Tornado!

It took several weeks of traveling the plains, but I finally saw a tornado last week, 2 in fact! They were short-lived (the first had dissipated by the time I got my camera out!), and far away, but they were real-deal tornadoes.



This was especially exciting since we've often been pretty far from the "business end" of the storm for our balloon operations this year. We've been going at a pretty torrid pace for the last few weeks, intercepting storms in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado since my last post.

This included a long-lived supercell in TX that we were able to collect a lot of good data on:



We also saw some great mamatus clouds outside of Roswell, NM, along with some dust being kicked up by strong surface winds.



In fact, the whole ride to the hotel from Roswell was quite picturesque:



We've also had some down time, including a visit to the Badlands National park last Friday while we were traveling from South Dakota down to Nebraska, where we operated yesterday. The whole sounding team was there, along with the Field Coordinators (their truck is the ambulance-looking thing in the back)



And the obligatory truck shot, this time of 2/3 of the "NCAR Family", NCAR1 and NCAR2 (NCAR3 was behind me while I was taking the picture).



Tomorrow is my last day with V2 before heading home, hopefully we'll get one last good operations day before I leave. Even if we don't, though, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing Miranda and Dixie, and to sleeping in my own bed again!

Little Breezy Today

We had a fun-filled day of operations today, more so because the large-scale surface winds were sustained at 40+ mph at times than because of the storms, which were actually on the marginal side. We figured it was going to be difficult to launch just because it is harder to launch a giant weather balloon in windy conditions, but we had no idea just HOW hard it was going to be until our first attempt.

We fanned our teams out in a line about 30 miles apart along I-80 in Nebraska for our initial operations today, and went for our first launch around 2 pm. Bryan (my NCAR buddy today) and I found a nice open field to launch from. We got the sonde ready and then went to fill the balloon, hoping to use the truck as a bit of a wind block, and as shelter from all the dust/debris being kicked up. As you can tell from some of the pictures in my other posts, these balloons are rather large, about a 3m diameter when fully inflated. Usually when it's windy we have one person operate the helium tank and hold the neck of the balloon, while the other kind of bear-hugs it to keep it from blowing around. Given my rather large wingspan, I'm usually a pretty good balloon bear-hugger. However today as we attempted this it was apparent that no measure of bear hugging was going to work. Our first balloon got away from me and started whipping around as Bryan tried to fill and hold on to it. It ended up twisting around causing a pocket of helium to form right above the neck, a relative weak spot. Before we could react, POP! the pocket burst, and we were left holding the neck of the balloon, while the rest of it floated/blew away quite rapidly. Mind you, there weren't even any storm nearby at this point, it was still sunny out, and these were just the background winds.

Undeterred, we grabbed another balloon and started filling. This time we just let the balloon stretch into the wind (and stretch it did!). We got it filled, and then came the challenge of attaching the sonde. It went something like this: Bryan held the sonde while I held the balloon with both hands, it whipping around wildly and effectively pulling my 200lbs down the road (seriously), while trying to thread and cinch a zip tie around the sonde clip to attach it. Trying to thread a zip tie through the little zip tie closing mechanism under these conditions was darn near impossible. After what seemed like an eternity, I got the sonde attached and cinched down. Balloon was still inflated, sonde now attached, I was barely keeping my feet planted, Bryan checked the computer and we were good. I let the balloon go and it shot away so violently that the string attached to the sonde snapped and the sonde fell into a field about 20 ft away as the balloon raced sky-ward.

Before a third try we checked in with the the sounding coordinator (Dr. Parker) to find out that everyone else was having similar problems. We scrubbed our launch, and we all regrouped, working in teams of two trucks, giving us 4 people total to manage the balloon. We joined up with Casey and Heather in the other NCAR truck who had figured out that there was enough room in the back of their truck to fill the balloon and attach the sonde inside, relatively sheltered. However, this still took some refinement, as during our first attempt using this method the balloon once again flew away so quickly that the string snapped off and we were left this time holding the sonde as our balloon cruised away. We eventually worked out a system of counting to three and simultaneously chucking the balloon and sonde out of the back of the truck, which managed to work. The only thing we had to worry about now was making sure we had plenty of open space over which the balloon/sonde could rise, as the strong winds caused the whole system to move laterally a considerably amount before gaining enough altitude to clear things like trees and telephone poles. One of our other teams reported getting a successful launch only to see their sonde bouncing along the ground behind their balloon before it was able to gain enough altitude. The same team reported nearly hitting a light pole during one of their launches, on the opposite side of the interstate from where they launched! All in all, it was a wild day for balloon operations.

Our story does have a happy ending though. We recovered our first sonde from the field intact and it went on to fly successfully by the end of the day. An important achievement when one considers that these sondes runs about $180 a piece!

Busy Week!

We had quite a busy past week for V2, chasing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, being on standby but not chasing Thursday, then chasing Friday and Saturday! So finally, just like the big weather-maker upstairs, on the seventh day we rested...and did laundry. Anyway, here's a bit of a recap of the last week in pictures. We did manage to intercept several supercells, a few tornadoes, and most importantly we collected some really good data!

On Tuesday we chased in western OK:



And met Chase the V2 weather Dawg



And of course we launched plenty of balloons (here's Bill showing how it's done):



Unfortunately the best storm didn't develop until it was almost dark.



We chased western OK again on Wednesday, and collected some good data on a supercell that produced a tornado near Clinton.



After our travel day on Thursday, we were back in action Friday in southwest TX. Another tornadic supercell...but this one rapidly evolved into more of a line while we continued to collect data.



Finally, on Saturday we made our way into southeast New Mexico....and caught yet another supercell. No tornado, but lots of big hail. The storm looked pretty as it began to dissipate in the fading light.



And we were rewarded with a pretty sunset:



And now, with clean clothes and a dinner at Olive Garden, we're ready to roll for what looks to be another busy week!

First Tornadoes of V2 2010

V2 intercepted multiple tornadic supercells today across central Oklahoma. I've had visions of creating a great blog post full of pretty tornado pictures when this day arrived, but alas, my team was far from the tornadic action. Based on the forecast storm motions of 40-50 mph, we decided to deploy our sounding teams in essentially a big box, with my truck being positioned at the northwest corner of the box. As it turns out, the tornadoes occurred at the southern end of our box (keeping our two NSSL trucks busy dodging storms and re-positioning), and aside from having to move at one point to avoid one intense cell, that may have been producing hail, my truck was pretty far removed from the action, and actually ended our day in sunshine!

So, no exciting pictures from our first tornado day, although we did launch a lot of balloons, and hopefully got some good data. It was a bit of a surreal experience though, as from where we sat the storm just looked like some dark clouds, and we were far enough away that it didn't appear all that menacing, yet all the while we were hearing increasingly dire reports on the radio and TV of major damage and loss of life in the greater OKC area. In particular there were some hard hit areas in Norman, very near where we had been prepping for ops last week. As in "the tornado missed the National Weather Center by 200 yards". We definitely had several "holy crap we were just there" moments seeing some of the pictures on the news as well while eating dinner at a local restaurant where some of the staff had to leave early because their homes had been destroyed by one of the tornadoes. As it is I'm sitting in a dark hotel because the power is still out from when the storms came through this area (this post is being brought to you by Verizon MiFi, by the way), but that's a far cry from some of the more serious damage. My heart goes out the people who lost loved ones (at least 5 fatalities reported so far), and those who lost their homes. I can't say I'm looking forward to the trip down I-40 in the morning which will likely take us past some of the damaged areas.

Looks like we may be operating again tomorrow....stay tuned.

First V2 operations day of 2010

After much anticipation, and several rounds of frisbee, we had our first operational deployment of V2 today. No tornadoes, but we did intercept a storm that intermittently showed signs of rotation, and all in all had a good first operations day for the sounding teams.

We started our day in Hays, KS, where my team (NCAR1) and one of the other teams (NSSL1) launched a pre-storm sounding to see how the environment was evolving early in the afternoon.

Here are Bill, Matt (Dr. Parker) and Johannes watching the balloon sail into the sky just after launch.




A few hours later, Bill (from NCAR) and I headed west on I-70 to a lovely rest stop by mile marker 97 to launch a second pre-storm sounding, in the hopes of finding a more favorable environment for storms. On a side note, I'm planning a future adventure to find out why there's a Tomcat parked alongside I-70 in Wakeeney, KS.

This picture begs the question, "Why is this fellow squinting into the sun whilst his sunglasses sit uselessly on his hat?"




And while it might not look graceful, I still managed to get the balloon airborne.





Eventually the atmosphere cooperated and produced a storm. The first of several, in fact to develop along frontal boundary that was located across northern KS. Unfortunately, the later storms developed after dark, so aside from providing us with some cool lightning on the way to the hotel, they were of little use to the V2 project.

Here's our target storm, as Bill and I approach from the southwest.




Tomorrow looks to be a travel day, as we're likely heading south to get into position for further operations later in the weekend or early next week!

VORTEX 2 (frisbee) action!

The trucks are loaded up. All our equipment and software has been tested and is (mostly) functional. And we have blue skies and nice warm, dry weather. Looks like it will be a few days until we get some real storms to go after. The last big storm system to move across the country (the one that brought the tornadoes and flooding to parts of the southeast) has effectively cut off our flow of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, leaving us with pleasant but disapointingly non-stormy skies.



So we spent our morning playing frisbee at the National Weather Center, before rolling out to western OK to meet up with the rest of the V2 armada. Hopefully we'll get something to chase in the coming days, although prospects still look rather bleak at the present. Nonetheless, here are some shots of the sounding team "in action."


Casey launches a might throw...


...and Matt makes a flying catch!




All the while, Casey B. makes it look easy.

Hopefully some storms show up before I dedicate a post to tossing around the Vortex (2) football!

The Adam Has Landed

We're on the ground in Norman, waiting to see what we'll be doing today and for the next few days. The forecast doesn't look as promising, so it's entirely possible that we'll be sitting tight for a few days, which isn't a necessarily a bad thing since it will give us a chance to do some more "shake downs" and testing of our equipment.

My trip out yesterday was much quicker (two flights and 8 hours vs 2 days) and much less interesting (no cops with guns pulled on the side of the road) than last year's, and it's nice to be back in the plains. We did a quick run through of sounding procedures yesterday, a refresher for those of us returning, and a learning experience of the newbies on board. I'll be in the same truck as last year, NCAR1, although Tim has added some new toys. Our electrical system that powers all the sounding equipment is now completely controlled by a wireless remote, and we have a battery backup so we have interrupted electrical flow if we need to shut the truck off, which is quite nice.

Right now the PIs are meeting to discuss what we're going to be doing today, and likely over the next few days...here's to hoping that the atmosphere starts cooperating!