Tornado Camp

Our trip has come to an end. As Brandon mentioned we saw a Tornado on our last day chasing, an awesome way to finish the season. Although a few of the Michigan crew stayed back to help Texas Tech the rest of us made it home safe and sound. We stopped on our way back in Kansas City and Amanda Graor made us a Delicious home cooked meal and left us take a break for a few hours at her place we then stayed the night in St. Louis and finished the long drive back yesterday. We made it home safely and good luck to those who are still on the chase. Below are a few pictures from the past couple days including a picture of a micro burst that we saw on Wednesday.

Micro Burst
Chris and Joe
Greensburg

Living up to its title yesterday was absolutely spectactular to say the least. Three of the four cars will head back to Michigan starting later today. We drove up to near Guymon, OK and saw two tornadoes!! We deployed to this vicinity with mixed emotions because the forecast models were all pointing to early convection, which would hinder supercell development and more along the line of a Multi-Cell System. Not to disappoint, Chris Weiss did an excellent job in pointing us in the right direction where we actually waited until the supercell storm came to us for the most part. The first tornado was really obscured due to the supercell having lots of precipitation wrapped around it but we saw a glimpse of it as it touched down for only a few seconds. I actually thought that they were scud clouds until it was a confirmed tornado. The second tornado happened right alongside us basically. We were told to terminate our transects and in the process of doing so we “accidentally” saw one to our right side about a 100 yards away. It looked spectacular, having an off white color extending from the ground up to the wall cloud. Naturally I had to stop and take a look. Don’t worry though we weren’t in any danger! We ended up staying in a hotel in Guymon for the nite. But now it is time to part ways with Tech and I do so with mixed feelings, both wanting to stay down here and learn much more with these exceptional individuals, but also having duties back in Michigan. So now I say goodbye to Texas Tech, and hope that we will meet another time in the future. Brandon Wills signing off.

Today could be our final day in Lubbock.  After a “soft standby” which led to a “hard stand down” yesterday, we are all itching to make sure that what could be a our last day chasing will also be our best.  The plan now is to head up into the northern Texas panhandle so that we are in position for operations around SW Kansas to SE Colorado.  Models indicate deep level shear in the Southern Plains that would be conducive to supercell development.  Our course of action is to move north into our target area and wait for initiation, probably by a progressing cold front, though convective potential is limited.  Everyone here is pretty optimistic that we will observe something today, and hopefully it will be severe enough to consider deploying our sticknet array and conducting transects with the MMs.  Other then that, we’ll be keeping an eye on the models as they update throughout the day to gain a better perspective on what is happening.  This being said, our crew is packed and ready to go.  I’m going to remain cautiously optimistic that today won’t dissapoint.

Despite driving almost the entire width of the country in the hope of finding a super cell, we were thwarted by a capped atmosphere. C’est la vie . . . but it still sucks to bust two days in a row. I’m thinking next time will be the charm and we’ll see some cool stuff and not sit around looking at a clear blue sky. At the moment, I believe we are tentatively targetting the Texas panhandle tomorrow so it’ll be very nice to not have to go a long distance to get to the target. According to the latest SPC forecast discussion, surface dew points and CAPE values in western/northwestern Texas look favorable so hopefully the cap will break when we want it to tomorrow and we will have some storms to go after.

So we are currently in southwestern Kansas right now waiting for the cap to break aloft because this is what it inhibiting any good convection to ensue. It seems like everything else is in place, it’s just too warm up at the 850mb to 700mb level now to alow for vertical motion to continue. The biggest lesson learned here is that it is hard to forecast these cells because even though there are many factors that are in our favor, there can be other things to hold us back. In our case right now, its the inversion. So if that breaks, then we are in good shape for some great things to happen. Patiently waiting…we need to bust this cap…then we are golden.

Mary

Quickly approaching 3pm CST we are now stationed in Valentine, NE patiently waiting for mother nature to start her fury that we all know and love in AOSS. Temps are in the low 80’s with dew points around 60 so there’s ample moisture. We are hoping that the winds aloft much higher in the atmosphere pick up in speed. We have a sufficient low level jet but not enough support higher up to aid in divergence and shear. That’s all for now, stay tuned for later updates from Team Michigan.

Hey everyone, we just drove about 180 miles from Goodland, KS to North Platte, NB. So far we’re waiting for the surface low to initialize just to the west so that we can begin driving towards that point in hopes of thunderstorms developing. It’s about 12 noon right now. Not much has changed on the forecast models except that the upper level winds may be a bit stronger than anticipated which is always good to promote cyclogenesis. The SPC wrote an earlier discussion in regards to likely severe weather and isolated tornadoes in the NB, ND, and SD regions for today so we are certainly in the right spot. Wind shear may be a problem in promoting supercell development today. However, it seems that the models have been forecasting storms on the lesser degree of strength whenever we have deployed so far. Let’s hope the same goes for today! Hopefully we will be writing about exciting supercells later today with pictures as well. Until then, we play the waiting game…

Today (Sunday since we got to the hotel late) we drove from Lubbock, TX to Goodland, KS in about 7 hours to prep for tomorrow. The trip was over 430 miles! Tomorrow will be difficult to pinpoint exactly where to go. Based off the latest forecast models, the trof axis shows the slightly deepening surface low pressure system to be towards the west of Goodland, whereas the plentiful moisture for thunderstorm development will be more to the east of Goodland. Basically it’s a pick your poison situation (bad pun I know but it’s late even for MDT) so we will more than likely be somewhere in the middle shooting for a supercell targeted area around the Nebraska panhandle. After busily driving around Nebraska hoping for just the right ingredients to fall into place moisture wise, Team Michigan will then begin its drive back down toward the TX panhandle to meet with Texas Tech on Tuesday afternoon for its final hoorah of 2007. Unfortunately we are nearing the end of our trip, but we are still quite positive for seeing supercells tomorrow and Tuesday. After that it will be back to Michigan to tell you all in person how much of a great learning experience this trip really is. Until then, this is Brandon signing off.

Tuesday and Wednesday were very good days for the Texas Tech and U of M team. We were able to get great data. I think the best data that we recieved was last night when we saw noticable changes driving in and out of the outflow boundary with the temperature and dewpoint data. The supercell occured at about 8:30pm in the eastern panhandle of Texas and we took data for about 30 minutes. Even though it was pretty dark out, we were still able to get a good look at the structure of the meso. We were suprised that a tornado didn’t drop out of it…there were so many turrets of clouds that were descending from it, but nothing happned. All in all, it was still amazing. We were able to watch the lightning associated with it almost all the way back to Lubbock. Here are a few pictures from Tuesday and Wednesday.

My mesonet group:
Yeah T2!

Tuesday:
Mammatus
mesonet group
Approaching meso
Tornado
Cool Clouds

Wednesday:
Wall Cloud
More Meso

Mary

These are a host of pictures that were taken over the past few days during week 1 operations.  Enjoy!

National Weather Service (Dodge City) Trip
     

Cloud Formation

Vertical Development

Vertical Development 2

Vertical Development 3