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.
Showing posts with label tornado. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tornado. Show all posts
Sunday, May 23, 2010
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.
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.
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