Back home

Now that I am home I cannot seem to stop the regular routine. I check the weather constantly, I am always looking at the models, I check SPC every time a new outlook comes out. I am obsessed. I can only hope that weather will come near me this summer. Later this week it looks like some storms might move into the area. I can only hope something good comes along.

On a side note, I have returned to hotel rooms for my brothers soccer tournament. I cannot wait to be in my own bed on a consistent basis.

Just a routine drive home

Today the plan was to simply drive east back home. In the middle of Iowa plans changed as some storms developed. We drove through a really intense rain shaft which had dropped hail earlier, but we did not experience any hail. After that intercept we stopped at Outback Steakhouse for our first sit down meal of the trip. This was a nice time to relax with the group and have a final night of bonding.

Tomorrow we should be back home by noon and all go our separate ways.

I wish I could stay out here for the rest of the summer, but work and making money takes a priority. I am looking forward to my time as a SCEP in Indy this summer. I am excited for everything I will learn.

On another note, Vortex 2 collected some really good data on a supercell which dropped 3 tornadoes today. That is really good for the science of meteorology and hopefully the data will help us learn the keys to tornadogenesis.

Hopefully there will be opportunities to chase this summer while I am working in indy.

Life Under the Shelf cloud

Well, we made the right decision by not heading north. SPC showed the greatest tornado risk in South Dakota and southern North Dakota. But logistically that was a long drive, and keeping up with storms moving north at 50 knots would have been nearly impossible. Today was a day where chasing anywhere was unrealistic. We knew we were planning on getting rolled by a line of storms late in the day which we did do.
Instead we decided to chase near our hotel where a line/derecho of storms had a chance of passing late in the day. The system never quite came together as we would have hoped, but we still got some amazing pictures as the line came towards us with a nice shelf cloud. We also got a good wall cloud early in the day with a strong updraft core above. The winds were around 35 mph for most of the day even when there were not storms. This was enough to blow dust in our eyes and blow hats off our heads.

Today was the last day of pure chasing. Tomorrow we will be heading on our way home. If we see some storms in Iowa on our way we might chase, but if not we will just go to our hotel and have a nice sit down dinner with everyone.

This has been a great trip with a slight risk at least every day. Last year there was only 1 slight risk for the whole 11 days. I was so happy to have a better chase this year. It was well worth it.

By the way, the two tornadoes we did see on the chase were rated EF0 in oklahoma. And the wedge in South Dakota was a destructive EF4 tornado. Unfortunately, we were not able to get good pictures of this tornado near Bowdle, SD because it was rain wrapped.

Oh, the life in Kansas

I love being out on the road chasing these storms. What a life!


First of all, I got a shout out on WREX in Rockford, Ill as one of my classmates broadcast about
our storm chase. Here is the link.


Today had a few storms pop, but nothing got too exciting til nightfall. A large tornado was seen near Goodland, KS, but it was after dark, so we were not able to see anything. Today shows that there can be storms popping but you might never get a good perspective, or they might not go tornadic even if you think they will. That is the point of vortex2.

On our way down tonight we passed the TIV and i caught a picture of it here.

Towards the end of the day we got stuck on a dirt road which had turned to mud. We had to push all 5 vehicles out of the mud and no one was wearing shoes by the end.
Oh the joys of chasing.

Tomorrow looks to be the last good day of chasing back up in south dakota. Hopefully we can have the same luck as last time.

Goodnight

Back to the south

So storm chasing involves a lot of driving. This can be seen since we are heading back to the kansas/nebraska border to chase storms today. Vortex 2 did not go out yesterday because the conditions were too conditional for the long drive. We are definitely glad we made the drive. It was well worth it to see the storms we did with barely anyone around. We saw a few chasers, but nothing too bad. Today we will be back into an area of possible chaser convergence. Hopefully we will not have too much issue there.

Also, to clarify, I know the weather channel has been doing a lot of coverage on chasers getting away of vortex2. We are not one of those "storm crashers." Indeed there are a lot of amateur chasers who do not know what they are doing and get in the way of other chasers who do know what they are doing, but that is not us. We are always careful to be off on side roads or parking lots where we do not risk injury to ourselves or anyone else.

We have seen cars passing in a double yellow, tripods set up on the side of the road, and people running across the road. We realize these mistakes and always chase responsibly. Vortex2 has never had an issue with us. They are collecting valuable data for the meteorological community, and we understand that.

Anyway, today's set up. Today will be late initiation along the retreating warm front/dry line. There is unstable air to the southeast of this boundary interaction and very stable air to the north. Our goal is to once again chase the triple point (where warm front meets the dry line). We are 2 for 2 on seeing tornadoes when we chase the triple point. Hopefully today we can make it 3 for 3.
South of the triple point we should see CAPE approaching 3000 J/kg and 0-3 helicity over 250 m^2/s^2. This should be more than sufficient for supercells if we can get the cap to break along the triple point. We are still in northern Nebraska, so we have a lot of driving to do.
Hopefully we see something good this afternoon.

What an amazing Saturday!

Here is the text to go with the pictures from yesterday.

I just saw the most amazing storm structure I might ever see in my life.

Yesterday was a day without much expectation. There was a strong cap over most of South Dakota and by 4:30 pm it didn't seem like that cap was going to break anytime soon. That's when we noticed a tower going up to our northwest. One tower after another continued funneling into the storm and it quickly began to strengthen on radar. We decided to go for it and drive north to intercept the storm. We arrived about 3 miles south of Bowdle, SD and got out of our cars. Almost immediately someone noticed the large cone tornado in the rain wrapped wall cloud. The contrast was not very good, so it was hard to get pictures, but we could see with our eyes as it turned into a wedge north of Bowdle.
A storm began to develop to our south and we had to get out of there before we lost a windshield. Even with leaving early we still got hit by some pea/penny sized hail on a storm which had just developed. We started heading east to intercept the storm again when we noticed another storm developing to the south and increasing intensity rapidly. We decided to go south on 45 to intercept that storm instead of going north on 45 to intercept the rain wrapped tornado.
This decision was well worth it as we set up on a hill and watched the storm develop into the most picturesque storm I have ever seen. First there was incredible mammatus overhead and then striations began to develop in the storm as multiple mesocyclones began to develop. We watched 2 funnel clouds begin to drop before pulling back up. As the low-level jet kicked in, the storm developed into one large mesocyclone with striations, a hail core, and mammatus that I have only seen in textbooks.
If I had the choice of seeing this storm or the tornado on Tuesday and I could only see one, this would have been my choice. I could not stop taking pictures. I also took a lot of video which I will have to go through and post once I get home.

In the end, this was the best day of the chase thus far because expectations were low, but we ended up seeing the best structured storm of the whole trip.

Today showed what can happen when a 6000 CAPE + environment, a strong cap, and strong low level vorticity all come together. We could have had nothing, or we could have had the best storms of the year. We were fortunate enough to have the latter.

quick from yesterday

we are leaving here this morning, but I wanted to post some pictures from yesterday when I had the chance. here you go:



the most amazing storm structure I have ever seen




The last picture is the large wedge tornado in northern South Dakota is in this picture, but the contrast is hard to see. Maybe if you turn the screen to the side you can see.

Well, another bust day. We forecast for storms in Northeastern Colorado and there ended up being none. Warm Air Advection at 700 mb capped everything. Once the Cumulus started disappearing we knew we were in trouble. We saw some towers go up over the mountains of Denver, but they never came off the mountains or responded with any reflectivity. Overall, it was not a very favorable day.
Hopefully tomorrow will be better in Northern Nebraska/Southern South Dakota. Hopefully we will have better luck there. Until tomorrow.
Goodnight

Upslope...here we go

time to play some upslope in Northeast Colorado. We should see some good supercell structure today and even a possible tornado or large hail. I hope to take some good pictures and have them posted tonight. We will be staying in Ogalala, Nebraska tonight. Hopefully we have a good day!

Off-day

On our off day we decided to head north to reposition ourselves for upslope convection tomorrow in northeastern Colorado. On our way we drove to Wakita, Oklahoma where we saw tornado damage from the tornado seen earlier this week by Tom Skilling. This damage was quite impressive from the multi-vortex tornado. Once we made it into town we stopped to see the Twister Movie Museum. The museum was open on request by dialing a number. When we called a little old lady came up and opened the museum for us.

We all signed in and put a push pin in the board where we were from. There were people from every continent! Including Antarctica! It is amazing to see how many people come to this small town in Northern Oklahoma to see this hole in the wall museum. They built false fronts on all the buildings in town and tore them down during the movie. Also, the locals did not like Helen Hunt (apparently she was not a pleasant lady) but they all loved Bill Paxton. He even played baseball with the local kids.

After the tour we went to Alva, Oklahoma for a storm chase tradition Pizza Hut Lunch Buffet. While we were here we decided our next stop was Greensburg, Kansas.

In 2005 an EF5 tornado hit Greensburg tornado and completely destroyed 90 percent of the town. Five years later it was eye-opening to see the damage still present and the bare foundations, but it was also good to see the town rebuilding from scratch and also rebuilding as a totally "green" town.
The only building left standing after the tornado was this grain tower on the north side of town.


Notice the lack of trees in the background. None are any taller than 20 feet, and those just have new growth on them or are dead.

Next we left to the north to Monument National Park in Central Kansas. These geological features were randomly in the center of the Kansas Plains, and made for a beautiful stop and site to see. We even saw a few antelope!




We are now back to our hotel and we all went out to eat at local resturants. It is always good to eat at the local places where we can generate some revenue for these towns which at times are really struggling to get by. After some time in the hot tub it is not time for bed.

Goodnight. Tomorrow we will be chasing upslope in Northeast Colorado. I will post on Twitter, but i will not be able to blog. We should see some excellent structure, and possibly even a spin up under a storm. I will keep you posted.

Off day today. The only storms are too far east in non-chasable country. So, today we are going to to some sight seeing. The twister museum. Hooker, Oklahoma, and then Greensburg, KS to see where the EF5 went through 5 years ago. Damage can still be seen. We will spend the night in Goodland, KS to potentially play some upslope in NE Colorado/SE Wyoming/NW Nebraska. I will have some pictures up later this evening, from the sight seeing today. We need a break after yesterday.

Our professor, Bart Wolf, made a really good point. Anyone can chase storms once they form, but it takes good forecasting to be there right when they form.

Still excited about the tornado yesterday, but the rest of the week looks favorable for more severe weather, so we are not done yet!

My first tornado part 2

Our plan was to head east and try to get ahead of this supercell one more time, but after going for about a half an hour the convection popping over Oklahoma City made it inaccessable safely. Driving into convection in a high shear/high cape environment is not a good idea. Our option was either going back to the hotel or chasing one small storm in northwestern oklahoma. We decided to go towards the storm in northwestern Oklahoma while taking pictures of the storms as we went away.

Here are some pictures of the day:



Here is the dryline/outflow boundary triple point really well defined by cumulus on the satellite view. This is where initiation began.



Look how crisp the updraft was on the backside of the forming supercell



Here are the two tornadic supercells early in the day



A textbook RFD (Rear Flank Downdraft) and a hook echo on radar. You can see the updraft/mesocyclone where the rain begins. There is also a hail shaft in there.



Here were the two supercells heading towards Oklahoma City.

PS. I got great video of the tornado in Western OKlahoma and it will be on youtube as soon as I get home.

My first tornado...what a sight!!!

First of all, wow...what a day!

We positioned ourselves in the best possible spot from the beginning of the day. As the day began we went to our hotel in Weatherford and then went back to the west in advance of the dry line/outflow boundary intersection (commonly referred to as the triple point). We could see towers going up along the boundary on satellite, and as they got closer we could see the towers ourselves. We could tell that we were close to initiation.

We went west a few miles to get closer to the convection. We were watching the sourthern tower for development, but it began to fizzle as the second tower went up quickly. The reflectivity was increasing in intensity quickly, and the flanking line had a beautiful rain free base. We busted north to make sure we could get in position for this storm. We got to the top of a hill to observe the storm and suddenly saw a lowering quickly lowering to the ground. As I got out of the car I could see a debris cloud as the funnel almost reached the ground. I got a video of almost the entire tornado which lasted about five minutes. Here is a picture of what it looked like.


About 5 minutes after the tornado we saw vortex 2 drive into town. Even though we want them to get as much data as they can it felt good to out forecast them and be there from the very beginning instead of playing catchup. The best part is that this was the only tornado all day which was not rain wrapped. After that we kept heading east to stay ahead of the storm, but the tornadoes immediately became rain wrapped in an HP (high precipitation) supercell. As we were heading east a new cell developed south of that original storm and we stopped in kingsfisher, OK to watch it come in. As we were in town the tornado alarms went off and the power went out. We realized were way too close and a funnel cloud began to come down to our west. We flew south out of town to a safe area, but no tornado ended up coming down.

More to come. Back to hotel for now.

quick morning update

very possible tornado outbreak today. Strong instability, shear,and dynamics, along with slow moving storms. If I do not see a tornado today I might never see one. SPC has a moderate risk out for most of oklahoma. We are driving west towards the oklahoma border. We are pretty much riding the dryline. We are going to stop at our hotel and then go from there. Follow twitter. Today could get exciting!

Bust day....never a good thing

What a let down. A day which looked to be at least moderately favorable left us out to dry.

We put up a weather balloon in the small town of Adrian, TX. The balloon showed CAPE of 3082 and 0-3 SRH of 297 with zero CIN. This was quite favorable for supercell development.
Right about the time we finished our launch a tower went up to our north and quickly developed super-cellular features. Based on our sounding this pattern should have continued further south and we would be in a prime spot to intercept the next storm to form. problem: there was no other storm.




Everything we knew said it was a good idea to stay. Our balloon showed a favorable environment and chasing country was unfavorable to the north due to the lack of roads and some hills. If a storm would have developed further south we would have had a better look at it. The only thing we did not forsee was the cap strengthening over our area.

We had to go home with our tail between our legs while vortex 2 followed the cyclic supercell to our north. At least we are in our hotel early tonight to get good sleep for the favorable day tomorrow.

You win some and you lose some. Today we lost. But that is the beauty of the atmosphere. There are still things we cannot forecast.

Hopefully tomorrow we will win!

heading west

heading to new mexico/texas border. We will likely run into Vortex 2 today. Internet not too good in this area. I will try to keep updated on situation on twitter

Mid-day update

So SPC moved everything north due to the clearing in Colorado. If we had chosen to go to Colorado we would have needed to leave this morning. Due to logistics of where we want to be tomorrow and the coverage of storms later we have decided to stay south. As long as the CAP breaks this afternoon we can see some great supercells and maybe even a tornado. One of the reasons for not going to far from our hotel is the outlook for tomorrow. Tomorrow looks like a strong tornado outbreak possible in western Oklahoma. Today is a day to see discrete storms where tomorrow will be more of a widespread outbreak with storms all over.

We plan to leave to get some lunch at 12:30 and put up a balloon this afternoon.

I will try to keep things updated.

Tuesday, May 18th morning discussion

So if you have not seen, SPC issued a Moderate Risk for severe weather over our area. This is especially exciting for me because we were only under 1 slight risk all of last chase! The outlook is 10% tornadoes 45% hail with hatching (chance of large hail within 25 miles of any area).

After waking up and getting some breakfast we met for our morning discussion. Morning visible satellite showed clouds beginning to clear out over the panhandle. Models show strong cape and decent shear across the region this afternoon. We had two decisions to make this afternoon. We could either leave and go north quickly into Colorado where a Denver cyclone will likely develop this afternoon. The conditions there are conditional, but if they get clearing there could be some supercells with tornadoes and some landspouts. Across our area the shear isn't quite as favorable, but we will likely see well structured discrete supercells which might go tornadic near dark. We are almost guaranteed to see storms with large hail.

This afternoon it looks like we will have CAPE between 2000 and 3000 J/kg (amount of buoyancy in the atmosphere) (1500 J/kg is sufficient) 0-3 SRH of 250 to 350 (200 is sufficient for supercells) and 0-1 EHI favorable for tornadoes by 0Z.
For anyone who can't understand this, it means conditions are right for storms with Large hail and an isolated tornado. We hope to see some well strutured supercells along the tx/nm border and follow them into Texas.

We will keep an eye on the models and decide exactly where to go later today. In the mean time we are going to leave our hotel at 11:00 am and launch a weather balloon in eastern New Mexico.

Quick peak to tomorrow: There will be a very concentrated regional outbreak which could favor large tornadoes. We will moniter the situation as the day progresses.

Monday, May 17th

What a change in terrain! We left Missouri in dense coniferous forest and ended the day in the desert of New Mexico. We also went from a few hundred feet above sea level to a couple thousand feet above sea level by the end of the day. It was beautiful to cross the landscape of our heartland and see the northern Ozarks, the rolling hills of eastern Oklahoma, the flat plains of western Oklahoma, the cap rock of the Texas panhandle, and finally the semi desert climate of eastern New Mexico.

When we stopped for lunch in Oklahoma city we saw several vehicles with dents and broken windows from the softball sized hail yesterday. We spoke with a reporter for a news station in Oklahoma City and he showed us pictures and talked about how bad the storm was.

We drove straight past our hotel in Amarillo and continued west to a dairy queen and shell station in Vega, TX. The 150 dollars or so we spent at that dairy queen was probably equivalent to the daily sales there. This town seemed to be in poor shape with a very small population. It is nice to bring some revenue to these small towns who are just struggling to get along.

We drove west into eastern New Mexico to see some storms which had begun to strengthen south of Interstate 44. Once the Low Level Jet formed the storms began to strengthen considerably and approached 70 dBz with quarter dollar hail reported. We were in our first severe thunderstorm warning of the chase, and saw incredible structure. We were fortunate enough to watch the storms from the top of the caprock out over the lower terrain in northern New Mexico. This was the most incredible way to view a storm. We also had some wind turbines on the ridge of the caprock which were picturesque as well as logical. This area is quite windy and when the LLJ kicks in they will generate a lot of power.

We saw a rain free base form on the southernmost storm and at one point it even seemed to show a hook echo. The lightning was the real show with these storms. Cloud-to-Ground (CG) lightning increased rapidly as the LLJ strengthened the storms. Everyone managed to take many nice lightning shots as the sun went down.

We are now on our way back to Amarillo to sleep for the night with an impressive lightning storm at our back. We are planning to meet at 8:30 in the morning for a discussion and then leave by 9:00 am. We will either stay in the same area, or head further north into Colorado depending on what tonight’s models prog.

Instability seems to push further north tomorrow into Colorado with dewpoints in the middle to upper 50’s which is plenty enough in Colorado. At the high terrain those dewpoints are equivalent to dewpoints in the lower 70’s at low elevations. Shear is more favorable further north as the upslope flow combines with a jet streak coming in over the intermountain west. More dynamic lift will be present tomorrow due to some CVA and the left exit region of a 90 knot jet streak. This negatively tilted upper level trough will slowly move into the plains and set up a more significant severe weather outbreak on Wednesday. I hope to write an update after the morning discussion.

Hopefully we can see some good storms tomorrow.

Quick long term update

It looks like the models show two shortwaves coming across the central plains during our time out here. Next weekend is showing promise for a possible outbreak. It is too far out to say anything decisive, but we will moniter it closely. Before that time we will be chasing in the oklahoma, colorado, kansas area on a slight risk for severe convection.

Time for bed

Sunday, May 16th

Well we are off for the trip! Today was a travel day to set up for the rest of the trip.

We were only 40 minutes away from campus before we realized we had left the wxradio at the University. The weather radio is vital to our chasing and especially for our safety. We all
waited in the parking lot of "Hicksgas" in the middle of nowhere indiana while the Pilot went back to the university. After a little frisbee and relaxing the Pilot came back and we were on the road.

In central Illinois car 2 had their antenna for their CB radio fly off, and it was hanging on the side of the van. Luckily it didn't cause any damage and everything still works, so hopefully we will not have that problem again.

We continued through Illinois and made it through St. Louis by mid afternoon. There was some pretty significant flooding along the Mississippi River that we saw as we drove through.

After a long day under cloudy skies we finally had the clouds clear and we saw the first cumulus towers of the chase in the distance as we pulled into Lebanon, MO. These clouds seemed to be a sign of good things to come.

Overall, today was a good day to travel. We didn't miss anything significant in the Plains today. There was one storm near Oklahoma City which dropped 4.25 inch hail, but that was the only cell of any significance in the area.

Here at the Holiday Inn Express in Lebanon, MO we went to the local chinese buffet for dinner (Great Wall of China buffet). We just finished our weather discussion and decided we will be leaving bright and early in the morning. 7:30 am departure so we can get to Tulsa by 11:00 am. By this time we will have to decide if we are going to head straight west from Oklahoma City or if we are going to head further south towards the Texas Panhandle.

This decision cannot be made until early tomorrow morning with the new model runs. Right now we cannot define one spot which will have significant severe convection tomorrow. There are dynamics in play to the north, and instability to the south, but we will need an area where they come together. Hopefully tomorrow morning's model runs will paint a better picture.

I need to get to sleep since we are waking up early. I hope to get on at some point tomorrow to update where we decide to go, but if I can't, you can always follow my twitter at evan_bentley.

Let the Chase Begin

A sense of apprehension could be felt among the Valpo met majors as we made final preparations for our 11 day storm chase. I am very excited about this year's chase. Last year there was next to nothing to chase, but this year the likelihood for significant convection looks to be much greater.

We spent a few hours hooking up our CB radios, filling the helium tanks for our weather balloons, checking out the laptops and software, and even setting up a camera in the Pilot (our lead vehicle, a Honda Pilot) to document the chase! A cold wind and stratus overhead kept some of the excitement subdued, but I could tell everyone was excited for the next week and a half.

The models show a wave developing in the four corners region and moving towards the plains under the upper level ridge. This could give a decent set up for chasing along the rockies for the beginning of next week. Decent instability and moderate shear could permit some supercells, but the details of where the most favorable environment will be seen as the time gets closer.

So all that is left to do is pack up the rest of the things in my room and get a good night of sleep. Sleep is something that I, as well as everyone else, will be lacking.

I will try to make posts nightly with pictures, but to follow my activity throughout the day you can follow my twitter at evan_bentley. I will update that as we make moves on the road.

Keep your fingers crossed for a good chase!