The evolving storm system for next week might provide some marginal chasing opportunities but the limiting factors for me would be distance and potential.
Sunday might produce some results but this would occur over far west Texas in a marginal set-up so unless something changes, Sunday is unlikely chase day.
Monday on the other hand is still a bit questionable but it does offer the intriguing possibility of weak tornadoes which occur with cold core upper level low pressure areas.
These set-ups depend greatly on surface heating, cold air aloft, backing winds and a boundary of some kind, usually a warm/stationary or occluded front. CAPE, a measure of instability, will often some up as marginal but as Jon points out, if the CAPE is mostly in the lowest layers of the atmosphere than a more volatile situation can occur. He also emphasizes “pattern matching” over the actual values of the various parameters.
The GFS model has waivered a bit on the position of the axis of unstable air with this mornings’ run placing it more south than previous runs in southern Oklahoma. I have seen it into Kansas just a day ago.
This is a summary of what project Vortex 2 accomplished during their first year of operation. It was a very slow severe weather season in 2009, at least within the project’s time and space domain.
The Missouri State University chase class converged with the Vortex 2 armada in Sterling, CO on the evening of Thursday June 4th, the day before they (and Vortex 2!) caught their first tornado near LaGrange, WY, indicated by the red dot on the map.
Many of you on the trip were aware that Matt Gingery parted ways with us in Clinton, MO while on the way home Sunday to go chase in northwest Missouri! On this day, one storm in particular crossed into extreme northwest Missouri. It was well-sampled by Vortex 2 but non-tornadic during the sampling. I believe Matt blogged about this chase on this site. If not, I’m sure he can chime in!
I’ll be curious to see if data collected from that storm produces any insight as to why a tornado didn’t form.
This is a summary of what project Vortex 2 accomplished during their first year of operation. It was a very slow severe weather season in 2009, at least within the project’s time and space domain.
Our chase class converged with the Vortex 2 armada in Sterling, CO on the evening of Thursday June 4th, the day before we (and they!) caught our first tornado near LaGrange, WY, indicated by the red dot on the map.
Many of you on the trip were aware that Matt Gingery parted ways with us in Clinton, MO while on the way home Sunday to go chase in northwest Missouri! On this day, one storm in particular crossed into extreme northwest Missouri. It was well-sampled by Vortex 2 but non-tornadic during the sampling. I believe Matt blogged about this chase on this site. If not, I’m sure he can chime in!
I’ll be curious to see if data collected from that storm produces any insight as to why a tornado didn’t form.
The Missouri State University Storm Chase Class started in the last days of May 2009 and we left for the actual chase on Sunday May 31st, returning seven days later
A ”death ridge” refers to a pattern of weather in the upper atmosphere where high pressure dominates. This encourages air to sink; a stabilizing effect which all but snuffs out thunderstorms.
Such a pattern was setting up in the middle and late portion of May as the Missouri State University storm chase class was coming together. Dr. Corcoran and I knew that a pattern of high pressure would cause problems for the class. If it set up, where would we go? Would there be anything to chase? The Vortex 2 armada was dismayed over this pattern too. They only had until the middle of June to surround a tornado.
Fortunately, the unfavorable pattern was showing some signs of breakdown by the week of the chase. While this was certainly good news, it was still a less than ideal pattern in which to chase storms. It looked as if moisture would be limited and the jet stream was too far north at least at the beginning of chase week. Be sure to read some of my blogs on the social site for the class linked below to gain some insight on how we arrived at our chase decisions.
SPC Forecasts for the Beginning of Chase Week!
But with only a few days left, the Storm Prediction Center finally started to project severe weather for the Great Plains! With new found hope, the first day of class met with some excitement. Bill Corcoran went over the basics of storm development and forecasting and quizzed the students on where the target should be our first day. On that subject, which would be the day we finally hit the road? Saturday was discussed but finally a “hard departure” of Sunday morning was set.
Meanwhile, I was busy collecting equipment and gear. A visit with Jim Sellars proved to be quite valuable; he was so open, friendly and willing to help the whole class. He was also quite generous, lending us HAM radio gear, power inverters, maps, you name it. Plus, he made sure we thought about the “gotchas” like “what happens is hail busts out a windshield?” or “you should probably have a roll of toilet paper in the van!”
I tested live streaming in the days before the chase began. I chose to use Livestream because it allowed other videos to be running in a play loop during non-streaming times. I wasn’t sure how streaming would work (so-so it turned out) but I wanted to be ready.
How did the Missouri State University storm chase class come about? Well I can tell you from my end, it all started with an e-mail.
I have been a per course instructor at MSU (back then SMSU) for many years. As you might imagine, the course I have helped teach is Introduction to Atmospheric Science or GRY 135. One of the conditions of teaching this course is that my career job comes first when the weather turns bad. Translation: I sometimes cancel class to be on T.V.! Well, during our infamous “La Nina” spring of 2008, this happened a lot. So much in fact that despite the understanding I had with the university, I felt compelled to e-mail some folks to say “sorry” and also “thanks for letting me do this”.
One of the people on the list was Dr. Bill Corcoran, the professor in charge of the meteorology class and a long time acqaintence. I got a reply in my inbox later that afternoon from Bill. As I clicked it, I expected the e-mail to say something like, “well, we understand” or “duty calls” or perhaps some other suggestion. Instead, and completely out of left field, the message body said, “do you want to help lead a storm chase class?”
Taken a back and under yet more intense weather that evening, my only short response was “yes, it would be a dream come true, let me collect my thoughts and get back to you!”
This all happened about 14 months prior to when the actual class would occur. During that time, it was decided that an intersession course was the best plan. The students would start with a few days in the classroom and then hit the road. Dr. Corcoran and I would be the instructors but we also had uber student Matt Gingery, a fellow storm chaser, in the class who proved to be invaluable (well after all, he did have the satellite-delivered weather system!) .
None of us had ever done anything like this. We ended up with a roster of 21 students plus one additional driver we picked up early on in the adventure. I don’t know if anyone has ever really thought about this but the logistics of a storm chase of this size and length are a bit daunting.
We had three vans that needed gas, windshields washed (always had bug juice on them), bathroom and/or food breaks, arrangements for a motel for nearly 30 people everyday (almost didn’t happen when VORTEX 2 pulled into town!), equipment loading and checking, technology charging, unloading and securing the vans, planning the next day’s chase, navigation questions, deciding which storm to stay on and which one to leave, “tweeting” and other social network updates, shooting photos and videos, explaining clouds formations and other meteorological phenomenon, etc.
Matt Gingery, Ryan Barnhart and Bill Corcoran on the day we picked up the vans.
The dates were set: the class would run from May 28th until June 7th. Just as excitement over the class was really beginning to build in the middle of May, a weather pattern not exactly friendly to thunderstorms began to unfold and our team was beginning to wonder if we would be chasing tumbleweeds instead! More on the “death ridge” as chasers call it and on the prep days before the actual chase in the next installment!
This was a chase of opportunity. I was in Wichita to drop off my wife at a New Kids on the Block concert (separate story!) and I had it in my mind that a storm chase was possible. On this day, a slight risk of severe storms existed in northern and central Kansas. After taking my wife to the meet and greet area for the concert, I decided chasing was worth my effort on this day. As I was driving north to Salina, a tornado watch was issued for northeastern Kansas and Salina was in the southwestern corner of the watch!
Encourgaed by the watch, my strategy was to track storms that were ongoing in northcentral Kansas as they travelled eastward into better dew points, lower LCL’s and near a warm front. The storm motion was only about 25 mph so I felt as if I had time to react.
I set up shop in Abilene, Kansas. The only storm warned on was approaching Clay Center. Instead of waiting on the next storm (that would have been the better move in hindsight) I decided to chase the Clay Center storm. It was high-based and outflow dominated but had some fantastic cloud-to-ground lightning. Just as I was thinking about heading back to the southwest, I got a calls from Matt Gingery and Brian Hurst who told me the storm moving into Ottawa County had just gone tornado warned!
I made my way back to KS 18 west and headed for the storm. I noticed a funnel report on the storm I was heading directly into but was unable to see any structure. I eventually headed down Solomon Road toward the city of Solomon just north of I-70 and shot some video. It was after sunset at this point but some backlighting at least made the awesome structure of the outflow and what could have been a wall cloud structure visible.
I went through Solomon and back east toward Abilene. The road curved back to the north on the west side of town which threw me a bit but I figured I’d shoot best structure and worry about which way I was looking later! It was from this position just on the outskirts of Abilene that I shot the wall cloud and what could have been some small funnels trying to pop out of the base. (see the “zoom” video)
I finally ended up in downtown Abilene and the all familar and eerie sound of tornado sirens was blaring as I prepared to head south out of town and back to Wichita for the night. All in all, a sucessful storm chase!
This is a summary of what project Vortex 2 accomplished during their first year of operation. It was a very slow severe weather season in 2009, at least within the project’s time and space domain.
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