a little shear funnel (non-tornadic). We went further east on I-80, punching the core of storm one as it crossed the interstate. Wow, there was some intense hail and wind in that one. Just wait until I post the video from that!

Then we went north of Burns, WY to watch cell number two. This was a cute cell that put out a lot of CG lightning but didn’t do much else. It was pretty photogenic as well. Roger yelled some obscenities at it to try to rile it up, but to no avail. We got back on the road.

By now, things were going bonkers east and south of us, so we hopped back on I-80 East. We crossed into Nebraska and contemplated our options. Cell two moved south of the interstate and intensified a fair amount. I don’t remember exactly, but there were soon some tornado-warned cells south of I-80, and a line of three discrete severe supercells up ahead to the northeast. The southern cells were beginning to converge and snuff each other out, so we went for the north option. Also we could see the upcoming third cell had a nice low base and some suspicious lowerings.

We trucked north at Sidney, NE (“America’s favorite stopping place since 1867”) towards the cell and we could make out some amazing structure as we got closer.

The pictures almost tell the whole story, there. What they don’t show was the rapid cloud movement as the storm quickly advanced and scud rose up right into the base. We stopped briefly to admire the Libery Bell base and the inflow bands that stretched on for miles. It was really something else. Storm of the day, right there. Three’s a charm!

We stopped in Sidney for a bathroom break and then busted east again, but the storm crossed the interstate before we were able to get in front of it. We passed under the rear flank core and right under the mesocyclone of the storm, pelted by golfball hail and winds recorded at 80 MPH. You could look straight up and see the swirling of the base as it was happening. That storm was rotating hard, but luckily did not produce anything on top of us. We has a brief period of calm followed by the forward flank downdraft and the hail and rain accompanying that!

Daylight was beginning to fade and the cells were becoming a mesoscale convective system (MCS) – basically an unorganized mess of storms. We arrived in Ogallala, where Roger had booked our hotels earlier in the day, and had dinner and were treated to a spectacular sunset that you can only find on the Great Plains.

As I was walking into the combination Taco Bell / KFC, I literally ran into Ari Preston, a fellow NOAA Hollings scholar who I had interned with in Norman last summer! He’s been out with VORTEX2 with the University of Michigan, and V2 is staying in Ogallala tonight as well. We had dinner and caught up. I found out that he “shared an elevator with Dr. Forbes” and that Mike Bettes is a really cool guy in person. V2 wraps up next week, and it sounds like the whole lot of them are pretty tired and frustrated at this point in the season and just want it to be over.

Today was a fanatastic first day with a lot of fun little surprises. We got to see some nice structure, some severe hail and wind, and got to experience a mesocyclone up close and personal. We didn’t have to drive very far, and we are in great position for tomorrow’s action along the KS/NE border, as well. Thanks to Roger for making the best of our so-so positioning today. I’m looking forward to Forecasting 101 tomorrow morning in the Days Inn lobby.

I’m beat. Check out the photos, and I’ll deal with the videos next week when I’m back. You’re going to have to wait to hear that hail we drove through.

Tour 5 arrives in Denver

2010-06-05T00:00:00-04:00

See more photos from today

It’s 10:45 PM Mountain Time here in Denver. I’m sitting by the open window in my hotel room. The camera’s shutter is clicking lazily, occasionally capturing lightning in a distant receding storm that has rolled off the mountains. My stomach is full of Country Buffet. It’s going to be a good week.

My non-stop flight to Denver was mostly uneventful. Because I signed up late for the tour, my hotel reservation was somehow missed, but one quick call to SLT co-founder Dr. David Gold and I was all set.

We have a large group this time: 18 people total in three vans. There are a few others my age in the group – Justin, Hannah, and Matt – and I’m looking forward to hanging out with them. Hannah and Justin even came over from Australia; very cool.

Today we all met up with Roger and he gave us the rundown of what to expect, guidelines to follow, and so on. Roger also shared some of his outlooks for this week, and it is looking better and better.

The next three days are pretty much spelled out for us. Tomorrow we get to sleep in and we can take our time getting to the target area in eastern Colorado, and the next two days find us following the system gradually eastward into eastern Nebraska and Kansas by Tuesday. Wednesday will likely be a travel day as we get into position for the week-end fireworks that are sure to fire up around South Dakota on Thursday and Friday. Roger says the setup for the last few days of the tour is, quote, “absolutely insane”.

This is coming from a guy who has seen 488 tornadoes.

Roger would love to bag tornado number 500 this week – and I’d love to see number one.

Do a rain dance for us.

Looking for that Silver Lining

2010-04-26T00:00:00-04:00

Another graduation, another chase tour.

It’s official: this year’s chase vacation is another whirlwind tour of the Great Plains with Silver Lining Tours. I’ll be on Tour 5, chasing from June 6 – 11, based out of Denver. Chasing with SLT in 2006 was very rewarding – my storm photography since then has never rivaled what I was able to capture on even that marginal chase week.

Plus, Roger is the freakin’ man. I can’t wait to get out there again.

In honor of this event, I updated the entire Suck Zone site, porting over all my posts and pictures from the old blog “Storm Chasing for Dummies”. Now everything is in one place and, more importantly, sorted chronologically for easy reading.

Home again

2009-08-13T00:00:00-04:00

See the photo gallery

Housekeeping

I just finished and posted an old chase summary from June 5, the day I totaled my car. It’s a long entry, as you might expect.

I also wrote an entry for the infamous June 12 Norman tornado.

My project

My summer project was a huge success and it came out really well. The final product was an eight-minute presentation for Science on a Sphere, titled Cooking Up A Storm. It walks the audience through the atmospheric setup for a typical severe weather day.

I showed it to a few tour groups and to my peers, and it was received very well.

You can view a rendering of the video or how it appears on the sphere. There is more information and a download on the SOS site.

End of the internship

After all the excitement of chase season, my internship ended uneventfully enough. I spent a lot of time with my newfound friends. To begin a typical evening, we would all come back to the apartments and fix ourselves dinner. Then we would get together at dusk and play volleyball or basketball until we were exhausted. Then we’d take showers and all get together to watch DVDs of The Office. It was a fun routine.

We did a lot of fun things on weekends too. We went to Oklahoma City for the Fourth of July weekend to go to White Water Bay and see fireworks. We played laser tag at HeyDay, and went to see the Oklahoma City RedHawks, a minor-league baseball team. There was also the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Oh yeah, and my mom visited as well and brought me a car so I could drive home. I love you, Mom.

Silver Spring

The final week of my internship was spent at NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring, MD. I drove there in three days, simultaneously enjoying the beautiful scenery of the southeast and cursing Tennessee drivers.

Presentation week went really well. The presentations dragged on and on, but that was expected. I met up with a lot of people I’d met during orientation week a year and a half earlier. We went into D.C. twice to sightsee and to nosh on some Legal Sea Food.

Thanks

Where to begin? Thank you first to Daphne Thompson for being a great first-time mentor and for lending her melodious voice for the narration of my SOS video. Thank you also to Keli Tarp for organizing the Hollings program in Norman for all eight of us; she did a bang-up job. Thank you also to the folks from the NSSL IT department, especially James Murnan for helping me with the video production and sound effect stuff. Finally, thank you to NOAA’s Ernest F. Hollings scholarship program and all its organizers, like Pai Moua and Chantell Haskins. This was a great opportunity and learning experience.

I wish the best of luck to all my friends and peers! In no particular order: Darren, T-mas, Justin, Stephanie, Madison, Liz, Kristen, Hannah, Lauren, Travis, Astrid, Doug, Jeff, Preson, Alex, Jonathan, Lindsey – you are all great.

I wouldn’t trade this summer for any other.

Where to go from here?

Senior year begins in two weeks, and I will have to get back into that routine again. I may post some more pictures or videos as I go through and process them. Hopefully some tropical storms spin our way so I will be able to blog about that! Then comes the fun winter weather and the infamous Storrs Wind Vortex To Hell. In the meantime, the blog will only be updated intermittently.

Thank you for reading!

Turkey Day

2009-06-13T00:00:00-04:00

See the photo gallery

Summary

Route map
Photo gallery
Trip meter: about 550 miles
Time: 11 hours
From: Norman, OK, to Turkey, TX, and back to Norman
States: Oklahoma, Texas
Summary: This was my first Texas chase! Though we were all turkeys today in Turkey, TX.

The set-up

Today was a moderate risk. I didn’t really have time to analyze why, because I got up at 1 PM and basically headed straight out the door. There was supposed to be some action with a strengthening low-level jet, along with temps near 100 and high dewpoints to match. The cap was strong, but with strong surface heating it was to give way later in the afternoon into evening.

Our trip with two people in one car quickly morphed into a seven-person, two-car trip.

Misery loves company!

The chase

South, or west? That’s always the big question when we’re headed out of Norman towards the dryline. Today, we decided west. Then south. Then west again.

We started out west on I-40, but thought that warmer, more sheared air would be to the south, below the warm front. The front was clearly visible cutting east/west directly through the Frederick, OK radar that morning. Or maybe it was the Enid radar. Not sure.

We drove south on route 183, initially trying to get in front of a monster, tornado-warned cell that looked great on radar. It was just too far away, though. By approaching it from the north, we would have had to core-punch through the storm’s precipitation core, which almost certainly included severe hail. Too little, too late.

So we went west on route 62, toward the dryline. We targeted a developing cell near Turkey, TX that had some decent rotation and nice structure. We couldn’t see much out our windows because the anvil blow-off from the previously-mentioned storm was blocking out the light to everything below. It was all just a big, hazy, socked-in mess.

The storm was roughly east of Turkey. It was trekking ENE but then turned right and tracked more ESE, crossing our path. It was a race to the finish as we drove SW on 86, trying to get to Turkey to cut in front of the storm and get on its south side. We saw on the computer that there were many other chasers already on this storm, and Cloud 9 Tours reported a brief rope tornado with this cell.

Well, as our luck would have it, the storm petered out and we were left in Turkey with pouring rain and crushed dreams. We didn’t get to see much of anything.

But things get a little better

At the Turkey gas station, we stood outside and discussed our next move. Then, out of the minivan parked two cars down, my NOAA mentor Daphne Thompson emerges! She was chasing with her husband Rich, a Storm Prediction Center (SPC) forecaster, and her sons. She knows everyone who was there because she helps run the Hollings program here in Norman. They had beat us to the storm, but had only seen a wall cloud, nothing more.

And you know what? They had driven from Norman, too. They have years and years of storm chasing experience and real-world operational forecasting. And we were in the same town at the same time.

I don’t care that we busted this chase. We still must have done something right.

Then the fun begins

On our drive back, the sky was perfectly clear to the northwest, where the sun was setting, and the remains of our storm tracked along to the southeast. The result was a brilliant, full rainbow that we got to watch for a half hour as we drove back on 86.

We stopped to take some pictures of the rainbow. When we climbed back into the car, the song I Can See Clearly Now was playing on the radio. The lyrics? “Here is the rainbow I’ve been waiting for / It’s gonna’ be a bright, bright, bright sun-shiny day.” How perfect is that?

Anyway, we then caught up with some other cell along 62, west of Altus. It was running south of us, parallel to the road at a high speed, so we could have been it for a long time. It initially had a high VIL reading, which means it probably produced some larger hail, but this one did not last long and we only experienced some rain and gusty winds as we poked through it. It was darker now, and the lightning was continuous and all around us. It really was a sight.

We stopped at Mickey D’s in Altus, OK for some fine dining, then went straight back to Norman. We got back around 1 AM.

Tired.

Frustrated.

But still feeling that today wasn’t as bad as it seemed.

Norman Tornado

2009-06-12T00:00:00-04:00

Summary

Trip meter: about 100 feet
Time: about an hour
From: our apartment to the next apartment over
States: Oklahoma
Summary: This one caught us off-guard

The set-up

This was a typical stormy evening in central Oklahoma. As the afternoon wore on, towering cumulus filled the sky as surface temperatures reached 90 degrees. As the sun set, the sky was lit up by lightning of storms all around us. We stood in the breezeway of the apartments, shooting the breeze (pardon the pun) and watching the show.

It was around 10 PM that things got interesting in a hurry.

The chase

The storm began innocently enough a few miles northeast of our apartments, in our very own Cleveland County. It popped up quickly, and it didn’t look too strong because it was so close to the KTLX radar, and the radar beam shot way under the base of the storm.

The thing is, the storm almost appeared with a hook already in place! Twenty minutes after appearing as a random blip, it had a small, strong couplet and a nearly circular hook. It produced the brief EF-1 tornado around this time, and ten minutes later the circulation dissipated.

Several minutes after this, the tornado sirens were sounded across Norman. They went off briefly, then came on again. The tornado had already happened! I heard later the local emergency manager had technical problems sounding the siren remotely, hence the delay.

In this animation, which spans 10:04 PM to 10:36 PM, the white star approximately denotes our location. Look at that hook! Awesome!

Our reaction

This all happened so quickly we didn’t have time to get in any sort of position to see the tornado. The entire time this happened, not a cloud passed over our heads; only the stars were above. It was very surreal. There were many trees around so we couldn’t see the base of the storm.

Doug drove up to the National Weather Center to go up to the observation deck, but by the time he had made it there, others already there told him they had seen the tornado and it had dissipated.

When the sirens sounded, some folks in the neighboring apartment bolted for their cars. They were going to find shelter somewhere else, they said in the university library. I don’t know what they were thinking – it’s very dangerous to be in a car when a tornado is near, especially at night when you have no idea where you are going or where the storm is. We talked them into staying, and they took shelter in our apartment, since it is on the first floor and is the safest. Meanwhile, all us weather nerds are standing around outside with cameras, laptops, and radios, staring skyward. Go figure.

This was the closest I’ve been to a tornado so far, estimated at about five miles. I didn’t even have to drive anywhere. But I didn’t get to see it. No photographs, no video – nothing but a shaky video of us running around the apartments. Oh well. There’s always the next chase, next spring. It will always be there.

Here is a great video and a nice frame grab from other sources.

Ponca City bust

2009-06-09T00:00:00-04:00

Summary

Route map
Trip meter: about 350 miles
Time: 10 hours
From: Norman, OK, to Winfield, KS, to Ponca City, OK, back to Norman
States: Oklahoma, Kansas
Summary: The moderate risk for southeastern Kansas never panned out! The shear was not at all what was expected. Intercepted some small cells near Ponca City, but it quickly became an MCS.

The set-up

Today was the day. A moderate risk in early June is no joke, and we took this one seriously. Too seriously.

The conditions were relatively good: high dewpoints, high temps with decent surface heating throughout the day, sufficient mid-level jet, and some shear. There was also a nice boundary set up by an MCS churning through west-central KS and into MO that morning.

I hate to ruin the ending, but the 850mb winds veered sharply as the day went on. The surface winds were already out of the southwest, so this removed nearly all the low-level shear. Poor storm organization led storms to quickly evolve into the multicellular mode.

The chase

We left Norman around 1 PM, cruising north on I-35 with Wichita as our target. There was a bulls-eye of good instability and shear that had Wichita at its center. A tornado watch soon went out.

I went with Doug Crauder, Derek, and John Lloyd. We met up with Doug’s parents along I-35 near Stillwater, OK and swapped cars. The six of us piled into their minivan and continued on northward.

But, wait! That MCS boundary, parallel with the KS/OK border, didn’t stall north of Wichita as expected. It continued to truck southward and soil the air behind it. We got off the interstate far south of Wichita and decided to go eastward. Though we heard that V2 was far to our west, we thought there were better conditions to the east, and development in the sky just looked better that way.

We sat north of Winfield, KS for an hour or so, just waiting patiently and watching. There were several other chasers and spotters out and about. We were waiting for something to develop, and we watched tower after cumulus tower explode upward. It was really fantastic to watch everything come together in the atmosphere. However, nothing was able to get going, so we ducked back south along Route 77 back into OK. We cut off a small, ongoing storm that was heading east across our path. We got some rain and a few seconds of pea-size hail.

We then went west from Ponca City, OK and got trapped between this cell and another one to its southwest. We danced around and did a good job avoiding and major precipitation cores from these storms. It was fun and a little hairy at times because we were trying to avoid some major greenage (monster hail) in the storms, though we were never really in danger. The crosswinds were really strong, but we eventually turned back south on Route 156 and escaped.

The southern storm initially looked really nice. It had a nice clear updraft that may have been broadly rotating. As it passed over us we again went south and stopped to watch, but by now it had simply dissipated into nothingness. This was along Route 156, SW of Ponca City, in Noble County.

Meh. It was getting dark, and nothing else showed any sign of further development. We took Route 177 back to Doug’s house for a bit, had a brief tour of the OSU campus (it’s nice!), then went back to the Stillwater exit in I-35 and swapped the cars again. We got back to Norman around 11 PM.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Doug’s parents for letting us use the minivan! I hope they had a fun trip, and that we didn’t alienate them too much with our vernacular and TLAs (three letter acronyms).

Also, I had fun chasing with a whole team of people. It’s great to divvy up the workload between driving, navigating, looking at data, and listening to the radio. We also were able to reach unanimous decisions pretty easily. Overall we made a good team. I hope I get to chase with these guys again.

Wrecked

2009-06-05T00:00:00-04:00

Summary

Route map (outgoing only)
Photo gallery
Trip meter: about 750 miles each way
Time: 12+ hours each way
From: Norman, OK, to Lisco, NE, and back
States: Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska
Summary: Things were looking up. Then down. Then up. Yes, I rolled the car over in the middle of nowhere

The set-up

Upslope flow! Good low-level shear! Sufficient moisture! Decent upper-level winds! The Storm Prediction Center promised all this, and more! There was a nice 10% tornado area in the WY/NE/CO/KS corner area.

VORTEX2 nailed it and scored big today in Wyoming. Even though we left at 7 AM, we could not get to this storm in time.

This was intended to be a multi-day chase. We were to chase in the western Nebraska area today, then go due east on I-80 for another chase day in the eastern part of the state, and then probably make an easy drive back to Norman on Saturday night or Sunday.

The chase

I chased on this Friday with Travis and Astrid. We left Norman at 7 AM, targeting Goodland, KS. This would put us on the edge of the high-tornado-risk area, and we could decide where to go from there. The drive was long, but Travis and Astrid made great company, and it was fun seeing the sights and talking.

Along the way, I broadcast on the amateur radio national calling frequency, 146.52 MHz. I knew there were other chasers in the area, so I thought I might get in touch with one. The one chaser who responded? Kevin Manross, who was chasing with Doug Crauder and John (see Ponca City Bust). They were a few miles behind us on I-70.

They were headed towards the Wyoming storms, which were ongoing at this point. We decided to follow them. Kevin is an experienced chaser, and he was glad to have us along. At one turn, we hesitated and hung back a little, waiting for things to develop closer to our position. I think this was in NE Colorado. They went on ahead, so we didn’t see them the rest of the trip.

The Wyoming storms were moving into western Nebraska, and they were looking better and better. We decided to follow suit and go further north.

As we got closer and were on I-80 west towards Sidney, a big tower popped up to our southeast. It formed explosively with a nice pileus cap, and a tilted-over appearance. In fact, it was too tilted over. By the time we had turned around and gotten back in front of it, you could see that it had stopped ingesting good air and it was simply hanging there, not doing much. The top of the tower was directly above us, and we were many miles away from its base. The whole structure was really funky.

By now, the ongoing storms were pretty close, and we couldn’t backtrack to the west, towards them, because then we would not have time to cut in front of them and get into a decent position. We had to go due north to cut them off.

I think we went north near Lodgepole, NE. All the roads in this area are one-square-mile-grid dirt roads. They were dry and in good condition, as dirt and gravel roads go, so we made the most of it. We were headed towards route 26, a paved highway that runs NW/SE, and would have put us in prime position to stay in front of these cells to our E/NE for the remainder of daylight.

The accident

Astrid was driving, but she got too excited with the storm getting so close, so we pulled over and I took the wheel again. We were about three miles south of Lisco, NE when the accident happened. The road crested a hill that sloped down into the North Platte River valley. I tapped the brakes at the top of the hill, because I could not see what was coming up over the hill. The tires skidded on the loose road surface and the car swerved to the right a little. I corrected back to the left and the car went into the wide left-hand ditch. I think I corrected the wheel back to the right and that’s when the nose of the car dug into the soft earth and rolled over. It all seemed to happen in slow motion, and I couldn’t believe it was happening as the ground filled the windshield. It was surprisingly soft and not jerky at all. The car landed on its wheels. We’re still not sure if the car rolled completely, because of the sporadic damage, but it sure felt it. There was a lot of flattened grass as well, and many loose items in the car had definitely made it to the roof and back.

We were all wearing our seat belts, and everybody was perfectly fine. Astrid had been beaten up by her huge purse with her laptop in it, and I had some small cuts on my arm from broken glass, but miraculously we all walked away. We surveyed the damage. My subwoofer in the trunk had come loose and broken the right-rear window. The whole driver’s side of the car was crunched in. Luckily, the driver’s window had been left behind in the road, because I had to climb out the window of the door, which wouldn’t open. Three tires were blown out. The front and hood were all crushed in, but there was little damage anywhere else. Also my magnetic-mount ham radio antenna had come off the roof, so it must have struck the ground.

The rescue

Well. Nobody was hurt, and no property was damaged but my own, so we didn’t need to call an emergency rescue. Who’s the next logical person to call? At the time, it seemed obvious: AAA! I spent a long time on the phone with them getting a wrecker to come get us. It was 60 miles away, in Sidney, NE, so we would have to wait. We also got back in touch with Doug and gave him our coordinates so he could come pick us up. No problem.

I’m kidding, of course. The storm, originally passing to our north, turned right a little and began to track directly over us. It has a severe thunderstorm warning, and it was a beautiful mothership supercell. At the last moment, chaser Cory Schuler passed by just as the storm was about to eat us alive. We piled into the back of his Subaru and he took us north to Lisco. We took shelter in the local fine dining establishment, The Roost, just before the storm hit. The rain was heavy and there was some pea-size hail. Then the storm got a tornado warning on it, and GRLevel3 confirmed a broad but well-defined couplet. That storm was trying to produce! If it had, we would not have been able to see or hear anything because of the heavy rain. We would have been toast – Nebraskan toast, with gravy on top.

Well the storm passed and didn’t produce a tornado. The wrecker showed up, unable to traverse the mud-slicked roads. Some kind locals took us back to the car in their Dodge Ram, and despite the four-wheel-drive, the truck slid all over the muddy road. A state trooper had somehow arrived to the scene, and he gave me an accident report to mail in. I grabbed my things and then the wrecker guy took us back to Sidney.

Doug and Kevin would have come to get us, but they were far away, getting into position for the next day’s chase. We were going to meet up with them the next day if necessary.

Getting home

Seven hundred miles. Car-less. No rental cars within fifty miles. It was a Saturday, so most rental places are only open a few hours in the morning, so we would only have one shot to get a car. It was a bleak prospect. Madison Burnett, a fellow Hollings student, had also chased with some friends and spent the night in Ogallala, about an hour east. She came out of her way to pick up Travis and Astrid. They drove another hour to Sterling, CO, where we could get a rental car home, as Madison had no room for three of us in her car. When they got to Sterling, they were told that there were no rentals available. Astrid explained our situation and they were magically able to find something for us. Whew. Astrid and Travis picked me up in Sidney and we uneventfully booked it back to Norman.

So ends that adventure. The Matrix was a great car and it treated me well. We will all miss its distinctive yellow color and its ability to stand out in the masses of dreary cars. RIP Matrix.

A statement to the storm chasing community

I understand the word of my accident has spread throughout the chasing community. In fact, my NOAA mentors learned of the accident through VORTEX2 before I had the chance to tell them myself.

I do not chase recklessly, and I do not wish it to be thought that this is the case. I always emphasize safety when I chase, and I always bring this up when I tell others about how I chase. I am humbled by my accident, and I hope it does not reflect poorly on the chase community by portraying them as daredevil thrill-seekers. That’s not what chasing is about.

I hope that other chasers may learn from my mistakes. Take it slowly on both unkempt back roads and paved ones. Have a solid backup plan if things go horribly wrong. Never, ever take these storms for granted – they will mess you up. Luckily this storm didn’t, but this story could have ended any number of grim ways.

Beginning the internship

2009-05-31T00:00:00-04:00

The first week of my internship is complete! At lot has happened since I arrived a week ago. I’m settled into my apartment and am getting to know my roommates. I know where the closest Wal-Mart is, and I’m already starting to know my way around Norman. Today I took my longboard for a ride around campus to get to know it a little better. It’s 93 degrees here, but it’s a dry heat! I barely even broke a sweat because the relative humidity is only 21%.

The NCAA Division I Norman Regional baseball tournament is occurring at the baseball field outside my window right now. As I’m writing this, OU just hit a grand slam and the crowd went wild. They lost last night, so things are looking up for them now.

We’re living in the apartments with many students who are also visiting from across the country. The REU program has a weather research program at the National Weather Center, as well, and everyone here gets along great. There are even students here on a golf management internship.

The workplace

Working at the NWC is a real treat. I’m quickly learning exactly how small the field of meteorology really is. For a scientific field with such a strong focus in both research and real-world operations, it’s always surprising how tightly-kniw it is. You do something great, and the whole world knows about it. You goof, and you never hear the end of it. Someone told me about Hollings students who went chasing last year, and their car broke down near the path of a tornado. The heckling went on for weeks.

Of course, this makes it trivial to form professional connections. There are probably no more than two or three degrees of separation between any two people in the field, especially when so many are under the same roof. Opportunities open up simply by talking to the right people. I guess this is how it works in the real world.

It’s really neat when you have seen someone’s name plastered on weather forecasts, academic papers, and on television, and then one day you happen to walk by their office.

The project

My project is coming along slowly, but surely. I’ve been playing a lot with the Sphere, trying to get a feeling for how to best utilize it. It’s also tricky to get videos and images in the proper format for displaying, and this is a major hurdle that I think I’ve figured out.

Once I get some more content, I’ll be able to post some pictures as the project progresses.

The weather

The weather here has been hot. And sunny. And dry. Meh.

Hopefully that will change come Tuesday. As some better moisture makes its way back into the region, we have the potential for some good storms. We’re in a “slight risk” area for Tuesday, so my fingers are crossed.

Off the Beaten Path: The Twister Movie Musem

2009-05-23T00:00:00-04:00

Trip meter: 269 miles (2850 miles total)
Time: About 6 hours
From: Hutchinson, KS to Norman, OK
States: Kansas, Oklahoma
Summary: Visited the Twister movie museum, and moved in to my apartment in Norman.

Today I took my time traveling from Hutchinson to Norman. I went a little out of the way to stop by the Twister Movie Museum in Wakita, OK (note: the movie version of Wakita is in Kansas).

I figured this was a storm chaser Mecca, of sorts; I turned out to be right. VORTEX2 had been there a few weeks ago, and Cloud 9 tours was there this week. A lot of international visitors come here, as well.

The museum is in downtown Wakita. For the movie, the entire downtown was turned into a disaster scene. They tore down many buildings and made main street ground zero. The museum had lots of photos of the entire process. The curator there told me that Bill Paxton was a really nice guy and would often hang out and play football with the locals, but Helen Hunt “was the complete opposite […] she didn’t make many friends here.”

They also had the Dorothy prop that fell off the truck in the movie, along with lots of signed goods, and even a Twister pinball machine donated to the museum from Bill Paxton (“He didn’t want it”).

The pictures aren’t that great, but I do have one thing to remember this by… a replica Dorothy probe ornament, complete with Pepsi can windmill, made by the curator lady herself:

From OBP – Twister Movie Museum

I continued on to Norman after that, and moved into my apartment on campus. This evening there was a severe thunderstorm warning in downtown Oklahoma City, just twenty miles away! If it weren’t in a metropolitan area, I definitely would have chased after it.

I hope this is a good omen.

Off the Beaten Path: Nebraska sandhills and Kansas Cosmosphere

2009-05-22T00:00:00-04:00

Trip meter: 548 miles (2581 miles total)
Time: Two days
From: North Platte, NE to Hutchinson, KS
States: Nebraska, Kansas
Summary: The Kansas Cosmosphere is amazing.

I took the last two days off from chasing because there wasn’t significant severe weather potential, though there were some storms today in the same region they were on Wednesday, in western Nebraska. Just my luck. It’s okay, though. It would have been a pain to drive so far to Norman after that, and I wouldn’t have gotten to do a little exploring.

Nebraska National Forest

Thursday I drove up to the Nebraska National Forest and hiked around for a bit. The forest bills itself as the largest hand-planted forest in the world. It’s situated right in the middle of the sandhills, so I guess it would have to be! The weather was a cloudy and windy, but warm, and it was nice to get outside and hike around a bit after three straight days of driving.

I have put up a small photo gallery.

From OBP – Sandhills

Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center

When I got back last night I scouted out things to do today. I checked the Kansas tourism website and settled on the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson. It sounded kind of cool, and it was on the way to Norman, anyway.

Wow! What a treat! The Cosmosphere is a museum that specializes in space artifacts. The Hall of Space walks you through the entire development of space travel: from the first experiments and the German V2 rockets, through the Cold War, and up to the Apollo missions. The artifacts they had there were amazing: an SR-71 Blackbird, recovered Mercury and Apollo capsules (including the Liberty Bell 7, which was only recovered from the ocean in 1999), the USSR’s backup Sputnik, a complete set of German V-1 and V-2 rockets, and so much more. Here is a list of artifacts on display.

From OBP – Cosmosphere

Be sure to see the full photo gallery.

This museum is a gem in the middle of nowhere. I went on a Friday evening and it was empty. Completely empty. For anyone with even a passing interest in aeronautics or space exploration, I can’t recommend it enough.

I have a really fun stop planned for tomorrow. You’ll never guess what it is. Never, ever, ever!

Nebraska Route 2 chase

2009-05-20T00:00:00-04:00

Video

Write-up

Route map
Trip meter: 703 miles (2033 miles total)
Time: About 14 hours
From: Newton, IA to North Platte, NE
States: Iowa, Nebraska
Summary: Perfect day! I chased the best cell of the day and had a great time tracking it down and meeting other chasers.

AHHHH what an amazing day. Where to begin?

I left Newton, IA at 8 AM sharp and cruised westward on I-80. Based on the SPC outlook and the locations of other chasers, I decided to skip going north in I-29 and instead took I-80 all the way across Nebraska.

Iowa had strong, gusty, southerly winds that made driving difficult, but the winds decreased as I made it further into NE. The sky was mostly cirrus and cirrostratus – nothing too promising! I drove and drove and drove and finally some cumulus bumps appeared on the horizon, in a line. I ended up driving through this line, which would later become a linear multicell system that I would not chase. This turned out to be the right choice, though I doubted myself at first.

I made it into North Platte around 2:15 CDT. I could go north, directly towards the cold front, or continue west towards the area of better moisture convergence. Some storms had already formed in eastern Wyoming and northeastern Colorado, and everyone else was out west, so I followed.

An hour later I cruised into Ogallala, gassed up, and booked it northward on Route 61. Into the sandhills I went. I stopped a few times to observe the new, small storms approaching to my northwest. I met up with some other chasers who were watching and waiting for the storm that I would eventually end up chasing all day.

We were just south of Hyannis. As the storm approached, I could begin to make out its solid, smooth updraft base. The precipitation was separated off to the north. GRLevel3 showed some weak to moderate rotation. I went north of Hyannis on 61, hoping to run into the VORTEX2 crew. A local told me they were in the town earlier, so I must have missed them.

I wanted to continue north, again towards the cold front, but then I thought about it and that didn’t make any sense. I had a storm right here, in front of me. I’d just stay in front of it and see how it went.

Well, how it went! I went east on Route 2, staying in front of the storm as I would stop, snap some shots and video, then hop in the car and cruise ahead. Chaser convergences were common along this road as we all were treated to the “cell of the day”.

I ducked back south on Route 83 to try to skirt in front of the storm to get some pics. Unfortunately, I cut it too close! As I watched the clouds engulf the sky above me, the precipitation shafts swept across the road and the car was pelted with gusts of wind, heavy rain, and, briefly, some hail.

Relatively unscathed, I sat south of the storm, but the view wasn’t that great because of all the precipitation. I watched the lightning for a bit and ate the second half of my Subway sandwich, then travelled into North Platte for the night.

North Platte, of all places!

I am beat! I don’t see anything interesting for tomorrow. Maybe I’ll sleep in and take it slow.

Outbound leg 2

2009-05-19T00:00:00-04:00

Route map
Trip meter: 684 miles (1330 miles total)
Time: About 11 hours
From: Zanesville, OH to Newton, IA
States: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa
Summary: Another flawless drive
Weirdest town names: What Cheer, Normal

Today was more of the same, except I didn’t get lost this time. The weather was perfect for driving, traffic was minimal, and there was a lot of construction but nearly no slowdowns.

Forecast discussion

Tomorrow, a weak low pressure forms in the ND/SD area as a cold front dives southeast across SD and NE. There will be some moisture in this area. Combined with the cold front, there becomes a chance of isolated, high-based, moisture-starved supercells.

The winds look good at all levels. There is instability and lift present along the cold front. Assuming I can get there in time, and I get the right location, I think tomorrow might yield some fun, easy-to-chase storms, once I track them down.

Target area

I think I need to get further north, no matter what. Also west. So, northwest. I will take I-80 west and then I-29 north to Sioux City, at which point I will deviate from the interstate for the first time this trip and take Route 20 west to Valentine, NE. If the cold front has not yet met up with me by this point, then I will sit in Valentine and take it from there.

It will take about 6–7 hours to get to Valentine. If I leave around 8 AM, this places me in Valentine around 3 PM. I hope this is enough time.

Follow along on the live map and on Twitter.

And wish me luck!

Outbound leg 1

2009-05-18T00:00:00-04:00

Route map
Trip meter: 646 miles (646 miles total)
Time: About 12 hours
From: Portland, CT to Zanesville, OH
States: Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio
Summary: Expected driving distance was greatly exceeded! Driving conditions were perfect; roads and traffic were great; Comfort Inn rocks
Weirdest town names: Eighty Four, California, Lover

Whew! What a great day. There’s not much to say beyond the basic summary above. I avoided I-80 like the plague, and I’m so glad I did. Driving conditions were fantastic on all fronts. The weather was initially cool and cloudy, but the clouds dispersed and it warmed up. There was no traffic congestion to speak of, though the two-lane sections of I-84 and I-91 were a little hairy at times.

It also helps that once you get out of New England, people stop driving like idiots and exhibit a little thing called courtesy.

Even with a carload of GPS technology, I still managed to get a little lost. I was distracted by some construction and got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I-76, going east. Normally this isn’t a problem, but the Turnpike is a toll road and the next exit wasn’t for ten miles. I did end up getting lunch before I turned around, so I guess it all worked out.

I had dinner in Cambridge, OH at Wally’s Pizza. It was a tiny brick building with a ten-space parking lot and a cute little sign. The pizza was fresh and it really hit the spot. Two thumbs up.

Tonight I’m holing up at the Comfort Inn in Zainesville, OH. When we chased in 2007, staying at a Comfort Inn was always a pleasant surprise and a great deal. I’m glad to report that nothing has changed.

Tomorrow might be the last driving-only day. I hope to end up in Iowa. I could end up tracking down some storms on Wednesday! I heard that VORTEX2 trekked north to Nebraska today. I bet they are targeting the same area as me. I’ll have more in-depth weather discussion tomorrow.

Outbound Plan A

2009-05-15T00:00:00-04:00

View Storm Chasing 2009 – Outbound Plan A in a larger map

The laundry is done. The AC adapters are stowed. The Matrix is packed. All systems are go.

Well, except for the weather systems.

The original plan

I’ve given myself a few extra days to reach my destination of Norman, Oklahoma, so that I can take some time to chase storms. Of course, I was assuming there would be storms during this time, which is usually peak storm season.

That is where the Plan A begins to fall flat.

Forecast discussion

I’ve been looking at weather models for the past few days. They can only predict up to 8-10 days in the future, and that far in advance they are relatively inaccurate. So, when I started looking at the maps a few days ago, I was praying they were wrong. However, as we get closer to the target date, not much has changed.

The models show a cold front sweeping across the nation over the next few days and scouring out the warm temperatures and moisture necessary for the formation of storms. Sometimes in this scenario, winds immediately shift back to the south and moisture quickly returns from the Gulf of Mexico, but a low pressure system centered over the Gulf is blocking this from happening. The result is a “death ridge” that results in hopelessly clear skies.

Some moisture appears to creep back into the Plains late in the forecast period, though the models differ on the timing and intensity of this event.

Outbound Plan A

This much is certain: I will be spending Saturday and Sunday in Connecticut visiting with friends and family, and will begin traveling west on Monday, May 18.

I plan to target Lincoln, Nebraska for Thursday. Local forecasts in Lincoln show a chance of thunderstorms on Thursday, coincident with the slight moisture return mentioned above.

This target also places me in a good position to travel north or south as necessary to chase for a day or two. Then it’s another full day’s travel due south, from Lincoln to Norman, on Sunday.

Do a rain dance for me.

P. S. You may be wondering what the deal is with that deviation in my route through Pennsylvania. Well you couldn’t pay me to take Interstate 80 through Pennsylvania. No way. I hate it. It’s only an extra hour to go this alternate route, and it will be worth it.

Video: Storm chasing high technology

2009-05-14T00:00:00-04:00

I was going to write a long and detailed post about the multitude of technology that populates my chase vehicle. Instead, this brief video will have to temporarily suffice.

There are also some pictures of the equipment.

Take my card

2009-05-12T00:00:00-04:00

The past few days have been a little hectic as I simultaneously unpack from a year at college and re-pack for a summer out West. Preparation for storm chasing is also in progress. The next post will be all about all the different tools I’ll be using.

In the mean time, I will share a little gem I found when I was scouring my room for my window-mount tripod.

Classic. The movie Twister was released May 10, 1996, right around the time this card was made. This is no coincidence, I assure you. Yes, that is a large, bolded “V” character in the top-left. I thought it looked sort of like a tornado.

So the year was 1996. See that URL on the card? It’s from Cape Internet, who provided dial-up access to home subscribers, where “56K” meant “28.8K on a good day”. To get the whole picture, you have to see the site in all its archived glory.

Check out that awesome animated GIF header with dark, rolling clouds and a big lightning bolt. This page has everything: rainbow rulers, pictures of my house, my pinewood derby car and my virtual pet from the game Dogz. It has a hit counter (now defunct) and a personal interest survey. Make sure you visit the old Garfield page, as well.

Whew, what a blast from the past.

Chaser tools: the start page

2009-05-06T00:00:00-04:00

When you’re out in the field chasing, getting and analyzing atmospheric data can be a crucial part of the day’s success. Many chasers have a special Web page where they link to commonly-used online weather maps and data sources. The pages are typically simple and text-based so they load quickly over a slow, spotty Internet connection.

I’ve populated my own start page with my favorite data sources in a variety of different data types.

The page’s design fulfills a few design requirements:

The entire layout fits on the display of my laptop (1024 × 600)
The links are large, so that they are easy to see and click
The links cover broad range of both time (daily trends and real-time) and location (local, regional, and national)

Firefox and Safari users will see nice, rounded edges on those links.

The current time is displayed in UTC, because all the weather maps are based in this time zone and I never have any freakin’ clue how to convert it, especially when I’m dancing between Central and Mountain time. It’s crucial that the computer’s clock and time zone are set properly, however, because the calculation is based off the system clock.

I’ll probably tweak this over time as I find that it meets certain needs and fails to meet others.

Bonus feature: I just found the old start page from when Jake and I went storm chasing in 2007. I thought, when making this latest page, that I was being clever with the categorization of data into “today” and “now”. I guess I was just copying myself.

You have entered The Suck Zone

2009-05-02T00:00:00-04:00

Hey everyone. I didn’t want to start studying for final exams just yet, so instead I made this weblog to keep track of my trip out west this summer.

My internship at the NSSL begins on May 26. If the weather works out, I’ll be taking a few extra days to travel and chase down some storms beforehand. Right now, I’m estimating my departure will be around May 19.

I set up a Twitter account named suckzone for rapid-fire updates from the field, so you can more easily follow without a lot of tweets dilluting your feed.

Also, I may migrate all the old “Storm Chasing for Dummies” posts here.

Homeward Bound

2007-05-16T00:00:00-04:00

Soooooo today had an extremely slight chance for storms in Wisconsin and Illinois. We slept in too late and decided it was too late to drive out west that far, in addition to being more distance we’d just have to backtrack in the future. The chance for severe weather was just too small, so we headed home.

There is nothing else to report. Tonight we are sleeping at Vassar College, where Jake’s sister has taken us in. We’ll be home tomorrow night.

Oh, and nothing happened in Wisconsin or Illinois today. Whew.

More fun without the sun

2007-05-15T00:00:00-04:00

Today was another great day, even though we were just a little late getting to everything we wanted to see. We targeted the area ahead of the advancing cold front, which at the time was developing from northern Minnesota all the way into Kansas. This put our target in the central part of Michigan. This air just in advance of the cold front had a good setup for severe weather, but a very small chance of supercell storms because of the weak wind shear.

We drove back eastward across the upper peninsula of Michigan, and crossed over the Macinac Bridge, which connects the upper and lower parts of the state. When we stopped for a break soon thereafter, we found that the temperatures had risen nearly 20 degrees from where we had left; we’d overtaken the cold front. That didn’t last for long, however, as the front blasted east. We finally caught up with some cells in central Michigan, and made several stops and turnarounds to get a good look at the storms. The storms were forming explosively as the cap finally broke, and it was amazing to watch the giant towers of clouds go up. We have some good video and photographs to show for this effort. The two biggest difficulties were seeing structure through low cloud cover and finding good road options. It was hard to find roads that had visibility of the horizon (stupid trees), and it was also difficult to find roads that didn’t lead to major metropolitan areas (i.e. Detroit).

Finally, our options ran out, and the cold front caught up with us, bringing to us strong winds and heavy rain, and briefly some pea-sized hail. We had planned in advance for this, and took some shelter from the hail at a gas station off the interstate.

In our quest to stay in a different state every night, we drove further south and are now residing at the Red Roof Inn in Toledo, OH. Unfortunately, it looks like our chasing is done for this trip. This cold front will leave a pool of stable air behind it, removing the chance of chase-worthy severe weather for at least a week or two. We can’t afford to stay out that long, so we are going to find some amusement for the next few days as we weave our way back home.

Success

2007-05-14T00:00:00-04:00

This post was written by Jake Rozin.

Here is another map of today’s progress.

3 PM – Waiting in Anticipation

This morning we woke to the sound of thunder as a small storm system passed over Duluth. After jumping out of bed, grabbing breakfast, and filling up on gas, we jumped into our trusty chasing-mobile and were off east. Headed on rte. 2 we made our way into Wisconsin and drove alongside a beautifully formed shelf cloud (pictures to come later). We then continued through WS and crossed into the upper peninsula of Michigan where we wait at a crossroads for warm enough air to break the cap. If it holds, we will wait for a cold front that has been a day behind us to catch up. We currently sit in an abandoned baseball field in Watersmeet, MI. Hope to see some activity soon.

Summary

After Watersmeet lost its charm, we decided to meet our cold front south of the border of Michigan and Wisconsin. We drove south to Eagle River and found a beautiful field tucked away from the road where we sat and waited. For several hours we watched the patch of would-be-severe weather creep up to us, pass, then continue on to the east without developing. It was then when we decided to drive south (then east) to try to intercept it as the system matured. After perhaps thirty minutes of driving, it became clear that “The little storm that could” could not. We shifted our attention to the Northern Peninsula of Michigan to where a huge system had engulfed Duluth and had continued heading east. This was our chance.

We rushed back the way we came, through Eagle River, over the border, made a left at Watersmeet, and headed west on Route 2. “You are headed towards a twisting storm,” piped the computer (the first noise it has made all trip). We parked by the road and watched as a huge mass came towards us. To the south was a precipitation screen, and to the west was a swirling cloud ready to eat us alive. Lightening was flashing on all sides but one, so we got back in the car and headed back to Watersmeet, then south. Soon, rain was coming down in torrents and visibility was nearly impossible. Then, I heard something slam into the windshield. Then the roof. It made a metallic thud as it bounced off onto the road. Quarter to half inch in diameter hail was now falling as fast as the rain. Rockwell feared for the newly replaced windshield as I tried to stay on the road.

After a bit of driving, we got out of the hail storm and were headed south. While deciding on where to spend the night, the thought of Iron Mountain came up. It was north east of where we were, so it would allow us to skirt around the edge of the storm that we had been trying to escape the past hour or so. As we made our way, the sun set behind us as we experienced one of the most amazing lightening shows I have ever seen. We pulled off the road to watch it for a bit, and that is where I snagged the picture below.

Tired, but victorious, we rolled into Iron Mountain and crashed at the first hotel we could find. Not a bad day. Not bad at all.

Jake

Day Fo(u)r Frustration

2007-05-13T00:00:00-04:00

Stupid, stupid cap.

Here’s a map of today’s adventure. Follow along while you read, if you like.

Out initial thinking was that storms would fire in southern Canada (due to better upper-air divergence) and move south-easterly into the US, where we would gladly welcome them into our country. So we drove north, and then west, to International Falls, a mere stone’s throw from Canada. We could literally see it right across that little river.

Then we made a realization: sitting right on the border severely limited our travel options if storms were to initiate. After all, we could only ever travel south from that position, anyway. We grabbed lunch and ate it just outside of the southern end of the town. It soon became apparent that no Canadian storms were planning to smuggle themselves into the U.S., so we went further south to bide our time. We found a beautiful rest area in Orr, with a little playground, a lake, and – most importantly – a Porta-Potty™. We chilled there for several hours, tossing a Frisbee™, playing Wiffle-Ball™, photographing the freight trains that went by, and generally enjoying the downtime.

As we expected, the SPC issued a mesoscale discussion around 7 PM CDT, outlining the possibility for the cap to break west and south of our position. We cruised further south out of Orr (population 600-something), targeting Grand Rapids (population 2000-something). However, an hour later another severe weather outlook was released, and this time the outlook was abysmal. The cap was just too strong, and the possibility for storms in our target area faded to nothing. We accepted defeat and drove another hour southeast to Duluth (population 86,000), where we are currently residing at (surprise!) a Comfort Inn. They should sponsor us or something.

Despite the severe weather bust, the day had its moments. For the first time, we were traveling off the interstate highway, and it was a very different experience. Some of the roads this far north are absolutely deserted. We passed one town with a population of 57. There aren’t even many farms up here; it’s mostly small houses and forested areas with some light logging. It is very different from the southern part of the state.

Today was frustrating, but it was more of a unique experience than anything else. It’s not as if we missed any storms because we made a bad decision. After all, there were no storms to be chased in the first place. We could have trekked out to Montana and chased that gusty, outflow-dominant, mesoscale mess, but then tomorrow’s cold-front chase in MN and WI would have been out of reach. Overall, today was maybe our most interesting so far.

Wait a second... Minnesota?

2007-05-12T00:00:00-04:00

Yup, that’s the plan. But how’d we get here in the first place?

We’re actually staying in Grand Forks, North Dakota, barely a mile from the Minnesota border. The day started early with us heading north through Madison and out of Wisconsin, then heading west with the initial hope of finding some storm action in South Dakota. We descended into the lush Mississippi River valley, then rose back out into the vast flatness that is southern Minnesota. In fact, everything was pretty freakin’ flat from there on out. We took I-90 due west, then turned north on I-29 as the wimpy South Dakota storms petered out as the afternoon wore on. Not a lot happened after that. There was some more flatness, and two dudes on fast motorcycles who kept racing us on the highway. Well, they pretended to race us, at least, since we had no chance of ever catching them.

We had a little trouble finding a room in Great Forks. Apparently, the nearby University of North Dakota holds graduation tomorrow, so we had to call around for a long time before snagging the last room at the “C’mon Inn,” which is actually really nice and has a cool indoor courtyard with waterfalls and plastic trees. The idea is to position ourselves equidistant from a few possible plays for tomorrow’s storms: mainly, extreme northern Minnesota, and northeastern South Dakota. The SPC is calling for good stuff in Minnesota, but looking at the models I disagree with that forecast and see South Dakota as a more favorable region. We will see how things turn out when the new outlooks are posted tomorrow morning.

Here’s a map that indicates our route so far and our nightly stops. We did about 700 miles today, bringing the total mileage in excess of 2,000 miles. Whoa.

Today would have been fantastic, if not for the extremely strong cap. All day, the skies were remniscent of what an “early morning” textbook storm day should look like. Altocumulus castellanas clouds were everywhere, indicating good instability trapped beneath a layer of stronger convective inhibition (the cap). The cap is just a layer of warm air aloft that inhibits vertical development of storms. On a good day, the cap would eventually break and allow storms to fire by mid-afternoon, but moisture was insufficiently shallow and the stupid cap was just too damn strong to let this happen, so the conditions did not improve as the day went on. Blech.

One last note: Montana is looking good for severe weather tomorrow, but we decided that Big Sky Country was just too distant, especially with a somewhat-decent setup in the upper Mississippi valley for the next two consecutive days. We’d never make it back east for Monday’s storms in MI and WI if we went to Montana tomorrow.

Northern Minnesota, here we come!

"Yeah, we kinda ruled today..."

2007-05-11T00:00:00-04:00

…said Jake, to sum up today’s trek. We nearly doubled yesterday’s mileage (roughly 450 miles), and put in about 800 miles today! We left around 7 AM and cautiously navigated the Pennsylvania fog, blowing by all the I-80 construction without a hitch. There were very few slowdowns after that. Interstate 80 became home as we cruised west, and mountains and forests gradually slipped into gently rolling fields and pastures.

We survived the roads of Ohio, and then sped through Indiana without even stopping for a break. Illinois was a little trafficky and more populated, because we were skirting the southern suburbs of Chicago. Finally, we turned north on I-39 and settled in to watch the golden sun slide below the horizon, turning wind farms and grain silos into sillhouettes. Now we’re in Wisconsin just south of Madison, deciding on tomorrow’s possibility for blasting west into South Dakota in time for storm initiation.

Yeah, it was a good day.

Partway there

2007-05-10T00:00:00-04:00

Okay, so today didn’t go exactly as planned. We made really good time until we ran into construction and lot of traffic on I-80W in Pennsylvania. We cut today’s trip short and are staying at the Comfort Inn in New Columbia, PA.

We got to watch some fun little storms fire up in western MA, and tracked them on the XM WxWorx system. All you out folks there in readerland got to follow along, as well.

Going to go to sleep soon to get an early start tomorrow. Forecast is looking pretty consistent for Saturday and Sunday! Can’t wait.

Chaser Positioning System

2007-05-09T00:00:00-04:00

Well the car is locked down, wired up, and tricked out. Thanks to the amalgamation of several disparate technologies, you, the cyber-chaser, can now follow along in our misadventures. The patented Chaser Positioning System™ – CPS for short – provides real-time updates of location, speed, bearing, and position relative to storms. It will also have a near-real-time webcam feed from the car dashboard (provided I can fix the program that enables this feature during the car ride).

You can access the CPS here.

Video: Curse of the Windshield

2007-05-07T00:00:00-04:00

So the windshield screwed us over for this week. The earliest I could get it replaced would be Tuesday, and by the time that happened and we drove west, the trough in the southern Plains which would have produced the severe weather would have passed. We could be on the road right now, but instead we’ll have to wait for a few more days.

I will get the windshield replaced this week, and then we will look at the patterns next week for possibly some high Plains chasing next Wednesday, assuming sufficient moisture can get that far north.

Update

Okay, so here’s the new plan. The fairly-recent 12Z GFS model run reveals some chase-worthy setups for Saturday and Sunday, and again later next week. That being the case, and assuming the windshield is replaced without any problems, we’re going to head out Thursday morning.

Video: Spring Break Preparations

2007-03-10T00:00:00-05:00

It Starts Again

2007-01-01T00:00:00-05:00

As 2006 draws to a close and SDS sets in, the time has come to start planning for the 2007 chase season. The chase team this year will be made up of myself and my great friend, Jake. We will begin our treck westward around May 5, depending entirely on atmospheric conditions and when our final exams are scheduled. It could be days before, or it could be weeks later; Mother Nature will decide. It will take about three days of travelling just to get into chase territory, with the third travel day being a potential chase day. Then we will chase around for a week or so, and schelp back to boring Massachusetts.

We will be documenting the snot out of everything. Jake will man the camcorder, I the trusty Nikon DSLR. The final product will be a storm chasing DVD so extravagent, so outlandish, so amazing, that it will blow away all precedents. You’ll see. Blog posts will recount our exploits step-by-step, and you will be able to follow along with realtime GPS tracking and a dashboard webcam. Just you wait!

Day 6 Summary - The Grand Finale

2006-06-23T00:00:00-04:00

Summary

Photo Gallery
Trip meter: Your guess is as good as mine
From: Lamar, CO to Denver, CO
Summary: Had fun with two LP storms; stared down the gullet of another HP beast

Long Summary

What a great day for a chase tour finale. We travelled straight north out of Lamar for the entire day, meeting up with a beautiful, extremely high-based LP storm around 5:30 just north of Scottsbluff. Like every other LP storm we encountered, it ran into dry air and promptly shrivelled up.

We went further north again and intercepted another ridiculously high-based storm just suspended in the air. As we watched from the southeast it developed a very strong RFD cut that nearly killed the storm, but it slowly rebuilt its base. As we travelled north yet again, it became apparent why; looking back on the storm from the northeast, rock-hard updraft towers were boiling up into the atmosphere. It looked rather ridiculous, with these massive updraft towers so high off the ground just slamming into the jet stream and racing westward. That thing didn’t quit sucking air for another couple of hours.

As you probably guessed, we again travelled north to meet up with a supercell screaming southwest towards us. We had watched this storm develop on radar over the past hour or two, thinking it out of reach, but it was trucking southward and by the time we reached it, it had developed a massive shelf cloud and was gusting like nobody’s business. It was definitely supercellular, with the rain core wrapping fully around the rapidly rotating meso, totally obscuring any chance of possibly seeing a tornado, had it been able to produce one. This storm then gusted out and proceded to race with us back southward.

The motion along the leading edge of this storm was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The gust front was churning and scouring the atmosphere. Little rotating eddies created all kinds of rotating clouds. Standing a few miles in front of the beast, you would feel a warm southeast wind at your back being sucked up into the storm. Then it would be calm, as the storm approaches and the air is literally rising straight up into the monster. Then the cold outflow wind hits your face and kicks up dust. That’s your cue to get out of the way.

What an experience. We’re on the way back to Denver tonight, and I fly home tomorrow. Thanks to Roger, Dave, Steve, and everyone at Silver Lining Tours for an amazing week. Given the conditions and 2006’s dreadful reputation, I could not have asked for anything more. The best of luck to everyone in the high plains tour next week; it looks like a Death Ridge is approaching that might send you packing to Canada looking for storms.

Final Thoughts

Final tally: we saw 10 Wal-Marts and 18 Pizza Huts (all data are considered preliminary).
I don’t want to go home!
I think I may puke if I have to ever eat fast food again.
Watch for a “Best Of” post with all the best photos post-processed for your enjoyment.
Time to start getting ready for the 2007 chase season.

Audio

4:42 PM –

Photos

Say hello to LP #1; look at the rapid rotation

I just love this

LP #2 from the north side

The midlevel winds really sculpted this shelf cloud on the HP storm

Actual size

Stitched panorama of the HP supercell

Day 5 Summary

2006-06-22T00:00:00-04:00

Summary

Photo Gallery
Trip meter: 603 mi
From: Great Bend, KS to Lamar, CO
Summary: Got on several tornado-warned storms; was chased by an HP beast; core-punched a little bit

Long Summary

Today was another frustrating chase day of 2006, but we did as well as we could have done, given the situation. We did not miss anything major, since most of the “tornado” reports today were likely false. From everything we saw, the conditions were not in place at all for the formation of tornadoes. That being said, we did get to see some awesome gust-front action.

We went west from Great Bend along I-70 and into Liman, Colorado. I forget exactly what happened here. I know we passed through Liman several times after that, traveling north to catch some cells that quickly died, and then we went back south on some tornado-warned cells that quickly gusted out and went linear.

That was when the fun began. We ended up on the leading edge of a massive gust front. We stopped to photograph it for a bit, but as the hail core came up over the next hill, Roger yelled “We gotta go! We gotta’ go now!” and oh how we went. We blasted ahead of the massive high-precipitation beast of a storm that was bright green in its center. That’s an indicator of large hail; Roger was very eager to stay in front of it after all the hail damage the van received last week. This thing was massive, and was bearing down on us quickly. Looking behind the van, the shelf cloud looked like a the mouth of a giant monster ready to eat the van.

Out in front of this storm, the winds were gusting in a straight line almost at the speed of the van. Those were straight-line winds of fifty, maybe even sixty or seventy miles per hour! We were racing along with the wind to our back, and blowing dust decreased the visibility to zero at some points. We also saw many, many gustnadoes. Cows, too.

We went further south, out of the path of all that garbage, to intercept another line of garbage. An embedded meso in the line gave the storm a tornado warning, with first indications being the tornado was spotted on the ground. We core-punched that storm through heavy rain, wind, and some hail, and drove right underneath the rotating mesocyclone. Short of being on a roller coaster, I didn’t previously think there was any other way to get such an adrenaline rush while sitting down.

Eventually the tornado warning was dropped. We went south and then east through a squall line twice, but turned around the second time when all chances for a tornado had gone to zero (not that there was any chance to begin with).

For all the crappy storms out there today, I think we did quite well. The pictures definitely confirm that.

Final Thoughts

“What a beast!”

Audio

12:01 PM –
3:06 PM –
3:42 PM –
3:58 PM –
5:03 PM –

Photos

This is a suspicious lowering we spotted in a storm early on.

This is the first good view we got of this massive storm. It has already taken on a shelf cloud and a gusted-out appearance.

Soon it started bearing down on us. Notice all the bluish-green under that thing? Hail, hail, and more hail.

This is a huge gustnado that kicked up tons of dust when it died.

There was all kinds of vorticity along the gust front. The movement in the clouds here was tremendous, but it was nothing dangerous.

Here’s one more look at this monster. Amazing structure.

Day 4 Summary - More Frustration

2006-06-21T00:00:00-04:00

Summary

Photo Gallery
Trip meter: Beats me
From: Ogallala, NE to Great Bend, KS
Summary: Intercepted a squall line; watched a nice lightning show after dark

Realtime Updates

11 AM – Goooood morning

Good morning from the wonderfully-named Ogallala, NE (yes, we’re still in NE). The Dodd City, Kansas balloon sounding is a textbook “loaded gun” sounding. I love it. We are headed to Colby, KS (!) to assess the situation, and then either head west or east depending on which setup Roger likes better.

Shorter-Than-Usual Long Summary

I’m exhausted, so this is going to be quick. There were three major plays for today: north-central Nebraska, central Nebraska, and northeastern Colorado. Nebraska had tons of instability (3000+ J/kg of CAPE) and moisture, and a little bit of shear. Colorado had upslope flow going for it, and lots of shear, but not so much moisture and a massive cap.

We went south and then west to lunch at Twister’s Bar and Grill in Colby, Kansas (“Just across from the big blue water tower!”) and make a choice. We finally decided to blast east to meet up with the boundary spreading across the center of the state. In fact, conditions were so good in this area that the cap broke all at once and all the good-looking storms quickly formed a linear, outflow-dominant system. Blast.

We drove south through the line of storms and ended up on the south side, and stopped briefly to watch an embedded meso with a massive wall cloud propigate over our heads. It didn’t last long, and we then went back north up to Great Bend to get our hotel.

Roger and I, instead of going for dinner at Perkin’s, grabbed McDonald’s and drove east a few miles outside of town in order to get some lightning video and stills. We got some good ones of lightning striking a radio tower (see below).

Of course, back in northeast Colorado, many individual supercells formed three hours after we left. They quickly became tornado-warned for the rest of their lives. Despite this, there was only one confirmed tornado report from an NWS employee, and it was likely a landspout-type tornado.

Final Thoughts

Note to self: try not to get camera gear so wet next time; condensation inside the lens is no fun.
Chasing is such a learning experience; I learn new strategies each day. I love it.
2006 strikes again. Blah.

Audio

4:03 PM –
8:08 PM –

Photos

Whoa.

Probably the only twister we’ll see this week.

This was the scene in the early afternoon as we approached the boundary from the west. Too bad there was too much of this around.

This was one supercell we caught up with underneath all of that linear crap. It had an ominous wall cloud for a while, but then it quickly dissipated. Blah.

This is ground-to-cloud lightning forking up from a radio tower. I got a handful of shots like this.

Day 3 Summary - Success!

2006-06-20T00:00:00-04:00

Summary

Route map
Photo Gallery
Trip meter: Far
From: Grand Island, NE to Ogallala, NE (actual name)
Summary: Witnessed two long-lived supercells, one LP and one classic; saw a killer lightning show

Excessively Long Summary

Words alone can’t describe how unbelievable today was. Months of reading, learning and discussing all came together in this chase. Today was all about making the right decisions. We travelled 90 miles east of Grand Island just so we could sit at another Wal-Mart and make a decision of whether to go east into Iowa or back west to Colorado. Iowa had insane sheer but also an insane cap, whereas northeast Colorado had upslope flow and good moisture going for it, but nonexistant directional sheer.

Roger decided that the COlorado setup looked better, so we retraced our steps from that morning. By the time we were around North Platte, storms were already firing off the Cheyene Ridge and were intensifying as they moved westward. The first few cells went up in a cluster, but one storm quickly dominated. It did a hard right-split, as expected, but unexpectedly the right storm quickly shrivelled up and the left storm took precedence. We followed this cluster of storms north from the I-80/I-76 split.

Way off to the south, we could see rock-hard updraft towers of storms in northeast Colorado, 100 miles away. Roger then made the hardest decision of the day to retrace our steps back south to catch up with those storms. It turned out to be the right decision.

We sped south and approached the biggest storm from the north, which soon became tornado-warned from a “trained spotter sighting,” but this was likely a false alarm. Either way, the storm was intensely rotating on radar, with over 160 knot gate-to-gate shear. We drove through the leading edge of its precipitation core and observed two massive inflow bands streaming into the storm. We stopped south of the storm to see its structure. It was a textbook LP storm, with a very high base and a corkscrewing updraft tower, with striations all along the base. It was truly amazing.

Over an hour or so, the storm slowly propigated directly over our heads, creating lowering after lowering, just trying to spin something up. A huge RFD cut form and occluded part of the meso, and there may have been a tiny funnel back in there, but the occlusion disconnected from the storm and promptly died. After that the storm basically quit, but it tried for the longest time to stay alive and fooled us a few times even as it was gusting out.

We moved slightly further south to watch another, much larger, supercell approach us. This one had classic structure with a nice round base that was relatively low to the ground, and it had strong, strong rotation. Scud was being sucked up into the base, and a wall cloud formed, but the storm gradually gusted out.

As if those displays of nature’s power weren’t enough, soon the sun sank behind the supercell and lit up the whole underside of the storm, with lightning to complement it. What a show. The pictures tell the whole story.

Well, the pictures tell most of the story. To know what it feels like to stand in the path of a storm twenty miles across and twelve miles high, you really have to just go do it. Read all the textbooks, watch Twister a dozen times, or look at the pictures over and over; they are all static. Nothing can truly express the dynamic nature of these beasts, short of being there to witness – no, experience – it.

What a trip.

Quotes of the Day

Roger: (as we turn around) “I can’t do it. I can’t chase this thing. It’s crap.”
Steve: “You’ve got to watch out, Roger; you wouldn’t want any hail to dent the van.”

Final Thoughts

Everyone agrees that today was absolutely worth the two days of frustration. You would, too.
Iowa didn’t see crap today! Phhhbbbbtttttt :-P (and I even wore my Iowa shirt!)
I’m beginning to see the advantages of chasing outside of a chase tour, namely not having to climb out of the back of the van whenever we stop.

Audio

9:40 AM –
12:42 PM –
3:52 PM –
6:33 PM –
7:26 PM –
8:03 PM –
10:38 PM –

Photos

Check out those two inflow bands! Craziness.

Finally on the south side of the storm. Check out the stacked-plate base. Insane.

Getting a little artistic as the storm drops some suspicious lowerings.

The storm is much closer now; check out that awesome lowering out of the base.

What lighting!

Shot of the day, right there. This was the last shot I took before the rain came and we had to pack up.

Day 2 Summary - The Hitchhiker's Guide to Nebraska

2006-06-19T00:00:00-04:00

Summary

Route map
Photo Gallery
Trip meter: 576 miles
From: Valentine, NE to Grand Island, NE
Summary: Observed a small, struggling, high-based storm; ate at Arby’s

Realtime Updates

8 AM – Good Morning, Tornado Alley!

Morning everybody. Another day, another change of plans. We were originally going to leave at 8 for Montana, but now we’re chilling until 10 and we’re just going a little further west into northeastern Wyoming. Luckily our new target is quite a bit closer; today was looking to be a really long day. It looks like there is a good potential for some nice rotating supercells, maybe even a tornado. (I did it! I said the T-word!)

11 AM – Wooo

We just had a little learning session with Roger in his hotel room on supercells and how they form. He has some awesome photos of all types of storms and tornadoes as examples.

The setup for today is quite a bit better than yesterday. We are targeting east-central Wyoming, where there is good shear, decent mid-level wind speed, and a moderate amount of moisture. Dewpoints in northwestern Nebraska are already in the mid-50s, and the easterly wind combined with an upslope flow of the surface winds should fire off some storms by mid afternoon. These will likely be high-based, but hopefully will move into the better, more moist air to the east, where we can follow them back towards tomorrow’s target of Iowa. Tomorrow’s going to be the big day, but I’m hoping today will not be too shabby, either.

Long summary

Today’s forecast was marginally better than yesterday’s, yet still no better than marginal. We moved our target much closer from Montana to eastern Wyoming, so we had plenty of time to kill in the morning. We had a teaching session in Roger’s Hotel Room for an hour before leaving, and then we cruised west on Route 20 to Chadron, where we took a break in Chadron to have lunch, go to Wal-Mart, and to assess the situation. Alex had the bright idea of playing everybody’s favorite one-hit wonder,Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5,” on the jukebox at the Pizza Hut. Boy did we leave there in a hurry.

The biggest limiting factor today, as forecast, was the amount of moisture available. Alex and I tried hopeleslly to play frisbee or football in the Wal-Mart parking lot, but it was impossible because of the steady wind screaming out of the southeast. We were hoping that this wind would bring up moisture from the gulf, but dewpoints in the region failed to rise above the low 50s.

On radar, we watched a huge storm go bonkers in northeast Colorado and then decided to cruise south into more moist air. We intercepted a little storm in Sioux county, just off Route 71, and watched it for a while. The first advice I received upon stepping out of the van? “Watch for snakes.” The storm was multicellular with two updraft bases, but everything was poorly defined and fuzzy, and it showed no sign of intensifying.

Roger was going nuts about a storm just moving into southwest Nebraska, about an hour south of our location. He was concerned because he didn’t want to get so far from our hotel reservations way up in northeast Nebraska, but we were finally able to get cellphone reception, he cancelled our rooms, and we shot south into Kimball county. Of course, by the time we arrived, the once lightning-intensive storm had gusted out and had turned to crap. Blast.

We had dinner in Sidney, claiming itself as “One of America’s favorite stopping places since 1867” in brochures, and witnessed some awesome mammatus out of the dying supercell. I talked with a truck driver who was en route from Seattle to Memphis, and he told me, as you have probably guessed, about his UFO encounter out in Nevada.

Meeting time is 8 AM tomorrow; we’ll see what happens.

Final Thoughts

I apologize for the poor picture quality; I will post-process these pictures when I return.
I may not be a severe storms researcher, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
I am reeeeeally excited about tomorrow! You out in Readerland should be, too!
“Mambo No. 5” is still stuck in my head.

Audio

3:52 PM –
5:39 PM –
7:50 PM –
8:55 PM –
10:09 PM –

Photos

4:52 PM – This is the first little storm that we stopped to observe. We saw a few lightning strikes and heard some thunder, but that was all. Nobody around for miles.

5:24 PM – As the storm propigated over us, it tried desparately to develop a new updraft base, but failed. We left right after this picture.

7:36 PM – Arby’s and mammatus clouds: it just doesn’t get any better.

8:17 PM – Looking out the window on the way back. I wish we could have stopped to photograph that for real; it was just beautiful.

Day 1 Summary

2006-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Summary

Route map
Photo Gallery
Trip meter: 441 miles
From: Denver, CO to Valentine, NE
Summary: No severe storms :(

Long summary

Before this morning, today’s outlook for severe weather was less than ideal. We were originally intending today to be a relaxed travel day to get into position for tomorrow, but the situation had changed by morning. The SPC issued a slight risk area for central NE, which Roger agreed with and we subsequently went after. Dewpoints were great in the high 50s, but other factors did not fall into play.

Radar showed a great boundary which formed a cumulus field early in the day, but this convergence quickly dissapated. The cumulus were completely gone by mid-afternoon. We briefly stopped at Merna, NE, at the intersection of routes 92 and 2, to assess the situation. We watched as a small cumulus cloud built up, then was quickly ripped to shreds by shear (see photos below). Roger then determined that Mother Nature was not going to deliver any storms today. We are now further north at a Holiday Inn Express in Valentine, NE, just south of the South Dakota border.

The setup for tomorrow is much more ensured. We are leaving tomorrow at 8 AM to blast west into Montana, follow those storms east, and then cruise on back east so we can be in Iowa for initiation on Tuesday.

Realtime Summary

(Note the time zone change)

11:15 AM MDT –
1:33 PM MDT – Currently going E on I-76, 20 mi from NE. Watching an outflow boundary developing in central NE. Targetting North Platte for lunch and gas.
4:04 PM CDT –
5:23 PM CDT – Heading E on 92 towards a scattered cu. field. Beautiful country out here; a little hilly and lots of green. Cows (moo) and horses! So cool.

Final Thoughts

Chasing is a blast.
It’s so flat!
Damn, daylight is really long here.
I can’t wait to see a storm; hope tomorrow is as good as it sounds.
Mooooooo!

Photos

2:20 PM MDT – Observing a boundary early in the afternoon

4:15 PM CDT – Took a pic of the license plate at our North Platte break; you should see the expressions some drivers give us when they pass on the highway

4:16 PM CDT – Taking a break at North Platte

5:37 PM CDT – Watching some cumulus get ripped apart at Merna, NE

9:30 PM CDT – Observing a storm way off in the distance; yes, it is still light out at this time! Crazy.

Trains, Planes, and Automobiles

2006-06-17T00:00:00-04:00

Just checking in from Logan! I’m here excessively early, as always, with over an hour to kill. I’m taking United flight 267 at 11:20. Everything is going smoothly so far. My carry-on bag was screened at the security check-in, probably due to the excessive electronic gear inside (laptop, camera, iPod, Nintendo DS Lite, etc.).

Okay, enough with the boring details. More posts to come.

Update after meeting up with the tour group and having dinner:

Chasing next week!

2006-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Finally! The time has come! I leave for chasing with Silver Lining Tours tomorrow. We will be chasing from Sunday through to next Friday. Hopefully this nuclear ridge that has held in place for the past month will move on and hopefully the mid-level winds and moisture levels pick up by the end of the week.

I will be posting to this blog very often. In addition to regular posts and pictures when I find Internet access, I will also be recording voice messages while we’re on the road, so check the blog often during the upcoming week.

2005 NSCC

2005-02-22T00:00:00-05:00

Well, the 2005 convention in Denver was a huge success. I got to meet a ton of prolific chasers… Tim Marshall, Tim Samaras, Tim Vasquez (the three Tims), Roger Hill, etc. etc. I met many people from the Stormtrack forums and IRC channel, also. What a great time. To top it all off, I won the grand prize in the raffle: an XM WXWORX system! Wow, I can’t wait to use this beast.

There are some pictures here.

Props to Roger Hill and Dave Drummond for putting on one killer convention, and to Baron Services for raffling off the XM system!

Chasing the Dream

2004-11-15T00:00:00-05:00

Imagine speeding down the highway, o’er amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties. It’s a beautiful day in the midwest: the sun is shining, there’s a slight breeze, and there are a few puffy clouds off in the distance. You are on the cautious lookout for stray cattle that may be loitering in your path. Unless you want hamburger for dinner, then you’d better stay vigilant. That fourth cup of coffee is helping out, for sure.

It’s an hour later. The sun had given up shining long ago, and the slight breeze has picked up to a brisk gale. Those puffy clouds of cauliflour have mutated into black seething anvils of doom and, from the light and sound coming from them, you might even believe that the gods are actually forging steel up there. You still haven’t stopped driving. In fact, you’ve been driving for the past five hours, indeed, the past several days, just to arrive at this moment.

A massive wall cloud drops down right in front of you. The pounding of your heart nearly drowns out the pounding of the hail against your windshield as you pull off the road and turn on your hazard lights. You set up the camera and tripod as you’ve fruitlessly done a hundred times before, yet today’s storm brings a different spectacle. A tornado drops right out of the churning cumulonimbus cloud a mile distant and quickly develops into a well-rounded and very devastating F-3 twister. You have reached… storm-chasing nirvana.

What happens from then on… it defies my explanation, because I haven’t experienced it. Yet this experience (or lack thereof) is what defines this blog. It’s the thrill of the chase, 20th-century style.

So, here we are, the autumn of 2004, and our supplies are as follows:

One (1) crazy-brained idea that, some day in the not-to-far future, a storm chasing expedition will be held, and it will succeed.
Two (2) tornado seasons before college during which to accomplish this feat.
One (1) vehicle (with four (4) tires) ready to be outfitted with all sorts of storm-chasing goodies.
Many (>1) available technologies (GPS, wireless internet service, radios, etc.) to assist in reaching this goal.
Two (2) parents who think otherwise.

So! Here we go! Hopefully, when all is said and done, Storm Chase ‘06 (projected date) will have been a huge success. But we’ve got a long way to go.