Helping out SPC

As some of you may, or may not know, the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, OK is responsible for issuing all of the Tornado and Severe thunderstorm watches across the country. Anytime you find yourself under one of these watches, its because one of the guys or gals out at SPC felt the conditions were favorable for severe weather, and that the watch was warranted. These people are the real deal severe weather experts, I don't care what the Weather Channel commercials say.

So imagine my surprise, and I'll admit, excitement, to hear as we were getting ready to launch a pre-storm sounding earlier this afternoon that the good folks at SPC were very interested in what our sounding might show, as they were considering issuing a Tornado watch for our area. Sure enough, shortly after our sounding was finished and we uploaded it to the VORTEX2 field catalog, which SPC has access to, a Tornado Watch was issued for our area, including parts of NE, IA, MO, and KS. The text for the watch is included below (emphasis added by me):

"DISCUSSION...APPARENTLY SURFACE-BASED CONVECTION IS BEGINNING TO
DEVELOP ALONG THE SE NEB/NE KS BORDER IMMEDIATELY IN ADVANCE OF A
SURFACE WAVE ON THE FRONT...AND IN AN AREA OF STRONG INSTABILITY.
DESPITE THE WARMING NOTED IN THE 850-700 MB LAYER IN THE 19Z TOP AND
20Z VORTEX2 SPECIAL SOUNDING IN SE NEB...COOLING IS LIKELY OCCURRING
FROM THE W WITH THE CLOUD BAND AND AN ASSOCIATED SHORTWAVE TROUGH
EJECTING NEWD OVER CENTRAL KS. GIVEN THIS EARLY
DEVELOPMENT...THUNDERSTORM COVERAGE WILL LIKELY INCREASE THROUGH THE
AFTERNOON/EVENING. THE STORM ENVIRONMENT IS FAVORABLE FOR
SUPERCELLS WITH VERY LARGE HAIL GIVEN STEEP MID LEVEL LAPSE
RATES...MLCAPE OF 2500-3500 J/KG...AND STRONG DEEP LAYER VERTICAL
SHEAR. ADDITIONALLY...BOUNDARY LAYER DEWPOINTS IN THE UPPER 60S AND
BACKING/STRENGTHENING LOW-LEVEL FLOW WILL CONTRIBUTE TO AN
INCREASINGLY FAVORABLE ENVIRONMENT FOR A FEW TORNADOES THROUGH LATE
EVENING."

I don't know how big of a role our sounding ultimately played in the decision process, but it still feels pretty good to have been able to help out with some extra data in their region of interest. Ultimately the V2 armada intercepted a supercell in western MO today and while it did not produce any significant tornadoes, we still managed to get some good data. This was the fourth day in a row we've intercepted a supercell, a definite improvement over how the project had been going for the first few weeks!

Tornado!

So it is currently 3am, and I just got to the hotel a half hour ago, in part because we ended our day 200 miles from our hotel, and in part because a rouge supercell decided to merrily cruise along I-80 right along our return path, with radar indications suggesting "vehicle damaging hail" as the field commander put it. It wasn't all bad though, waiting for the storm to pass gave us an excuse to stop for steak in Ogallala, NE.

The steak of course is to celebrate finally seeing a tornado during VORTEX2! We intercepted a supercell near LaGrange, WY today that produced a rather impressive, long lived torando. Unfortunately, while Heather and I could see the tornado, it was while we were largely driving away from it to position for a balloon launch, so my pictures were taken leaning out the window looking behind us. In the interest of full disclosure, there was a period where we were driving towards the tornado, but we'll save that story for another time. All told we had a solid deployment for a few hours on this supercell, and then once operations ended were able to chase a second supercell (which Heather and I were in great position on from the get go from our last balloon launch) until dark. It didn't produce a tornado, but had a great wall cloud and some fantastic rotation.

Took plenty of pictures, as you may imagine, but can only muster editing one to post tonight because as I said it's 3am, and morning briefing time will be here before I know it! There will be more pictures to come soon, once I actually get a chance to sit down and go through them. Anyway, here's a shot of our tornado, enjoy!

Supercells!!!

Today the V2 armada finally caught not just one, but two supercells in southeast WY/northeast CO. Still no tornadoes, but at least we finally had some good rotation in the storms we were chasing (hey, it only took 4 of the 5 weeks of the project!). It was a long, tiring day (lots of driving!) so I'm not up for a full recap right now, but just wanted to share the happy news. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures that look particularly supercell-ish. We were either driving our busy with balloon preparation whenever something interesting was going on. But we did see a nice rainbow, which always makes for a pretty picture:





Now it's time for sleep in the Travel Lodge next to the Corrections Facility in Sterling, CO.....if nothing else our accomadations have been memorable this trip ; ).