Quick update

Just wanted to give a quick update before I crash tonight. Yesterday we operated in western South Dakota/eastern Wyoming (well, my team was in eastern Wyoming, pretty much everyone else was in SD). It was a frustrating day, as the convection never really moved off of the Black Hills so we weren't really able to deploy and do much more than launch environmental soundings all day. I think it was extra frustrating as I had been secretly hoping for a down day to go see Mount Rushmore, or do some hiking in the Black Hills. This may give you an idea of how the project has been going the last week or so...my first thought as we rolled into Hot Springs, SD two days ago was "Ooo mountains, lets go hiking!" rather than anything related to storm intercepts : p. This is the kind of thing a persistent ridge over the central US will do to a person.

Today though, we actually got a decent storm intercept and I was quite happy with it. Still wasn't a supercell and still no tornadoes, but at least there was marginally enough shear present to organize the storm into something we could actually run operations on. My compatriot in NCAR1 today was Matt, one of the other NCSUers, as Lou and Chris, my NCAR buddies, had to run to Scottsbluff, NE to get us some more helium. We managed to get ourselves into position on the storm quite readily and then maintained our position without getting overrun by the precipitation. Not only that, but we were averaging about 10 mins from stopping the truck to getting a balloon in the air, which is pretty good seeing as we were told to expect 15-20 mins. prep time coming into the project.

So all told I'm feeling better after our operations today. Things still look pretty marginal for the coming days, but I've heard a rumor that it looks a little better by early/mid week (I haven't been looking at the medium-range models forecasts myself lately as I've been finding it too depressing : p). I'm trying to keep up a Great Pumpkin-esque philosophy with regards to our storms, it's not if we will get a tornadic supercell, but rather when we will get it ; )
That's all for now, we did stop at Carhenge the other day on our way north from Nebraska....I have pictures that I plan to post at some point, but not right now cuz I'm just too darn tired!