V2 Operations Day 4.... back to OK

After chasing in TX yesterday, today we returned to OK, initially targeting Clinton, where we had spent the night on Monday. Today, though was more fruitful as we actually ended up with a target supercell and were able to deploy accordingly.

Today I was joined by Bill, one of the NCAR scientists, as he and Tim had swapped places with Bill in my truck and Tim driving the support truck. We got into position and launched a sounding from Canton, OK, just after 5 pm as storms were beginning to develop to our north along a cold front. We were then sent east to Okeene, OK to begin sampling the target storm using our "slow moving storm" strategy, which places us near the forward flank of the storm. Making this deployment extra interesting, our mobile internet was not working, meaning that we didn't have radar data or the positions of the other V2 vehicles, to give us situational awareness. Thus we had to make our initial intercept visually, which was a bit daunting since it's been a good 5 years since my last real storm chase.

We reached Okeene as the storm was beginning to organize to the north. As we closed on the storm, I could see the updraft region and knew that we needed to move east to get into position. We then passed several of the deployed doppler radars further suggesting that we needed to move east as our position is supposed to be east of them. As the storm began dropping forward flank precipitation, we decided to move slightly south so that we'd be able to launch our balloon without getting overtaken by it. By 6:20 we were in position to launch, and got our balloon off by 6:30, just as some light precipitation was beginning to fall and lightning was increasing. We continued to reposition to the south, eventually launching another sounding near Union City, OK just as the sun was setting at about 830 pm. We probably could have gotten off another sounding or two over the course of the day had we stayed closer to the storm instead of heading east before we moved south, but for our first real deployment I think it went pretty well. And when we stopped to launch at sunset we deployed our orange hazard flasher on the roof of the truck....which looked pretty sweet:


Tomorrow looks to be a relocation day, as no storms are expected. This will actually be nice as it will give us a chance to debrief the last two days and figure out what if anything we can/should change. Friday will hopefully find us out chasing again though, so be sure to check back for more reports.

Day three....and the dryline giveth

The third day of VORTEX2 operations started about the same as the first two...cold and drizzly. However, today we at least had the prospect of storms, and we left last night's lodging in Clinton, OK headed west for the Texas Panhandle.

The upsonde units were slated to launch two pre-convection soundings, with my team joining the NSSL2 truck (Matt, Kate and Dave) in the thriving metropolis of Tulia, TX (note: Tulia is neither thriving, nor a metropolis). They got to town before us, so they took the lead on the sounding, getting set up at a local park. Tim and I arrived in time to help fill the balloon and take the site pictures and the balloon was released at 2:05 PM CDT.

After waiting for the balloon to complete its ascent through the troposphere, we joined a large part of the armada on the other side of Tulia for a short spell, before Tim and I were redeployed west to Silverton, TX to launch another sounding, just as storms were beginning to develop along the dryline.


Downtown Silverton, TX as a storm rolls in

We reached Silverton in about 45 minutes, and soon had our sounding equipment ready and a balloon in the air. It indicated that the atmosphere was still quite dry in the low levels, which made sense as the storms that were developing were rather weak and none were organizing into the supercells that we were looking for.

Ultimately, we ended up spending the remainder of our day in Silverton with the armada, eventually joining the convoy for the trip east to our lodging location, jumping into line right behind one of the Doppler on Wheels (DOW) trucks.


Rolling down the highway behind the DOW

As luck would have it a storm that had developed to our south eventually became a supercell and passed over our lodging location just as we were arriving, dropping some small hail, and making for some amazing lightning. Unfortunately it was too late for us to deploy for this particular storm, as the sun was beginning to set.


Precipitation core in a supercell south of Childress, TX.

Overall, I'd say this was a pretty good first chase day. Between the whole team, we launched several successful soundings, although we never actually did deploy for a certain storm. There were some communications issues, but we anticipated that going in given the cell service in this part of the country, and hopefully we'll be able to adapt to overcome these on future missions. For now, though, it's time for bed, as tomorrow looks to be another active day!


NCAR1 (my truck!) with a rainbow

V2 Operations, Day 1

Today was the first official day of operations for VORTEX2. We started the day with a weather briefing at 10am, which confirmed what most of us had already determined: no storms today, so we're staying in Norman. This actually worked out well, as it gave us the opportunity to work out the few remaining kinks in our communications/navigation software, so that by the end of the day everything looks to be ready to roll (knock on wood). We're fully operational now, meaning that we've joined the rest of the armada at a common hotel, and that we're expected to be ready to go by the 10am briefing in the morning. I have to say, we make quite a site with all of our instrumented vehicles and mobile radars parked in front of the hotel!

Hopefully tomorrow we'll finally leave Norman for somewhere with some storms!!

Balloon Training (Thursday)

So I realize it's Sunday, and the following pictures are from Thursday...but this is the first time I've had some downtime to catch up with things! Anyway, on Thursday we did some balloon training, learning how to use all of the sounding equipment, and how to fill and launch a balloon. We had some problems, as the first two sondes ended up being bad, with temperature readings 5C off from our surface station for quality control, but we were still able to learn how to do everything, so now we're ready for action! Here are some pictures:

The team working on setting up the sonde prior to launch. We use a special machine in the truck to acquire and condition the sonde prior to launch. Once this is done, we keep the sonde in an aspirator that blows air over it and keeps the temperature sensor shaded so we don't get an inaccurate reading from having the sonde sitting in the sun or on the ground. The aspirator is the thing that looks like a TV tray near the middle of the picture.



A closeup of one of our sondes, sitting on the older style aspirator that will be used by the NSSL trucks. The NCAR trucks have a newer aspirator design that is more compact.


Ready to launch. Tim explains balloon launch procedures to Dr. Parker, while Matt holds the balloon.

Media Day

Thursday was media day, bringing an army of reporters, photographers and videographers to the National Weather Center to see just what we were up to. It also brought out local celebrities as Miss Oklahoma, who happens to be a sophomore meteorology major at OU. Here she is inspecting one of the chase vehicles.
Personally I think NC State should have chipped in to outfit us with sparkly tiaras and sashes instead of our "Red Means Go" t-shirts....would have been a lot more eye-catching.

Media day also included an hour with all of the chase vehicles and teams assembled in the parking lot for pictures/interviews. We showed off our newly learned mad-ballooning skills with a live balloon launch. Here are a few shots from the event:

Group shot of the sounding team. From left to right: Casey, Dave, Matt, Kate, Matt (Dr. Parker), Me, and George. Missing from the picture are the NCAR folks: Tim, Jenn, and Bill.



The result when you tell George to get into the group picture with the rest of us.


Line-up of M-GAUSS trucks..Dodge Chevy and Ford are all represented.



Field Coordinator vehicle


Mobile Mesonets


Overhead view through a window on the 5th floor of the National Weather Center. This gives you an idea of just how many vehicles are going to be taking part in the project.

Casey and I make the Weather Channel....sort of

Thanks to Miranda for this link . The Weather Channel's Mike Bettes has been around the National Weather Center the last few days doing interviews and various reports regarding V2. In one of his more recent installments he and his videographer were up on the rooftop observation deck, and happened to note a few students preparing a weather balloon launch....I'm the one in the orange shirt...if you squint you may recognize the Red Sox hat ; ).

Irony defined

Irony: Driving 1200 miles over 2 days to find tornadoes only to have a tornado-warned, very impressive looking supercell go over campus back in NC!

No confirmation of any tornadoes in the greater Raleigh area, although the storm looked very well-organized on radar. Unfortunately it does sound like a tornado touched down east of Raleigh, in Wilson county causing damage to some homes in the area.