Yesterday I went running (I know I was surprised too, it's been a little while) and I really enjoyed the time I had to just think and experience the beautiful sunset. One thing that really caught my attention was our relationship with an infinite, perfect God and sin.
God isn't a God of rules and regulations and things you have to follow, He's a God of love and power and grace. There are certain things He tells us He wants us to do for ourselves because He knows the pain and heartache that goes along with so many things we can do. Obvously, just like a small child whose parent tells it not to put that dirty toy in its mouth, we disobey because we want to experience it for ourselves. We don't want to be told what to do even if it's probably best for us, why? Why not?
This wasn't what hit me at that moment, it's not that intense right, what hit me like whoa was this verse mixed with the following thought, "Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body" (1 Corinthians 6:18). One translation even says to "Run from sexual sin!" This is what the Bible is saying about sexual immorality right? ...But think about it in context of all sin. Now Scripture is saying especially with sexual sin because it is within the body and it takes on a whole new meaning because of it...however, I don't think it's right to only flee sin in the context of sexuality. After all, there are particular verses that address all sin as well: "But you, Timothy, are a man of God; so run from all these evil things. Pursue righteousness and a godly life, along with faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness"(1 Timothy 6:11), 1 Corinthians 10:13, etc.
People choose different physical boundaries within their relationship depending on their values, desires, needs, etc. Some people are less strict and some people more. One thing that came to mind as I was getting tired running, were the people who choose not to kiss until they're married or at least for a long time within the relationship...whoa, weird. Ha, that's funny that I say that considering I'm one of those people...of course I never ever thought I would be.
A lot of people ask why that's such a big deal to me or why that's even a reasonable option and that's what I was thinking about yesterday. See, I want to make sure that what I do isn't just for the sake of doing it to test myself (like deciding not to kiss until marriage), I want to do it in order to truly develop more into a woman of God that He created me to be. As I was thinking of the pros and cons of it, it hit me--this type of "extended" boundary helps to account for my own humanity. See, we as humans always "go too far." But what exactly does that mean? What does it have to mean? Really, you can only "go too far" by crossing that line of your the boundaries that you set for yourself because those are important to you. A person may make it their rule to not have sex and they may "go too far" without going all the way because they got a little too close. If a person accounts for this and makes a rule to not kiss, for example, even if they "go too far" it hasn't necessarily gotten to the point where they got a little too close to having sex.
Now I know, this may be a little strange to think about, but truly think about it. Now I'm not saying this was my train of thought in deciding this for now, because it kind of just happened by accident, but it really made me think. This doesn't only have to apply to physical boundaries within relationships either...remember, there's other sin out there ;)
See, what if instead of making it our priority to not do the sin that God says isn't good in the Bible, what if we took the initiative to take the next step and to not even get close. We don't want to test the waters and see how far we can push the envelope with God like we did with our parents when we were 3. Why not, instead of getting as close to the line without crossing it, do more to stay so far away from it that we can't even see it? Why not flee from sin or run away from sin instead of flirting with it? Why not account for our humanity and make sure we're serving God full heartedly instead of serving ourselves in the process?
Now I'm not saying you have to make it a rule in your relationship to not kiss or whatever or whatever. Not my job to say that. I'm saying, you know yourself better than you let on and you know when you're probably sinning without "going all the way" (that doesn't just apply to sexual immorality now). How could you change yourself for the better just by not even getting close? Think about it.
June 21, 2009
June 14, 2009
Trust...Is It a Must?
It's so hard to believe that a little over a year ago now I was in the second week of the best summer of my life. In fact, just a few weeks ago on June 2, I couldn't believe that a year ago that day I was on a plane from Chicago, IL to Manchester, NH to start an amazing adventure without a clue of what to expect. The fact that I'd meet the best friend I've ever had and my boyfriend along with meeting 50 other awesome, amazing people who I'm so blessed to call my friends and siblings in Christ was nowhere in my mindset heading into project. I never dreamed of having that type of experience...I never dreamed that a year later I would be traveling through the Great Plains storm chasing either! Wow, what will it be next June 2? It was a few days before that anniversary that I wrote this in my journal...something that God started to show me as I sat in a van driving through the middle of nowhere:
5/30/09
It's always been an issue for people finding it hard to believe that what is in the Bible is true. This is [mainly] because people wrote the Bible (physically). The thing is, don't people physically do every kind of reporting [there is] on this earth? Don't we trust doctors to be truthful and honest in giving us reports about what's wrong with us physically? Don't we trust psychologists to tell us what's wrong with us mentally? Why can't we, then, trust the people who have talked face-to-face with Jesus to tell us what's wrong with us spiritually? Isn't that also an important aspect of our health? Actually, since we all agree that everyone dies at some point, thus leaving us without a body and mind, wouldn't our spiritual health be most important to preserve and to make better?
My point is this, we trust people every day to share with us their expertise, experiences, knowledge, and advice. Why does that stop with spirituality? Yes, man in general is faulty and imperfect...so is this planet! Doing mathematical models and physical tests, we realize that real-world phenomena does not precisely follow the physical and mathematical principles that govern this planet. If it did, we wouldn't have to run so many experiments and have to calculate error into our findings. Just ask a physicist, a biologist, a doctor, a meteorologist, a chemist, you name it!
Is it because of our experiences with faultiness and imperfection that we can't understand a perfect God? Is this maybe why we refuse Biblical Scripture to be true, because we have an imperfect perception of a perfect God?
God came down to this earth in the form of a humble man. Why? He wanted to reach us on our level. He wanted to be like us so that He could reach us in the best way possible. When you talk to a child, do you talk to them as if they were another adult or a child?
Maybe, just maybe, God chose people to relay His amazing message in one book because He knew what He was doing. Just saying. God knows that we think in imperfect methodology because that's all we know. We've never experienced any perfect thing apart from Him and we can't even experience that without Him "dumming" it down for us. Am I saying Biblical Scripture is imperfect, heck no!
I fully do believe Biblical Scripture is the God-breathed, people-penmanship of God's exact Word. Do people who have autobiographies written normally physically write the work for themselves? No. They speak and it's written. Secretaries do this all the time. Does this mean that there will be a few mistakes in the writing the person does? Sure, sometimes. That's why the person dictating the letter, book, whatever re-reads it afterwards and edits the work.
Now think about it, if God is the One dictating this book, would He not make sure that what's in it is 100% correct? Remember, He's the only perfection ever existing!
As far as "creating" the Bible that we know today, I think the reasoning is simple as to how books were chosen and books were left out. Theologians and other experts who studied ancient texts, geography, geology, and all that knew what was in correlation with God's ways and customs and what wasn't. They're experts who studied the validity of each book in terms of credibility. Don't we normally trust experts?
Now I'm just saying that I don't think this is a valid claim to disagree with the Bible by saying it's because people wrote it. The fact that it's written by over 40 men in a span of about 1500 years in three different languages makes me believe in its credibility all the more. The fact that there are no known contradictions in the original texts and the fact that these men did not see each other's work when writing their own makes me believe in its credibility all the more. The fact that Jesus fulfilled over 360 prophesies from Scripture dating over a thousand years before his birth makes me believe in its credibility all the more. The fact that archaeological findings, well-known and trusted historians, and Josephus' writings continuously agree with the Gospels makes me believe in its credibility all the more.
You can say what you want about men writing the Bible but I challenge you to gather over 40 men from all around, 3 different languages, over 1500 years and tell them to write about their God and their experiences of Him and this so-called Messiah. Let me know what happens.
5/30/09
It's always been an issue for people finding it hard to believe that what is in the Bible is true. This is [mainly] because people wrote the Bible (physically). The thing is, don't people physically do every kind of reporting [there is] on this earth? Don't we trust doctors to be truthful and honest in giving us reports about what's wrong with us physically? Don't we trust psychologists to tell us what's wrong with us mentally? Why can't we, then, trust the people who have talked face-to-face with Jesus to tell us what's wrong with us spiritually? Isn't that also an important aspect of our health? Actually, since we all agree that everyone dies at some point, thus leaving us without a body and mind, wouldn't our spiritual health be most important to preserve and to make better?
My point is this, we trust people every day to share with us their expertise, experiences, knowledge, and advice. Why does that stop with spirituality? Yes, man in general is faulty and imperfect...so is this planet! Doing mathematical models and physical tests, we realize that real-world phenomena does not precisely follow the physical and mathematical principles that govern this planet. If it did, we wouldn't have to run so many experiments and have to calculate error into our findings. Just ask a physicist, a biologist, a doctor, a meteorologist, a chemist, you name it!
Is it because of our experiences with faultiness and imperfection that we can't understand a perfect God? Is this maybe why we refuse Biblical Scripture to be true, because we have an imperfect perception of a perfect God?
God came down to this earth in the form of a humble man. Why? He wanted to reach us on our level. He wanted to be like us so that He could reach us in the best way possible. When you talk to a child, do you talk to them as if they were another adult or a child?
Maybe, just maybe, God chose people to relay His amazing message in one book because He knew what He was doing. Just saying. God knows that we think in imperfect methodology because that's all we know. We've never experienced any perfect thing apart from Him and we can't even experience that without Him "dumming" it down for us. Am I saying Biblical Scripture is imperfect, heck no!
I fully do believe Biblical Scripture is the God-breathed, people-penmanship of God's exact Word. Do people who have autobiographies written normally physically write the work for themselves? No. They speak and it's written. Secretaries do this all the time. Does this mean that there will be a few mistakes in the writing the person does? Sure, sometimes. That's why the person dictating the letter, book, whatever re-reads it afterwards and edits the work.
Now think about it, if God is the One dictating this book, would He not make sure that what's in it is 100% correct? Remember, He's the only perfection ever existing!
As far as "creating" the Bible that we know today, I think the reasoning is simple as to how books were chosen and books were left out. Theologians and other experts who studied ancient texts, geography, geology, and all that knew what was in correlation with God's ways and customs and what wasn't. They're experts who studied the validity of each book in terms of credibility. Don't we normally trust experts?
Now I'm just saying that I don't think this is a valid claim to disagree with the Bible by saying it's because people wrote it. The fact that it's written by over 40 men in a span of about 1500 years in three different languages makes me believe in its credibility all the more. The fact that there are no known contradictions in the original texts and the fact that these men did not see each other's work when writing their own makes me believe in its credibility all the more. The fact that Jesus fulfilled over 360 prophesies from Scripture dating over a thousand years before his birth makes me believe in its credibility all the more. The fact that archaeological findings, well-known and trusted historians, and Josephus' writings continuously agree with the Gospels makes me believe in its credibility all the more.
You can say what you want about men writing the Bible but I challenge you to gather over 40 men from all around, 3 different languages, over 1500 years and tell them to write about their God and their experiences of Him and this so-called Messiah. Let me know what happens.
June 08, 2009
Day 18 of the Great Storm Chase!
Today was the last day of a long journey...Our trip only lasted 18 days but it seemed like years! Ha, it's true.
We started our day with a meeting at our hotel--not struck by a tornado last night--in Chillicothe, MO. We met to discuss the weather outlook for the day and to see if there was anything worth chasing or if we should just head straight home. After discussing that there was a slight risk for central and northeastern Illinois with not the best indices, we decided that it would be best if we just headed straight home. If anything did fire up, which it appears that some things did in those areas right about now, we knew that we would be losing daylight fast--like the past few days. Also, we knew that we would have to sit around and wait for things to happen, like we had to do the past few days, with the chance that nothing would happen, like the past few days. There really wasn't a big reason to try to chase since that would've put us back in Indiana at about 1-2 am.
Today, we just reflected on our time and drove. Nothing too special really. We ended up getting back to the suburbs of Indianapolis at about 7:30 pm or so and now I'm home. I think it's going to be strange not smelling horrific things all the time, although there's always my dad haha, and not having to see the same 11 people every moment of my waking hour. I think the weirdest adjustment, though, will be not feeling like a nomad and living in a van (not down by the river lol).
Thanks for being loyal followers of my blog and I invite you to check this site often because although I won't be blogging about sweet storm stories, or lack-there-of, I do love to blog about other things and things that I'm passionate about. Who knows, maybe I'll chase on my own a little bit too when things pop up around the area and I'll blog about those experiences...Thanks again and sorry I couldn't get a tornado for ya!
We started our day with a meeting at our hotel--not struck by a tornado last night--in Chillicothe, MO. We met to discuss the weather outlook for the day and to see if there was anything worth chasing or if we should just head straight home. After discussing that there was a slight risk for central and northeastern Illinois with not the best indices, we decided that it would be best if we just headed straight home. If anything did fire up, which it appears that some things did in those areas right about now, we knew that we would be losing daylight fast--like the past few days. Also, we knew that we would have to sit around and wait for things to happen, like we had to do the past few days, with the chance that nothing would happen, like the past few days. There really wasn't a big reason to try to chase since that would've put us back in Indiana at about 1-2 am.
Today, we just reflected on our time and drove. Nothing too special really. We ended up getting back to the suburbs of Indianapolis at about 7:30 pm or so and now I'm home. I think it's going to be strange not smelling horrific things all the time, although there's always my dad haha, and not having to see the same 11 people every moment of my waking hour. I think the weirdest adjustment, though, will be not feeling like a nomad and living in a van (not down by the river lol).
Thanks for being loyal followers of my blog and I invite you to check this site often because although I won't be blogging about sweet storm stories, or lack-there-of, I do love to blog about other things and things that I'm passionate about. Who knows, maybe I'll chase on my own a little bit too when things pop up around the area and I'll blog about those experiences...Thanks again and sorry I couldn't get a tornado for ya!
Day 17 of the Great Storm Chase!
Yo yo, so today we had a day let me tell you. We started off in Omaha, NE of course and we decided to to head south towards Topeka, KS to start off our day. We got there and had lunch at Wendy's and checked out some more soundings, indices, dew point temps, surface temps, maps, etc. to see where we should go and when things would fire up.
We, of course, ended up sitting around Wendy's for about 2 hours waiting on these storms to fire. We had the best location for when things actually would fire up since we could relocate to any general area, so we just had to wait and see where it would happen. We had amazing indices! There was almost a 4000 CAPE, -8 LI, decent CIN--although a little high, 84 Fahrenheit temp, 68 Fahrenheit dew, and not much cloud cover. Everything was perfect for supercells; we just needed a trigger to fire these storms. We were originally relying on the dryline to move in and get these storms to fire up in Topeka but we then realized that a deep, immature storm was starting to form northwest of us somewhat near Falls City, NE--but still in northern Kansas.
We grabbed our computers and ran to the vans to quickly gas up and hit the road to intercept this promising cell. We shot up north as fast as possible and we had Korey as navigator, Dan and Stephen on radar, and me and Brad as spotters. I also helped to figure out some road networks in the area and to help Korey in making sure roads were paved and all that. We were heading to the storm when one cell fired south of it and it was a better play than the original one we were looking at. By this time, the northern storm was more mature, had a slight hook, great shear, and a meso marker. We figured it would drop a tornado soon but we would have to go through the southern cell to get to it. Therefore, we decided to make a play on the supercell to the south since it was easier to get to and it was rapidly growing.
These cells were cruising though! They were moving at about 24 mph or so, so we had to book it in order to get ahead of it. We got to a decent location to intercept this storm when we also started running into A LOT of other chasers in the area. We stopped at a somewhat flat area to watch a shelf and wall cloud rotate to see if it would drop a tornado. We watched it for a little while and then saw that the rotation was slowing down and that the northern cell was getting better. After a few minutes of discussion, we decided to jut over to the northern cell. One of the biggest issue of this chase was the terrain. There were a lot of hills and a lot of trees that obstructed our view.
While we were passing the time at this cell, though, a few of us were talking about the "Bear Cage" of the supercell. I brought up the idea of bears actually coming from the Bear Cage and how absurd it would be if storms dropped every kind of bear from the sky instead of hail. Then someone brought up, what if storms dropped bears instead of tornadoes. Then we acted out what would happen and said that the bears would come spinning down from the sky and they'd be angry and hungry. It would be so much more dangerous to chase storms that dropped bears of every kind from the sky instead of tornadoes...we had nothing better to do, haha.
We ran into even more chasers as we went after this northern cell and we even saw the chasers that we ran into yesterday as well as the new TIV and Vortex 2. En route, we saw a town that got hammered by the storm. There were leaves and small branches all over the place from the wind. We even saw massive amounts of hail in neighboring fields, so one of our vans stopped to collect some of the hail stones. They were 4.25 inches--softball-sized hail! Also, we saw a lot of pods with anemometers and all kinds of instruments that were set along the roads, probably by Vortex 2 or someone else doing research. That was pretty cool to see.
We got to a great location where there were about 4 meso markers and we stopped and watched this storm as well. This is the point when everything started to get crazy. There were over 100 chasers lining the road, it was absolutely dangerous! So many locals, professionals, and hobbyists were chasing these storms and a lot of them were driving and parking crazily, which made for hazardous conditions on top of hazardous weather.
We watched this one for just a little bit when we were finally able to find a spot to pull over. We looked for a little while and then noticed that the southern cell was picking up strength quickly, so we decided to get back to that one. The traffic was so horrible on the 2-lane road that we saw a small break in the cars and we jumped in the vans as fast as possible and took off down the road.
We were able to get to a part of the storm that was looking monstrous! We could see where the core was and it was pouring down rain very heavily in that area. We saw something that looked like a lowering cloud briefly inside of the heavy rain and once we couldn't see much at all in that area, we decided to pull off onto a nearby road instead of punching that area and risking getting hit by something that was hidden--a tornado. We waited there for about a minute or two and then decided to punch it and drive through it to get to a better part of the storm. We got hit by golf ball sized hail on the way through and a lot of rain. We got to another small road that was horribly littered with chasers as far as you could see! It was absolutely ridiculous!
We watched these storms for awhile and saw several mesocyclones and wall clouds but we never got to see a tornado. It was getting really dark by this time so we decided to book a hotel, since we hadn't yet and it was already 9 pm with a bazillion chasers in the area. I was able to book a decent hotel about 40 miles away, thankfully, so we stopped off at KFC on the way to our hotel.
We ended up chasing into Missouri today, so we ended up in Chillicothe, MO for the night. We got to our hotel at a decent time and unloaded our vans. Not too long after we got here, one of the guys ran in our room and said that there was a tornado on the ground really close to our hotel. We quickly turned on the local news to see what they were saying and sure enough, there was a tornado on the ground right next to where we just came from and were chasing. A few of us ran into my professor's room and we were looking at the radar, velocity data, VIL data, etc. We figured out that we could drive north on the neighboring road for about 15 minutes and would be able to intercept the storm easily. We then figured out that the storm's velocity was about 30 mph northeast and we calculated that it would take about an hour for that part of the storm to reach our interception point...no tornado would last that long. We then saw that a decent cell that was rapidly growing with decent sized hail just southwest of us and heading right for our hotel. I kept an eye on it for awhile but it started dissipating soon before it got to us and didn't exactly amount to anything.
We did find out that there was a tornado within the heavy amount of rain that was right next to us when we decided to stop after losing sight of the lowering cloud. We were there, but the tornado was rain-wrapped and it was impossible to see a thing...I don't consider it as anything really. It was great that we were in the right location but it doesn't do much if you can't see it.
Today was a great day and unfortunately the last. Tomorrow we're heading back to Indiana but there's a possibility that we'll chase our way back. There's some decent outlooks for severe storms in east-central Illinois, so we are thinking about trying to check those storms out on our way. The only problem would be that it's pretty likely, at least at this point, that those storms will squall out and will probably thus not give us a tornado.
We've seen everything there is to see with severe storms and supercells on this trip...everything BUT a tornado :( Today, we saw an amazing sunset and a very vivid rainbow--the best I've ever seen in my entire life! It was so bold and we even were able to see the end of it! Can you believe it! (No, there was no leprechauns or pots of gold)
I guess there's always a slight chance for tomorrow--so for one last time, hope for the best!
Good night!
We, of course, ended up sitting around Wendy's for about 2 hours waiting on these storms to fire. We had the best location for when things actually would fire up since we could relocate to any general area, so we just had to wait and see where it would happen. We had amazing indices! There was almost a 4000 CAPE, -8 LI, decent CIN--although a little high, 84 Fahrenheit temp, 68 Fahrenheit dew, and not much cloud cover. Everything was perfect for supercells; we just needed a trigger to fire these storms. We were originally relying on the dryline to move in and get these storms to fire up in Topeka but we then realized that a deep, immature storm was starting to form northwest of us somewhat near Falls City, NE--but still in northern Kansas.
We grabbed our computers and ran to the vans to quickly gas up and hit the road to intercept this promising cell. We shot up north as fast as possible and we had Korey as navigator, Dan and Stephen on radar, and me and Brad as spotters. I also helped to figure out some road networks in the area and to help Korey in making sure roads were paved and all that. We were heading to the storm when one cell fired south of it and it was a better play than the original one we were looking at. By this time, the northern storm was more mature, had a slight hook, great shear, and a meso marker. We figured it would drop a tornado soon but we would have to go through the southern cell to get to it. Therefore, we decided to make a play on the supercell to the south since it was easier to get to and it was rapidly growing.
These cells were cruising though! They were moving at about 24 mph or so, so we had to book it in order to get ahead of it. We got to a decent location to intercept this storm when we also started running into A LOT of other chasers in the area. We stopped at a somewhat flat area to watch a shelf and wall cloud rotate to see if it would drop a tornado. We watched it for a little while and then saw that the rotation was slowing down and that the northern cell was getting better. After a few minutes of discussion, we decided to jut over to the northern cell. One of the biggest issue of this chase was the terrain. There were a lot of hills and a lot of trees that obstructed our view.
While we were passing the time at this cell, though, a few of us were talking about the "Bear Cage" of the supercell. I brought up the idea of bears actually coming from the Bear Cage and how absurd it would be if storms dropped every kind of bear from the sky instead of hail. Then someone brought up, what if storms dropped bears instead of tornadoes. Then we acted out what would happen and said that the bears would come spinning down from the sky and they'd be angry and hungry. It would be so much more dangerous to chase storms that dropped bears of every kind from the sky instead of tornadoes...we had nothing better to do, haha.
We ran into even more chasers as we went after this northern cell and we even saw the chasers that we ran into yesterday as well as the new TIV and Vortex 2. En route, we saw a town that got hammered by the storm. There were leaves and small branches all over the place from the wind. We even saw massive amounts of hail in neighboring fields, so one of our vans stopped to collect some of the hail stones. They were 4.25 inches--softball-sized hail! Also, we saw a lot of pods with anemometers and all kinds of instruments that were set along the roads, probably by Vortex 2 or someone else doing research. That was pretty cool to see.
We got to a great location where there were about 4 meso markers and we stopped and watched this storm as well. This is the point when everything started to get crazy. There were over 100 chasers lining the road, it was absolutely dangerous! So many locals, professionals, and hobbyists were chasing these storms and a lot of them were driving and parking crazily, which made for hazardous conditions on top of hazardous weather.
We watched this one for just a little bit when we were finally able to find a spot to pull over. We looked for a little while and then noticed that the southern cell was picking up strength quickly, so we decided to get back to that one. The traffic was so horrible on the 2-lane road that we saw a small break in the cars and we jumped in the vans as fast as possible and took off down the road.
We were able to get to a part of the storm that was looking monstrous! We could see where the core was and it was pouring down rain very heavily in that area. We saw something that looked like a lowering cloud briefly inside of the heavy rain and once we couldn't see much at all in that area, we decided to pull off onto a nearby road instead of punching that area and risking getting hit by something that was hidden--a tornado. We waited there for about a minute or two and then decided to punch it and drive through it to get to a better part of the storm. We got hit by golf ball sized hail on the way through and a lot of rain. We got to another small road that was horribly littered with chasers as far as you could see! It was absolutely ridiculous!
We watched these storms for awhile and saw several mesocyclones and wall clouds but we never got to see a tornado. It was getting really dark by this time so we decided to book a hotel, since we hadn't yet and it was already 9 pm with a bazillion chasers in the area. I was able to book a decent hotel about 40 miles away, thankfully, so we stopped off at KFC on the way to our hotel.
We ended up chasing into Missouri today, so we ended up in Chillicothe, MO for the night. We got to our hotel at a decent time and unloaded our vans. Not too long after we got here, one of the guys ran in our room and said that there was a tornado on the ground really close to our hotel. We quickly turned on the local news to see what they were saying and sure enough, there was a tornado on the ground right next to where we just came from and were chasing. A few of us ran into my professor's room and we were looking at the radar, velocity data, VIL data, etc. We figured out that we could drive north on the neighboring road for about 15 minutes and would be able to intercept the storm easily. We then figured out that the storm's velocity was about 30 mph northeast and we calculated that it would take about an hour for that part of the storm to reach our interception point...no tornado would last that long. We then saw that a decent cell that was rapidly growing with decent sized hail just southwest of us and heading right for our hotel. I kept an eye on it for awhile but it started dissipating soon before it got to us and didn't exactly amount to anything.
We did find out that there was a tornado within the heavy amount of rain that was right next to us when we decided to stop after losing sight of the lowering cloud. We were there, but the tornado was rain-wrapped and it was impossible to see a thing...I don't consider it as anything really. It was great that we were in the right location but it doesn't do much if you can't see it.
Today was a great day and unfortunately the last. Tomorrow we're heading back to Indiana but there's a possibility that we'll chase our way back. There's some decent outlooks for severe storms in east-central Illinois, so we are thinking about trying to check those storms out on our way. The only problem would be that it's pretty likely, at least at this point, that those storms will squall out and will probably thus not give us a tornado.
We've seen everything there is to see with severe storms and supercells on this trip...everything BUT a tornado :( Today, we saw an amazing sunset and a very vivid rainbow--the best I've ever seen in my entire life! It was so bold and we even were able to see the end of it! Can you believe it! (No, there was no leprechauns or pots of gold)
I guess there's always a slight chance for tomorrow--so for one last time, hope for the best!
Good night!
June 07, 2009
Day 16 of the Great Storm Chase!
Well, I don't even know why any of you are still reading my blogs, haha. Not really much to report about today except for another major bust. We left our hotel in Lexington, NE to head to Lincoln, NE and assess where the best spot for storms would be in that area. We figured things would fire up in that general vicinity and we were thinking of possibly finding something in deep southeastern Iowa.
I was the navigator today and I was extremely exhausted from yesterday and the fact that I haven't gotten more than 5 or so hours of sleep the past few days and have been going strong during those days was taking its toll on me. With that being said and the fact that I could barely keep my eyes open, I subjected myself to drinking an energy drink so that I could be alert and ready to navigate. It did the trick and navigating today wasn't that intense anyways.
We came into Lincoln and ate lunch at the amazing Cracker Barrel again and then we decided to head to Nebraska City and reevaluate again to see which direction we needed to head. When we got to Nebraska City, we pulled into a gas station that was near a hotel so we could get snacks, drinks, and tap into the neighboring hotel's internet. When we did, we realized that we should probably stay put in that area because it had the best chances for storms--if the cloud deck would ever move out.
We had a lot of trouble with cloud cover today and it was soaking up all of the sun's radiation and thus energy for our storms. The spot where we were stationed had a temperature of 94 and dew point of 70...it was miserable! I wore jeans today because it was 40 something in the city where we started and foggy. As we waited to see where we should go, if anywhere, some of us threw the football around even though it was horribly hot out.
The clouds weren't clearing very much and where they were clearing, it wasn't moving too fast. We watched for a little while and we sat in that parking lot for almost 3 hours! The NSSL probe stationed themselves there for a little while too and we saw Valporaiso chasers (also from Indiana) as well as several independent chasers who had the same idea as us. One of the guys got a chance to talk to the people from the National Severe Storms Laboratory Probe and he said that they punched the core yesterday that dropped baseball sized hail. Their van got damaged and they just got the windshield replaced because it got smashed out. Apparently, the majority of Vortex 2 was in western Nebraska for the day in the same spot where we chased yesterday because there were a few cells firing up in that area. They sent two vehicles to the area where we all were.
We finally decided to move on to Shenandoah, IA, which was only about 30 miles east of the Nebraska, Iowa border because it appeared that a few weak towers we saw east of us were starting to break the cap. We knew that it wasn't much and considering it was already 6:30 pm, if anything did actually fire up, it would probably happen either when it was dark or when it was getting pretty dark. We did want to give it a shot though and it was our only option to see anything for the day since everything turned out to be a bust. We got in the vans and headed east when we passed a few storm chasers on the side of the road looking at the sky; probably also trying to figure out whether anything was going to happen or not. We were getting closer to our destination when we passed an even bigger line of chasers looking at the sky, so we decided to stop and talk with them to pass the time, since any tower at all looked incredibly weak and incapable of producing anything more than rain.
We talked to them for a little bit and found out that they were from New York and had only been out for a week so far. Of course, everyone who we've ran into since yesterday has asked us if we saw the Wyoming tornado. Then they usually follow it up with some remark about how amazing it was, especially if they got there. They did the same thing ;/
It was pretty neat talking to them though and to hear their perspectives on things and learn that they've been chasing for over 14 or so years. We realized that we should just head to our hotel in Omaha and eat a decent restaurant for dinner so we left.
We got to Omaha and of course our Garmin GPS, which has been taking us to random places this whole time, got us somewhat lost in downtown Omaha and then died on us, haha. We had to try to charge it in the car and then it took us into a very bad part of town and got us lost again and then it finally got us to where we needed to be. Our joke of the trip has been that the Garmin is actually someone using it to take us into dark allies and dark truck stops, etc. and then somemone is there waiting to mug us. Yes, it has taken us to these places and for no apparent reason, haha.
We ate at a pretty good local restaurant and then we got to our hotel here in Omaha. a pretty lame and slow day fo sho.
Heather talked to WIBC yesterday and the guy asked her what the advantages were of being one of two of the only girls on the trip and afterwards we were thinking of things she should've said. I said that she should've said that we've learned a lot about farts, poop, alcohol, and women. Yesterday, my van spent over an hour talking about people who accidentally pooped their pants when they thought they only had to fart, haha. Today, there was a contest to see who could make the best farting noises with their mouths. Every girl we pass ever is rated on their scale of hotness and drinking stories are always shared and they often talk about which beer they like best. This is what we learn when we ride in the car with 10 other guys...haha. Also, we never stop smelling poo and feet and overall nastiness. Last night, all the guys were saying that our van smelled like a gerbal cage.
With all of that said, haha, I think I'm going to spare you the rest of the details about the awkness and nastiness of our times. Only two more days left so we're definitely getting extremely desparate and moody to see a tornado. Hope for the best!
Good night!
I was the navigator today and I was extremely exhausted from yesterday and the fact that I haven't gotten more than 5 or so hours of sleep the past few days and have been going strong during those days was taking its toll on me. With that being said and the fact that I could barely keep my eyes open, I subjected myself to drinking an energy drink so that I could be alert and ready to navigate. It did the trick and navigating today wasn't that intense anyways.
We came into Lincoln and ate lunch at the amazing Cracker Barrel again and then we decided to head to Nebraska City and reevaluate again to see which direction we needed to head. When we got to Nebraska City, we pulled into a gas station that was near a hotel so we could get snacks, drinks, and tap into the neighboring hotel's internet. When we did, we realized that we should probably stay put in that area because it had the best chances for storms--if the cloud deck would ever move out.
We had a lot of trouble with cloud cover today and it was soaking up all of the sun's radiation and thus energy for our storms. The spot where we were stationed had a temperature of 94 and dew point of 70...it was miserable! I wore jeans today because it was 40 something in the city where we started and foggy. As we waited to see where we should go, if anywhere, some of us threw the football around even though it was horribly hot out.
The clouds weren't clearing very much and where they were clearing, it wasn't moving too fast. We watched for a little while and we sat in that parking lot for almost 3 hours! The NSSL probe stationed themselves there for a little while too and we saw Valporaiso chasers (also from Indiana) as well as several independent chasers who had the same idea as us. One of the guys got a chance to talk to the people from the National Severe Storms Laboratory Probe and he said that they punched the core yesterday that dropped baseball sized hail. Their van got damaged and they just got the windshield replaced because it got smashed out. Apparently, the majority of Vortex 2 was in western Nebraska for the day in the same spot where we chased yesterday because there were a few cells firing up in that area. They sent two vehicles to the area where we all were.
We finally decided to move on to Shenandoah, IA, which was only about 30 miles east of the Nebraska, Iowa border because it appeared that a few weak towers we saw east of us were starting to break the cap. We knew that it wasn't much and considering it was already 6:30 pm, if anything did actually fire up, it would probably happen either when it was dark or when it was getting pretty dark. We did want to give it a shot though and it was our only option to see anything for the day since everything turned out to be a bust. We got in the vans and headed east when we passed a few storm chasers on the side of the road looking at the sky; probably also trying to figure out whether anything was going to happen or not. We were getting closer to our destination when we passed an even bigger line of chasers looking at the sky, so we decided to stop and talk with them to pass the time, since any tower at all looked incredibly weak and incapable of producing anything more than rain.
We talked to them for a little bit and found out that they were from New York and had only been out for a week so far. Of course, everyone who we've ran into since yesterday has asked us if we saw the Wyoming tornado. Then they usually follow it up with some remark about how amazing it was, especially if they got there. They did the same thing ;/
It was pretty neat talking to them though and to hear their perspectives on things and learn that they've been chasing for over 14 or so years. We realized that we should just head to our hotel in Omaha and eat a decent restaurant for dinner so we left.
We got to Omaha and of course our Garmin GPS, which has been taking us to random places this whole time, got us somewhat lost in downtown Omaha and then died on us, haha. We had to try to charge it in the car and then it took us into a very bad part of town and got us lost again and then it finally got us to where we needed to be. Our joke of the trip has been that the Garmin is actually someone using it to take us into dark allies and dark truck stops, etc. and then somemone is there waiting to mug us. Yes, it has taken us to these places and for no apparent reason, haha.
We ate at a pretty good local restaurant and then we got to our hotel here in Omaha. a pretty lame and slow day fo sho.
Heather talked to WIBC yesterday and the guy asked her what the advantages were of being one of two of the only girls on the trip and afterwards we were thinking of things she should've said. I said that she should've said that we've learned a lot about farts, poop, alcohol, and women. Yesterday, my van spent over an hour talking about people who accidentally pooped their pants when they thought they only had to fart, haha. Today, there was a contest to see who could make the best farting noises with their mouths. Every girl we pass ever is rated on their scale of hotness and drinking stories are always shared and they often talk about which beer they like best. This is what we learn when we ride in the car with 10 other guys...haha. Also, we never stop smelling poo and feet and overall nastiness. Last night, all the guys were saying that our van smelled like a gerbal cage.
With all of that said, haha, I think I'm going to spare you the rest of the details about the awkness and nastiness of our times. Only two more days left so we're definitely getting extremely desparate and moody to see a tornado. Hope for the best!
Good night!
June 06, 2009
Day 15 of the Great Storm Chase!
It's been a 17-hour day through 4 states (Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska) and in all honesty I'm surprised I'm even writing this blog tonight. Today was another horrible day in the way of disappointment. I feel like that's pretty much my theme in these blogs but I have to tell you, it's most def not by choice!
We started the day in Guymon, OK and were planning on heading towards the northwestern Kansas area. We had a very quick meeting and I ate my breakfast in literally 2 minutes and while analyzing and drawing out a surface map. We met at 9:00am CDT and we all agreed that we needed to hit the road ASAP to get to the area by the time we needed to, so we left. The ones of us analyzing and drawing out maps had to do it on the road and we were told to report our findings to Dr. Call 20 minutes after. I know I'm improving my skills because I'm absolutely horrible at creating isolines for some reason and have a hard time analyzing these maps that we get but today I seemed to be able to do it without much trouble at all and it was right on cue.
After we discussed everything that was going on via walkie talkies, we kept heading towards northwestern Kansas where we ate lunch and then decided to stop at a nearby hotel to use their Internet to get more soundings and outlooks from the SPC. It appeared that the best helicity was to the north but the best CAPE's were filling into the south. Also, we had decent moisture and temps all over but there was a pesky cloud deck that stationed itself in the areas we were hoping to get some storms. We also found that the LCL and LFC heights weren't too far apart meaning that the storms didn't have too far to go before reaching the level of free convection (LFC) and thus didn't have much CIN. This wasn't necessarily a good thing because this would potentially cause the storms to squall out and not be supercellular in nature. We had to make a choice about what we should do and we decided to stay put for a little while because we thought we had a good chance of good storms where we were.
We stuck around in the motel parking lot for awhile, with their permission of course, and the guys threw the football around and a few others of us just kind of sat around and kept an eye on things. We were there for a long time and in actuality it almost kind of reminded me of Hampton Beach. It was extremely hot, the motel looked like something straight from Hampton Beach, and we were all just chilling and not doing too much but hanging out. I miss project!
Dr. Call told us that there was a supercell forming in eastern Wyoming and wanted to know if we wanted to try to get to it. The thing was that the cell was 4 hours north of us and at that time didn't seem like the best idea. We figured that if we went after that cell we would cut ourselves off from any other possibility of getting to anything else that might fire up. The weirdest part was that the cell formed through the cloud deck...not normal since the daytime heating isn't as intense there. We sat around and hung out some more when we found that a tornado warning was reported for the cell in Wyoming and the cell had the perfect, textbook hook to it on the radar. It was the exact picture that we've studied in supercell formation and hooks. This thing had shear, high VIL's, large hail, and now a hook. We knew it was only a small matter of time before the tornado would touchdown. We were disappointed but we knew there was no way we could've gotten to that cell in time since there was only a half an hour to an hour between the time that we saw the cell and the time that it intensified to that point.
We decided that we did need to move somewhere though so we decided to head into northeastern Colorado since some storms were firing up south of Denver. We packed up and moved on about 40 minutes west and we made another decision to either go for the storms coming up from southern Denver or to move north to intercept the cell that was moving in from Wyoming into Nebraska. This was the point where we found out that tornado was reported from that cell that popped up in Wyoming and it was on the ground for 24 minutes! That's ridiculous! Apparently, Vortex 2 and Reed Timmer's group (the TIV and Discovery Channel people) got to that tornado on time and got amazing video and pictures of it...AWESOME! Just what we needed to boost morale, NOT.
We decided that it would be best to head north because the area had the best looking indices overall. We jumped in the vans and shot north into Nebraska to intercept these storms. We got closer to the storm and were heading into the part we wanted to be the most when we were having issues seeing past the hilly terrain. We were driving and all pumped when we saw what looked like a wall cloud. Then, hanging from that wall cloud was a little notch that appeared to start turning into a funnel. There were several notches all around it too and there was even a few wall clouds within that same area. It looked like a funnel starting to come down then we all started chanting and screaming when we saw it hit the ground! We were so excited to finally see a tornado and we were all so ecstatic!!
When we got closer, we realized that what we saw was a mere allusion. It was only scud from the storm and is often mistaken for funnel clouds, wall clouds, tornadoes, etc. AWESOME! This is when we started to really get ticked I'm pretty sure. We had an amazing view of the sky with the sunsetting in the background, rain shafts and a meso to the right of it, and another promising cell to the left of it. It was definitely one of the most amazing views I've ever seen!
We decided to go on top of a nearby hill in the field neighboring the road where we parked to get a better view since the hill blocked it from the other cell just next to us. We were up there for awhile when we decided that it would be best to come down since the lightning started to pick up a lot more. We could've easily been struck if we stayed up there. We came back to the vans and watched the storm hoping and praying for a tornado until it got pretty dark. We decided to move back up the road a little bit to get a better view of the cell to our left.
We went on top of that hill to get a better view as well. When we did, we watched the storm desperately seeking the rain shaft and bottom of the shelf cloud for a lowering wall cloud, but it never happened. We looked back towards the road to see some of Vortex 2 traveling past us. A local college girl joined us for a small part of our time while we were looking at the sky because she was a storm spotter. She was on the phone with her dad as the Vortex 2 vehicles passed by and she said that we were on the Weather Channel live. Apparently, the truck was doing a live feed of the storm we were watching when they drove by and they got us on top of the hill.
We watched that one for awhile too but it was getting really dark at this point and the lightning was getting more and more intense. In fact, there was one lightning strike that was less than a mile away and we all ran as fast as we could back to the vans, haha. We went up the road a little bit more to keep watching these storms from the inside of our vans because they had amazing potential to drop a tornado. There was lightning all around us and the once barren road was littered with local storm spotters, enthusiasts, and chasers all hoping for a tornado to form. We finally decided to leave when we couldn't see a thing anymore and it was already after 9:30 pm MDT. We still had a little over 2 hours to our hotel and we still had to stop for dinner.
We made a quick stop at a gas station that had a Subway and we noticed that everyone and their brother that was out chasing was also there. We saw some of Vortex 2's greatest equipment there: the 2 Doppler's on wheels and the mesonet. Apparently, the Weather Channel's on-air talent was also there but I was in such a horrible mood that I didn't really care too much. We got back in the vans to head to our final destination in Lexington, NE when we looked at the radar to see that the highway we were planning on taking the whole way there was getting hammered with baseball sized hail and a good threat for a tornado. There was a tornado warning out for that exact area and we had to be very cautious because of the huge hail and the fact that if there was a tornado, we wouldn't be able to see it--making it incredibly dangerous.
After a long discussion and look at the maps, we decided to start out on that road still and to pull off in Paxton, NE. It was also during this time that we found out that a tornado struck Paxton only 20 minutes earlier...Awesome! Another tornado out of reach and impossible to see, literally.
We got to Paxton and reevaluated to find that the storm that was once tracking south southeast was now tracking straight east. This was great news because it meant that our path would be crystal clear to get to our hotel. When we pulled off in Paxton, we passed another entourage of Vortex 2 and a whole heap of semi's and cars pulled off on the side of the road too scared to punch through the storm--who could blame them? Part of our reasoning to continue on was because one of Vortex 2's most expensive piece of equipment continued on US-80, the road we were debating taking, and we knew that they wouldn't drive that into baseball sized hail. When we saw that they were going for it, we knew that it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to continue on instead of trying to wait the storm out, so we left.
The rest of the night was smooth sailing but we didn't get to our hotel until 2:00 am CDT this time...like I said, I'm surprised I'm even writing this right now but I wanted to do it while it was still fresh. Tomorrow's outlooks look okay but worse than today's so we can only hope now...oh, we can only hope. We only have about 3 more days roughly and this is a very bittersweet ending as of now. Tensions are at a max, frustrations overloaded, and the group is getting dangerously close to our breaking point. We each feel so horribly defeated right now and it seems as if anyone could snap at any minute...not a good thing that's for sure. Hope for the best!
Good night!
We started the day in Guymon, OK and were planning on heading towards the northwestern Kansas area. We had a very quick meeting and I ate my breakfast in literally 2 minutes and while analyzing and drawing out a surface map. We met at 9:00am CDT and we all agreed that we needed to hit the road ASAP to get to the area by the time we needed to, so we left. The ones of us analyzing and drawing out maps had to do it on the road and we were told to report our findings to Dr. Call 20 minutes after. I know I'm improving my skills because I'm absolutely horrible at creating isolines for some reason and have a hard time analyzing these maps that we get but today I seemed to be able to do it without much trouble at all and it was right on cue.
After we discussed everything that was going on via walkie talkies, we kept heading towards northwestern Kansas where we ate lunch and then decided to stop at a nearby hotel to use their Internet to get more soundings and outlooks from the SPC. It appeared that the best helicity was to the north but the best CAPE's were filling into the south. Also, we had decent moisture and temps all over but there was a pesky cloud deck that stationed itself in the areas we were hoping to get some storms. We also found that the LCL and LFC heights weren't too far apart meaning that the storms didn't have too far to go before reaching the level of free convection (LFC) and thus didn't have much CIN. This wasn't necessarily a good thing because this would potentially cause the storms to squall out and not be supercellular in nature. We had to make a choice about what we should do and we decided to stay put for a little while because we thought we had a good chance of good storms where we were.
We stuck around in the motel parking lot for awhile, with their permission of course, and the guys threw the football around and a few others of us just kind of sat around and kept an eye on things. We were there for a long time and in actuality it almost kind of reminded me of Hampton Beach. It was extremely hot, the motel looked like something straight from Hampton Beach, and we were all just chilling and not doing too much but hanging out. I miss project!
Dr. Call told us that there was a supercell forming in eastern Wyoming and wanted to know if we wanted to try to get to it. The thing was that the cell was 4 hours north of us and at that time didn't seem like the best idea. We figured that if we went after that cell we would cut ourselves off from any other possibility of getting to anything else that might fire up. The weirdest part was that the cell formed through the cloud deck...not normal since the daytime heating isn't as intense there. We sat around and hung out some more when we found that a tornado warning was reported for the cell in Wyoming and the cell had the perfect, textbook hook to it on the radar. It was the exact picture that we've studied in supercell formation and hooks. This thing had shear, high VIL's, large hail, and now a hook. We knew it was only a small matter of time before the tornado would touchdown. We were disappointed but we knew there was no way we could've gotten to that cell in time since there was only a half an hour to an hour between the time that we saw the cell and the time that it intensified to that point.
We decided that we did need to move somewhere though so we decided to head into northeastern Colorado since some storms were firing up south of Denver. We packed up and moved on about 40 minutes west and we made another decision to either go for the storms coming up from southern Denver or to move north to intercept the cell that was moving in from Wyoming into Nebraska. This was the point where we found out that tornado was reported from that cell that popped up in Wyoming and it was on the ground for 24 minutes! That's ridiculous! Apparently, Vortex 2 and Reed Timmer's group (the TIV and Discovery Channel people) got to that tornado on time and got amazing video and pictures of it...AWESOME! Just what we needed to boost morale, NOT.
We decided that it would be best to head north because the area had the best looking indices overall. We jumped in the vans and shot north into Nebraska to intercept these storms. We got closer to the storm and were heading into the part we wanted to be the most when we were having issues seeing past the hilly terrain. We were driving and all pumped when we saw what looked like a wall cloud. Then, hanging from that wall cloud was a little notch that appeared to start turning into a funnel. There were several notches all around it too and there was even a few wall clouds within that same area. It looked like a funnel starting to come down then we all started chanting and screaming when we saw it hit the ground! We were so excited to finally see a tornado and we were all so ecstatic!!
When we got closer, we realized that what we saw was a mere allusion. It was only scud from the storm and is often mistaken for funnel clouds, wall clouds, tornadoes, etc. AWESOME! This is when we started to really get ticked I'm pretty sure. We had an amazing view of the sky with the sunsetting in the background, rain shafts and a meso to the right of it, and another promising cell to the left of it. It was definitely one of the most amazing views I've ever seen!
We decided to go on top of a nearby hill in the field neighboring the road where we parked to get a better view since the hill blocked it from the other cell just next to us. We were up there for awhile when we decided that it would be best to come down since the lightning started to pick up a lot more. We could've easily been struck if we stayed up there. We came back to the vans and watched the storm hoping and praying for a tornado until it got pretty dark. We decided to move back up the road a little bit to get a better view of the cell to our left.
We went on top of that hill to get a better view as well. When we did, we watched the storm desperately seeking the rain shaft and bottom of the shelf cloud for a lowering wall cloud, but it never happened. We looked back towards the road to see some of Vortex 2 traveling past us. A local college girl joined us for a small part of our time while we were looking at the sky because she was a storm spotter. She was on the phone with her dad as the Vortex 2 vehicles passed by and she said that we were on the Weather Channel live. Apparently, the truck was doing a live feed of the storm we were watching when they drove by and they got us on top of the hill.
We watched that one for awhile too but it was getting really dark at this point and the lightning was getting more and more intense. In fact, there was one lightning strike that was less than a mile away and we all ran as fast as we could back to the vans, haha. We went up the road a little bit more to keep watching these storms from the inside of our vans because they had amazing potential to drop a tornado. There was lightning all around us and the once barren road was littered with local storm spotters, enthusiasts, and chasers all hoping for a tornado to form. We finally decided to leave when we couldn't see a thing anymore and it was already after 9:30 pm MDT. We still had a little over 2 hours to our hotel and we still had to stop for dinner.
We made a quick stop at a gas station that had a Subway and we noticed that everyone and their brother that was out chasing was also there. We saw some of Vortex 2's greatest equipment there: the 2 Doppler's on wheels and the mesonet. Apparently, the Weather Channel's on-air talent was also there but I was in such a horrible mood that I didn't really care too much. We got back in the vans to head to our final destination in Lexington, NE when we looked at the radar to see that the highway we were planning on taking the whole way there was getting hammered with baseball sized hail and a good threat for a tornado. There was a tornado warning out for that exact area and we had to be very cautious because of the huge hail and the fact that if there was a tornado, we wouldn't be able to see it--making it incredibly dangerous.
After a long discussion and look at the maps, we decided to start out on that road still and to pull off in Paxton, NE. It was also during this time that we found out that a tornado struck Paxton only 20 minutes earlier...Awesome! Another tornado out of reach and impossible to see, literally.
We got to Paxton and reevaluated to find that the storm that was once tracking south southeast was now tracking straight east. This was great news because it meant that our path would be crystal clear to get to our hotel. When we pulled off in Paxton, we passed another entourage of Vortex 2 and a whole heap of semi's and cars pulled off on the side of the road too scared to punch through the storm--who could blame them? Part of our reasoning to continue on was because one of Vortex 2's most expensive piece of equipment continued on US-80, the road we were debating taking, and we knew that they wouldn't drive that into baseball sized hail. When we saw that they were going for it, we knew that it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to continue on instead of trying to wait the storm out, so we left.
The rest of the night was smooth sailing but we didn't get to our hotel until 2:00 am CDT this time...like I said, I'm surprised I'm even writing this right now but I wanted to do it while it was still fresh. Tomorrow's outlooks look okay but worse than today's so we can only hope now...oh, we can only hope. We only have about 3 more days roughly and this is a very bittersweet ending as of now. Tensions are at a max, frustrations overloaded, and the group is getting dangerously close to our breaking point. We each feel so horribly defeated right now and it seems as if anyone could snap at any minute...not a good thing that's for sure. Hope for the best!
Good night!
June 05, 2009
Day 14 of the Great Storm Chase!
Today was definitely interesting...in a weird way. We started off in Wichita Falls, TX and were planning on heading towards Amarillo for a slight chance for some storms--pretty slight. We weren't in too much of a hurry because the best indices were for around 7 pm tonight so we were expecting to get there about 3 or 4 pm to have some leeway in what we were able to do. I have to say, Texas reaks! Between the guys in the car and the towns and cows outside, I didn't stop smelling poo and other nasties the entire day, SICK!
As we got closer, we got more skeptical about the possibility of severe storms, or at least supercells and tornadoes. We went through Amarillo and a little northwest of the city because there were a few cells firing up in that area. They didn't look like supercells but they looked okay for the time. We were shocked when we found out that it generated a tornado warning because a law enforcement officer reported a land spout from it...we were all skeptical as to what he actually saw because the radar didn't show much at all for that storm. We kept going towards it anyways because it was the best option we had and then we had to turn and backtrack a little and to our west when we realized that something better was happening on the other side of the storm. We saw a shelf cloud and were racing to get closer to the area because we noticed that a few notches kept wanting to form off of that. We saw a few brief wall clouds from from the shelf and we saw a lot more mammatus clouds. There was also a decent couplet on the velocity radar, high VIL values, decent amounts of hail, and an evident notch on the radar indicating a possibly imminent hook.
We found the perfect road to take to get to that area because we had a few other shelf clouds to our immediate left and right above us. Today, we saw several gustnadoes and one really well-defined one. We decided to stop at a nearby road to take a few pictures of the lowering shelf cloud, gustnadoes, and the amazing skyline. There were a few rotating clouds that came along with that as well. When we stopped and got out to take pictures, we noticed there was a lot of tall grass and since we were in Texas we had to be leery about deadly snakes being around. We also had to stay somewhat close to the vans since there was a decent amount of lightning in the area. We noticed that the gust front was moving towards us and fast along with a lot of rain so we jumped back in the vans before we got blown away. When we did, we noticed that a huge swarm of gnats attacked our van and were all over the inside, SICK! That was probably the worst part!
It was a good thing that we got back in the vans when we did because right after we did, the gust front moved in strong and the grass was completely horizontal. As we drove down the road a little ways we could see that a lot of dust filled the air from the gust front acting on that dirt road that we pulled off on. We had to keep our eyes to the sky since there were a lot of shelf clouds and a lot of rotation above us.
We decided to start heading south once we got to the western boundary of the storm to try to attack it from a different angle. We pulled off again a little ways down the road to re-assess and decide where to go next. As we did, we saw the really well-defined gustnado ripping through a cornfield parallel to the road. This land was perfect to get hit by a tornado, in our case--it was flat, not very populated at all, and only some fields in the area.
This is the point where our group became pretty divided and tensions got a little heated. Some wanted to stop chasing and start getting into position for tomorrow and the rest of us, especially me, wanted to keep chasing because we still had a pretty decent shot at this storm. The part that we were originally chasing was starting to squall out and die off because they seemed to be merging together, but there was a storm that was still a little to our south that was picking up intensity and started to show some nice couplets on the velocity radar, indicating good amounts of shear and thus rotation. There were also high decibels indicated on the radar with high cloud tops indicating that it was a pretty strong and energetic storm.
It became even more complicated to decide what to do because another guy and I were the Day 1 people, in charge of deciding where to go and what to do with the storms, and he wanted to position for tomorrow and I wanted to continue. We decided to go for it for about 20 more minutes to give this storm a shot.
As we did, we realized where we were in relation to the storm. The RFD became really well-defined as we saw an amazing view of the downdraft to our east and as we traveled further south we could see more and more downdraft becoming evident. I made a comment that we were in the Magic School Bus because it was like we were taking a virtual tour of a textbook example of a strong thunderstorm. It was amazing!
We got to a point where we ran out of decent road networks and we couldn't seem to get to a decent spot to capture this storm so we decided to call it a day. Another huge disappointment!
To make matters worse, Korey got a text message from his mom saying that the SPC reported a tornado touchdown at 6:33 pm in Amarillo, TX. The spot where the tornado hit was only 5-10 miles away from us at that point! I couldn't believe it! I was angry, sad, frustrated, and disappointed on top of being exhausted. It was painful because there was no way that we could've known that was there and it was so close! Nothing indicated that a tornado should've necessarily been at that spot at that time so there was no way for us to predict that but it was still painful. It was so much worse than losing that all important game in a sport.
I couldn't help but wonder why. Why would we get so close and then have a tornado be right next to us without us having a clue? Soon after we found that out, we were all pretty much in a daze and everyone was listening to their iPod's when we noticed a cloud off to the distance in the dark sky. The cloud was in the exact shape of a tornado. We could tell that it wasn't an actual tornado, but it was a 2-D image of a tornado that just happened to form from a cloud. I couldn't help but laugh a little, it made me more angry, and I honestly even shed a tear. I prayed just a few minutes before I saw that asking God why we would get so close and then a tornado would form right next to us without us even being aware. After all, He knows how desperate and passionate we are about finding at least one tornado on this stinking trip! I couldn't help but think that this cloud was a pure reassurance, whether you believe it or not...it brought me more frustration but yet a deep since of peace about finding one of nature's most powerful, extreme, and miraculous occurrences. Honestly, how often do you see a tornado-shaped cloud after a day like this but it's not truly a tornado. It was the PERFECT shape and image against the dark sky. It didn't even last long, just long enough for us each to see it and chuckle.
Tomorrow has the best outlook yet for tornadoes so we're all VERY excited and hoping that it won't be another crap out. We're looking to head into northwestern Kansas where the SPC issued a 10% chance of tornadoes (may seem low but the most we've had so far is 2%) and the Weather Channel's Vortex 2 is saying that there's a 5 out of 10chance that tornadoes will form in that area. We're hoping for a huge breakthrough and a relief to all of our tension and frustration of a 15-day dry period. Hope for the best!
Good night!
As we got closer, we got more skeptical about the possibility of severe storms, or at least supercells and tornadoes. We went through Amarillo and a little northwest of the city because there were a few cells firing up in that area. They didn't look like supercells but they looked okay for the time. We were shocked when we found out that it generated a tornado warning because a law enforcement officer reported a land spout from it...we were all skeptical as to what he actually saw because the radar didn't show much at all for that storm. We kept going towards it anyways because it was the best option we had and then we had to turn and backtrack a little and to our west when we realized that something better was happening on the other side of the storm. We saw a shelf cloud and were racing to get closer to the area because we noticed that a few notches kept wanting to form off of that. We saw a few brief wall clouds from from the shelf and we saw a lot more mammatus clouds. There was also a decent couplet on the velocity radar, high VIL values, decent amounts of hail, and an evident notch on the radar indicating a possibly imminent hook.
We found the perfect road to take to get to that area because we had a few other shelf clouds to our immediate left and right above us. Today, we saw several gustnadoes and one really well-defined one. We decided to stop at a nearby road to take a few pictures of the lowering shelf cloud, gustnadoes, and the amazing skyline. There were a few rotating clouds that came along with that as well. When we stopped and got out to take pictures, we noticed there was a lot of tall grass and since we were in Texas we had to be leery about deadly snakes being around. We also had to stay somewhat close to the vans since there was a decent amount of lightning in the area. We noticed that the gust front was moving towards us and fast along with a lot of rain so we jumped back in the vans before we got blown away. When we did, we noticed that a huge swarm of gnats attacked our van and were all over the inside, SICK! That was probably the worst part!
It was a good thing that we got back in the vans when we did because right after we did, the gust front moved in strong and the grass was completely horizontal. As we drove down the road a little ways we could see that a lot of dust filled the air from the gust front acting on that dirt road that we pulled off on. We had to keep our eyes to the sky since there were a lot of shelf clouds and a lot of rotation above us.
We decided to start heading south once we got to the western boundary of the storm to try to attack it from a different angle. We pulled off again a little ways down the road to re-assess and decide where to go next. As we did, we saw the really well-defined gustnado ripping through a cornfield parallel to the road. This land was perfect to get hit by a tornado, in our case--it was flat, not very populated at all, and only some fields in the area.
This is the point where our group became pretty divided and tensions got a little heated. Some wanted to stop chasing and start getting into position for tomorrow and the rest of us, especially me, wanted to keep chasing because we still had a pretty decent shot at this storm. The part that we were originally chasing was starting to squall out and die off because they seemed to be merging together, but there was a storm that was still a little to our south that was picking up intensity and started to show some nice couplets on the velocity radar, indicating good amounts of shear and thus rotation. There were also high decibels indicated on the radar with high cloud tops indicating that it was a pretty strong and energetic storm.
It became even more complicated to decide what to do because another guy and I were the Day 1 people, in charge of deciding where to go and what to do with the storms, and he wanted to position for tomorrow and I wanted to continue. We decided to go for it for about 20 more minutes to give this storm a shot.
As we did, we realized where we were in relation to the storm. The RFD became really well-defined as we saw an amazing view of the downdraft to our east and as we traveled further south we could see more and more downdraft becoming evident. I made a comment that we were in the Magic School Bus because it was like we were taking a virtual tour of a textbook example of a strong thunderstorm. It was amazing!
We got to a point where we ran out of decent road networks and we couldn't seem to get to a decent spot to capture this storm so we decided to call it a day. Another huge disappointment!
To make matters worse, Korey got a text message from his mom saying that the SPC reported a tornado touchdown at 6:33 pm in Amarillo, TX. The spot where the tornado hit was only 5-10 miles away from us at that point! I couldn't believe it! I was angry, sad, frustrated, and disappointed on top of being exhausted. It was painful because there was no way that we could've known that was there and it was so close! Nothing indicated that a tornado should've necessarily been at that spot at that time so there was no way for us to predict that but it was still painful. It was so much worse than losing that all important game in a sport.
I couldn't help but wonder why. Why would we get so close and then have a tornado be right next to us without us having a clue? Soon after we found that out, we were all pretty much in a daze and everyone was listening to their iPod's when we noticed a cloud off to the distance in the dark sky. The cloud was in the exact shape of a tornado. We could tell that it wasn't an actual tornado, but it was a 2-D image of a tornado that just happened to form from a cloud. I couldn't help but laugh a little, it made me more angry, and I honestly even shed a tear. I prayed just a few minutes before I saw that asking God why we would get so close and then a tornado would form right next to us without us even being aware. After all, He knows how desperate and passionate we are about finding at least one tornado on this stinking trip! I couldn't help but think that this cloud was a pure reassurance, whether you believe it or not...it brought me more frustration but yet a deep since of peace about finding one of nature's most powerful, extreme, and miraculous occurrences. Honestly, how often do you see a tornado-shaped cloud after a day like this but it's not truly a tornado. It was the PERFECT shape and image against the dark sky. It didn't even last long, just long enough for us each to see it and chuckle.
Tomorrow has the best outlook yet for tornadoes so we're all VERY excited and hoping that it won't be another crap out. We're looking to head into northwestern Kansas where the SPC issued a 10% chance of tornadoes (may seem low but the most we've had so far is 2%) and the Weather Channel's Vortex 2 is saying that there's a 5 out of 10chance that tornadoes will form in that area. We're hoping for a huge breakthrough and a relief to all of our tension and frustration of a 15-day dry period. Hope for the best!
Good night!
Day 13 of the Great Storm Chase!
Today-another late night so still catching up on blogs-we had a chill day to recover from yesterday. We were in Grand Island, TX so we decided to sleep in, hit up Walmart, and then head to Dallas to check out the sights.
We stopped at the new Cowboys' stadium on our way downtown because one of the guys is a die hard fan and a lot of people wanted to see it as well. It was pretty cool even though I know nothing about the Cowboys or anything about that stadium--didn't even know they built a new one. We were taking pictures and checking it out when a news reporter came up and interviewed Korey, the die hard fan. He loved it and it was pretty funny to get even more publicity for sight-seeing! It should be on http://www.the33tv.com/news/kdaf-stadium-tourism-story,0,1558176.story but the video keeps coming up unavailable so...
After that we headed to downtown to go to the JFK Museum at the sight where he got shot. It was kind of in a sketch place but it was really interesting once we got inside. The museum was completely on the 6th floor of the old Texas Book Depository, which was where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots that shocked the world. It was a very detailed, well-done, and in-depth museum that I actually found interesting. I usually am not much on history, like at all!, but this was something that really struck me. The museum walked you through every detail of JFK's presidency and then into his death and then into the aftermath from every angle they could find. They even preserved the corner where they found the shells and the gun. It was nuts to look out the window next to the one used to shoot JFK and see the exact spot where he was shot in his motorcade. It was a somber feeling and it was pretty eerie...very sad.
We then left to head to our final destination for the night. We hit up a really nice steakhouse in town since we were in Texas and that was interesting let me tell you! The food was amazing, the decor stereotypical Texan, and the people in cowboy hats...everywhere! When we were practically done eating, I was talking with my professor about New Hampshire when it happened...A girl, wearing a low-cut top, came up to Dr. Call (very drunk) and asked if she could write on him. He looked really shocked and confused, everyone at our table was staring now. She said she wanted to give him her number so she wanted to write it on his hand. He was still in shock but he agreed because he was still in shock and blushing A LOT! At this point we were all laughing pretty hard because it was the most unlikely event to happen all night...or trip for that matter. She asked what his name was and he couldn't even remember! Everyone started chanting "the Extreme!" because they nick-named him that after Bill Paxton on Twister. Everyone had their cameras out at this point so the girl asked if she get could a picture with him so he did. She bent down a little bit and put her arm around him. Then, she took his head and shoved it in her chest...didn't expect that one! She thanked him and told him to call her because it was her birthday and she should be allowed to do that. Everyone just kept chanting, "the Extreme" for awhile after she walked away. Stephen, another guy from IU, has a tendency to throw up and/or pass out when he laughs too hard so he literally had to turn his back on everything so he wouldn't laugh too hard. He said he was convulsing and sweating already at that point. It was a pretty hilarious experience in all I must say.
After that we headed to our hotel to check in and to get ready for the next day.
Good night!
We stopped at the new Cowboys' stadium on our way downtown because one of the guys is a die hard fan and a lot of people wanted to see it as well. It was pretty cool even though I know nothing about the Cowboys or anything about that stadium--didn't even know they built a new one. We were taking pictures and checking it out when a news reporter came up and interviewed Korey, the die hard fan. He loved it and it was pretty funny to get even more publicity for sight-seeing! It should be on http://www.the33tv.com/news/kdaf-stadium-tourism-story,0,1558176.story but the video keeps coming up unavailable so...
After that we headed to downtown to go to the JFK Museum at the sight where he got shot. It was kind of in a sketch place but it was really interesting once we got inside. The museum was completely on the 6th floor of the old Texas Book Depository, which was where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots that shocked the world. It was a very detailed, well-done, and in-depth museum that I actually found interesting. I usually am not much on history, like at all!, but this was something that really struck me. The museum walked you through every detail of JFK's presidency and then into his death and then into the aftermath from every angle they could find. They even preserved the corner where they found the shells and the gun. It was nuts to look out the window next to the one used to shoot JFK and see the exact spot where he was shot in his motorcade. It was a somber feeling and it was pretty eerie...very sad.
We then left to head to our final destination for the night. We hit up a really nice steakhouse in town since we were in Texas and that was interesting let me tell you! The food was amazing, the decor stereotypical Texan, and the people in cowboy hats...everywhere! When we were practically done eating, I was talking with my professor about New Hampshire when it happened...A girl, wearing a low-cut top, came up to Dr. Call (very drunk) and asked if she could write on him. He looked really shocked and confused, everyone at our table was staring now. She said she wanted to give him her number so she wanted to write it on his hand. He was still in shock but he agreed because he was still in shock and blushing A LOT! At this point we were all laughing pretty hard because it was the most unlikely event to happen all night...or trip for that matter. She asked what his name was and he couldn't even remember! Everyone started chanting "the Extreme!" because they nick-named him that after Bill Paxton on Twister. Everyone had their cameras out at this point so the girl asked if she get could a picture with him so he did. She bent down a little bit and put her arm around him. Then, she took his head and shoved it in her chest...didn't expect that one! She thanked him and told him to call her because it was her birthday and she should be allowed to do that. Everyone just kept chanting, "the Extreme" for awhile after she walked away. Stephen, another guy from IU, has a tendency to throw up and/or pass out when he laughs too hard so he literally had to turn his back on everything so he wouldn't laugh too hard. He said he was convulsing and sweating already at that point. It was a pretty hilarious experience in all I must say.
After that we headed to our hotel to check in and to get ready for the next day.
Good night!
June 04, 2009
Day 12 of the Great Storm Chase!
What an amazing day (even if this blog is a day late)! Today we drove from Emporia, KS to our ending point in Ft. Worth, TX...yep, we racked up over 700 miles total today! Our professor figured out that we drove as many miles today as it would've taken going from Emporia back to Muncie from which we originally started this trip. I know you're thinking, whoa, whoa, whoa! the drive from Emporia, KS to Ft. Worth, TX is only about 440 miles, not 700!
I understand but when you're on a chase trip thinking that the storms are going to be in western Oklahoma starting out and then you realize that the storms are actually forming in northern Texas, you're going to drive a whole heck of a lot chasing these storms down! Like I said, we originally were thinking that these storms were going to spring up somewhere in western Oklahoma and that was our original target area. We even left at 8 am to make sure we would get there in time.
Once we looked at the data more, we realized that a few of our peoples' prognostics that storms would happen in Texas were right and that we could actually get there in time; we kicked it into high gear! We ate a quick lunch at the ol McDonalds at about 11:30 am and then we were chasing the rest of the day. We were so excited because the cell we were going after was growing and at the perfect rate! It was definitely developing but not so fast that we couldn't get there in time. When we were about 20 miles outside of our intercept spot, our cell got a tornado warning. JACKPOT!
We were even more pumped as we drove further into the gloomy and dark skies. We got to one point on this storm and we could definitely see the hook and the shelf cloud. We got out of the vans, into very thick grass which apparently had snakes in it, and we put our cameras to the sky hoping for the best. We stayed there for awhile and the sky started turning green...oh yeah! This whole trip we've all been quoting Twister nonstop so of course this gave us a golden opportunity--"WE'RE GOING GREEN! Saddle up!"
Why does the sky turn green before a tornado or with severe weather? Hmm, great question! Well, the colors of anything are the ability of that surface to reflect, absorb, and/or scatter light that hits it. The sky is blue because of the particles in the air and the way that the light gets scattered on it's way to the earth's surface--in a nutshell. The sky turns a greenish color due to the hail that's coming down. Actually, we were able to see just one small pocket of the sky that turned greenish turquoise before the whole sky appeared to be that color. The way the ice balls, hail, scatters and reflects light is the ability to make the sky appear green. Hail usually accompanies tornadoes and strikes right before tornadoes so when the sky turns green you know you're getting into the vault, or "bear's cage," of the storm. This is where the hook echo occurs on the radar and in the storm--the vault. The hook looks just like that, a hook, and it appears this way on the radar because the particulates and water droplets within that part of the storm are so fine that the radar cannot detect that part of the storm. This usually occurs very close to tornado formation. Inside the hook is where the tornado usually forms and right around that is the hail formation and right around that is the precip. Therefore, when you see green, it indicates hail, which indicates the vault, which indicates a possible imminent tornado. Obviously, this isn't always the case since we saw green skies and no tornado came of this storm--it's just what happens a lot or at least sometimes.
After that side note...we decided to get back in the vans and try to get to another part of this supercell since we weren't at the best angle for seeing a tornado if one did happen to form. We saw a wall cloud and we desperately wanted to get closer since we were so far away from it. As we were driving, the most amazing thing happened...we noticed swirling dust to right of our van probably no more than 200 yards away. I know I saw it and quizzically asked, "What is that?" Everyone else saw it too but were still not sure exactly what to think. When we stopped to look at it more and take pictures, one of the guys looked up and said, "We have a rotating cloud right above us!!" Of course, I dove out of the van, pretty much literally, and stared at the sky until people were screaming for the very few of us outside to get back in the van. "We need to get out of here NOW!" a lot of people said...sad day. We got back in and drove off quickly but as we kept our eyes on that low, rotating cloud, it started to slow down and then soon dissipated...sad day again!
We've concluded that the swirling dust and the rotating cloud were probably not connected. The dust was most likely a gustnado and the swirling cloud was a thing of its own. A gustnado is a "tornado-like" phenomena that is formed by the gust front that accompanies a storm. These usually form in either the Rear Flank Downdraft (RFD) of a supercell or in the downdraft of a severe thunderstorm. They aren't the same as tornadoes and they do about F0 or F1 damage at best. Now knowing what this was and how it forms, this give us some insight into where we most likely were within the storm--the RFD since this was a supercell.
After this spectacle, we got to see a whole lot more in the way of wall clouds, strong winds, hail, lightning, and shelf clouds. It was an amazing day to say the least! It was such a long-lived supercell so we chased this thing for hours! In fact, once it finally started dissipating and losing it's rotation, it was probably about 9 pm and we still had a ways to go to get to our hotel for the night. We didn't eat dinner until about 10:30 pm that night...remember lunch was at 11:30 am and we chased since then. We checked into our hotel in Ft. Worth at midnight--hints the reason for the blog a day late ;)
What a spectacular, mentally draining, physically draining, yet disappointing day! We were SO CLOSE this time, I understand that I say that often, but we had wall clouds! There's only two one more step after that (funnel cloud) until tornado time! Hope for the best, we're out until June 9 now! Good night!
I understand but when you're on a chase trip thinking that the storms are going to be in western Oklahoma starting out and then you realize that the storms are actually forming in northern Texas, you're going to drive a whole heck of a lot chasing these storms down! Like I said, we originally were thinking that these storms were going to spring up somewhere in western Oklahoma and that was our original target area. We even left at 8 am to make sure we would get there in time.
Once we looked at the data more, we realized that a few of our peoples' prognostics that storms would happen in Texas were right and that we could actually get there in time; we kicked it into high gear! We ate a quick lunch at the ol McDonalds at about 11:30 am and then we were chasing the rest of the day. We were so excited because the cell we were going after was growing and at the perfect rate! It was definitely developing but not so fast that we couldn't get there in time. When we were about 20 miles outside of our intercept spot, our cell got a tornado warning. JACKPOT!
We were even more pumped as we drove further into the gloomy and dark skies. We got to one point on this storm and we could definitely see the hook and the shelf cloud. We got out of the vans, into very thick grass which apparently had snakes in it, and we put our cameras to the sky hoping for the best. We stayed there for awhile and the sky started turning green...oh yeah! This whole trip we've all been quoting Twister nonstop so of course this gave us a golden opportunity--"WE'RE GOING GREEN! Saddle up!"
Why does the sky turn green before a tornado or with severe weather? Hmm, great question! Well, the colors of anything are the ability of that surface to reflect, absorb, and/or scatter light that hits it. The sky is blue because of the particles in the air and the way that the light gets scattered on it's way to the earth's surface--in a nutshell. The sky turns a greenish color due to the hail that's coming down. Actually, we were able to see just one small pocket of the sky that turned greenish turquoise before the whole sky appeared to be that color. The way the ice balls, hail, scatters and reflects light is the ability to make the sky appear green. Hail usually accompanies tornadoes and strikes right before tornadoes so when the sky turns green you know you're getting into the vault, or "bear's cage," of the storm. This is where the hook echo occurs on the radar and in the storm--the vault. The hook looks just like that, a hook, and it appears this way on the radar because the particulates and water droplets within that part of the storm are so fine that the radar cannot detect that part of the storm. This usually occurs very close to tornado formation. Inside the hook is where the tornado usually forms and right around that is the hail formation and right around that is the precip. Therefore, when you see green, it indicates hail, which indicates the vault, which indicates a possible imminent tornado. Obviously, this isn't always the case since we saw green skies and no tornado came of this storm--it's just what happens a lot or at least sometimes.
After that side note...we decided to get back in the vans and try to get to another part of this supercell since we weren't at the best angle for seeing a tornado if one did happen to form. We saw a wall cloud and we desperately wanted to get closer since we were so far away from it. As we were driving, the most amazing thing happened...we noticed swirling dust to right of our van probably no more than 200 yards away. I know I saw it and quizzically asked, "What is that?" Everyone else saw it too but were still not sure exactly what to think. When we stopped to look at it more and take pictures, one of the guys looked up and said, "We have a rotating cloud right above us!!" Of course, I dove out of the van, pretty much literally, and stared at the sky until people were screaming for the very few of us outside to get back in the van. "We need to get out of here NOW!" a lot of people said...sad day. We got back in and drove off quickly but as we kept our eyes on that low, rotating cloud, it started to slow down and then soon dissipated...sad day again!
We've concluded that the swirling dust and the rotating cloud were probably not connected. The dust was most likely a gustnado and the swirling cloud was a thing of its own. A gustnado is a "tornado-like" phenomena that is formed by the gust front that accompanies a storm. These usually form in either the Rear Flank Downdraft (RFD) of a supercell or in the downdraft of a severe thunderstorm. They aren't the same as tornadoes and they do about F0 or F1 damage at best. Now knowing what this was and how it forms, this give us some insight into where we most likely were within the storm--the RFD since this was a supercell.
After this spectacle, we got to see a whole lot more in the way of wall clouds, strong winds, hail, lightning, and shelf clouds. It was an amazing day to say the least! It was such a long-lived supercell so we chased this thing for hours! In fact, once it finally started dissipating and losing it's rotation, it was probably about 9 pm and we still had a ways to go to get to our hotel for the night. We didn't eat dinner until about 10:30 pm that night...remember lunch was at 11:30 am and we chased since then. We checked into our hotel in Ft. Worth at midnight--hints the reason for the blog a day late ;)
What a spectacular, mentally draining, physically draining, yet disappointing day! We were SO CLOSE this time, I understand that I say that often, but we had wall clouds! There's only two one more step after that (funnel cloud) until tornado time! Hope for the best, we're out until June 9 now! Good night!
June 02, 2009
Day 11 of the Great Storm Chase!
We got another pretty decent show in the way of storms and pretty awesome sights today. It was similar to yesterday but actually better! We're getting closer!!
We were able to target storms that we wanted to move in on near Beatrice, NE. When we were heading east to hit Lincoln before heading south to Beatrice, we noticed that we were passing Vortex 2 who were all heading west. There were about 4 dopplars on wheels and a whole heap of NOAA vehicles heading the opposite direction as us so of course we started getting nervous, haha. We had lunch at Cracker Barrel, finally some great food!, and then we decided to stay on course despite our fear that we should maybe follow the pros and ditch our whole plan of action.
We ended up heading south and that was the best thing we could've done! We were able to catch up to this storm to watch it be born and build and become monstrous which was an amazing experience in and of itself. The cumulus clouds were towering literally all around us and there wasn't a blank part of the sky because of how many of them were building and then joining forces. It was awesome to see how each plume of warm, moist air rose and cooled adiabatically and started forming clouds at the LCL each on their own. Then after they each did that they were able to join forces to create one monster of a storm. It's so awesome to see your textbook in action!
We decided to move on to get behind the storm to get to a better location for where tornadoes would actually be produced. While driving and watching this massive complex build we noticed some interesting cloud developments all around us. At one point a few of us looked out the window and saw a developing mesocyclone and the start of its rotation...it was right next to us! We alerted the other van and they took a look and we pulled off onto a nearby road to check out where we should head next. We decided to go back down the road we just came from for a little bit to see what was going to happen and when we did we got hammered with strong rain and pea-sized hail.
Our amazing crew in Van 1 positioned us perfectly through a window in the storm to dodge the dangerous low-visibility areas and onto a road that put us in AMAZING position! We started travelling down this road and stopped again to take a better look at the sky and the radar, satellite, and rotation. We had shear markers listed on the storm right next to us which was a great sign.
As we sat there, the guys were looking at what looked like the beginning of some rotation once again in the sky to our left. We were looking at it and watching it build and as I looked around a little bit I noticed that there was another meso forming to our 5 o'clock. I alerted everyone and we realized that we had to get out of there fast because we were right in the middle of two rotation mesocyclones...what we need for tornadoes. We took off down the road and found a nearby road that ran perpendicular to the storm we were just looking at so we pulled off and parked to watch the spectacular show!
We were able to see that the mesos were drawing in a significant amount of inflow into its core. We were all so excited because we thought that would be the moment we'd been waiting for this whole trip. We saw that it was rotating and that it wanted to drop something but it just wouldn't comply. We were all out of the vans in the now very cold air with our cameras held tightly on the rotation, cheering for it to drop a tornado. We were pleading, begging, and coercing it to drop something! We were in the exact position that we wanted to be in and it was the perfect show. Unfortunately, the meso was a jerk and decided to start moving on and then it slowly died off. This was pretty much the end of our journey for the day.
We were all so ecstatic that we got to see more of a potential today than yesterday but it still wasn't a tornado, unfortunately. Tomorrow we're looking to head into Norman, OK or Oklahoma City, OK to chase again. This might be one of our last chances for a few days. We're going to leave at 8:00 am to head to Wichita, KS and decide where the best area to head will be. We're stationed in Emporia, KS tonight which is about 50 miles outside of Topeka, KS.
I can say one thing though, after watching these storms develop from crystal clear blue skies to a few cumulus clouds to a few cumulus towers and then into a storm, it's truly a sight for wonder and amazement. It's so difficult to get such severe storms and supercells to form and there's so many things that have to be included into the creation of these extreme weather phenomena. Tornadoes are apparently darn near impossible to get to form and to drop from these perfect conditions too. It's almost like these storms and tornadoes are in and of themselves pure miracles of God. The way each cloud hangs so softly yet so powerfully in the sky without any help from us below. The fact that the clouds build and grow and mature on their own without any support from anything else but the atmosphere--a bunch of gases and the sun! It truly amazes me and it truly helps me to remember how small I truly am and how much we have yet to learn about this amazing planet. The best scientists, the most money, and the best equipment are still out today in the form of Vortex 2 trying to find out the bare minimum of how exactly these storms work and how tornadoes behave. How long have we lived on this planet now? We have a lot to learn and I love it!
Hope for the best!
Good night!
We were able to target storms that we wanted to move in on near Beatrice, NE. When we were heading east to hit Lincoln before heading south to Beatrice, we noticed that we were passing Vortex 2 who were all heading west. There were about 4 dopplars on wheels and a whole heap of NOAA vehicles heading the opposite direction as us so of course we started getting nervous, haha. We had lunch at Cracker Barrel, finally some great food!, and then we decided to stay on course despite our fear that we should maybe follow the pros and ditch our whole plan of action.
We ended up heading south and that was the best thing we could've done! We were able to catch up to this storm to watch it be born and build and become monstrous which was an amazing experience in and of itself. The cumulus clouds were towering literally all around us and there wasn't a blank part of the sky because of how many of them were building and then joining forces. It was awesome to see how each plume of warm, moist air rose and cooled adiabatically and started forming clouds at the LCL each on their own. Then after they each did that they were able to join forces to create one monster of a storm. It's so awesome to see your textbook in action!
We decided to move on to get behind the storm to get to a better location for where tornadoes would actually be produced. While driving and watching this massive complex build we noticed some interesting cloud developments all around us. At one point a few of us looked out the window and saw a developing mesocyclone and the start of its rotation...it was right next to us! We alerted the other van and they took a look and we pulled off onto a nearby road to check out where we should head next. We decided to go back down the road we just came from for a little bit to see what was going to happen and when we did we got hammered with strong rain and pea-sized hail.
Our amazing crew in Van 1 positioned us perfectly through a window in the storm to dodge the dangerous low-visibility areas and onto a road that put us in AMAZING position! We started travelling down this road and stopped again to take a better look at the sky and the radar, satellite, and rotation. We had shear markers listed on the storm right next to us which was a great sign.
As we sat there, the guys were looking at what looked like the beginning of some rotation once again in the sky to our left. We were looking at it and watching it build and as I looked around a little bit I noticed that there was another meso forming to our 5 o'clock. I alerted everyone and we realized that we had to get out of there fast because we were right in the middle of two rotation mesocyclones...what we need for tornadoes. We took off down the road and found a nearby road that ran perpendicular to the storm we were just looking at so we pulled off and parked to watch the spectacular show!
We were able to see that the mesos were drawing in a significant amount of inflow into its core. We were all so excited because we thought that would be the moment we'd been waiting for this whole trip. We saw that it was rotating and that it wanted to drop something but it just wouldn't comply. We were all out of the vans in the now very cold air with our cameras held tightly on the rotation, cheering for it to drop a tornado. We were pleading, begging, and coercing it to drop something! We were in the exact position that we wanted to be in and it was the perfect show. Unfortunately, the meso was a jerk and decided to start moving on and then it slowly died off. This was pretty much the end of our journey for the day.
We were all so ecstatic that we got to see more of a potential today than yesterday but it still wasn't a tornado, unfortunately. Tomorrow we're looking to head into Norman, OK or Oklahoma City, OK to chase again. This might be one of our last chances for a few days. We're going to leave at 8:00 am to head to Wichita, KS and decide where the best area to head will be. We're stationed in Emporia, KS tonight which is about 50 miles outside of Topeka, KS.
I can say one thing though, after watching these storms develop from crystal clear blue skies to a few cumulus clouds to a few cumulus towers and then into a storm, it's truly a sight for wonder and amazement. It's so difficult to get such severe storms and supercells to form and there's so many things that have to be included into the creation of these extreme weather phenomena. Tornadoes are apparently darn near impossible to get to form and to drop from these perfect conditions too. It's almost like these storms and tornadoes are in and of themselves pure miracles of God. The way each cloud hangs so softly yet so powerfully in the sky without any help from us below. The fact that the clouds build and grow and mature on their own without any support from anything else but the atmosphere--a bunch of gases and the sun! It truly amazes me and it truly helps me to remember how small I truly am and how much we have yet to learn about this amazing planet. The best scientists, the most money, and the best equipment are still out today in the form of Vortex 2 trying to find out the bare minimum of how exactly these storms work and how tornadoes behave. How long have we lived on this planet now? We have a lot to learn and I love it!
Hope for the best!
Good night!
June 01, 2009
Day 10 of the Great Storm Chase!
Today was most definitely interesting. When waking up, I realized that the Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers crew stayed in the same hotel as us in Sioux City, IA. The TIV (Tornado Intercept Vehicle) and the whole crew were there setting up to head out for some storms just like we were. It was really sweet to see the vehicle and see
how the pros do their work.
We headed out to start out in southeastern South Dakota and as we watched to see where things would start popping up we found ourselves flirting with the South Dakota, Nebraska border. The thing that saved us the most in actually finding storms today was just looking out the window. We started seeing some cumulus towers starting to build so we parked and watched them for awhile. We noticed that a lot of them were building and building fast. We needed to see if they'd break the caps and if more than one would do it...they did! We kept checking the visual satellite imagery and the radar to see if and when they'd start showing up and it took awhile but we were with that storm from its birth until close to its death!
We kept changing our trajectory to intercept the building storm but some of us were still skeptical about how severe it would actually get. After all, we'd seen towers build and dissipate before. We decided it was our best shot for the day so we kept following the clouds and predicting their movements and it finally started to pay off. The clouds were building fast and they were starting to join forces leaving an amazing sight!
The building storm finally starting showing up on the satellite and radar and we were finally able to get a better idea of what these storms were thinking and where they were heading. We followed them for a good while and even saw some mammatus clouds, shelf clouds, a hook in the storm, inflow, and what looked like some mesocyclones trying to form. All of which looked promising for a possible tornado...but that's wishful thinking at this point.
We followed and chased and were in great location all day but the storms started to dissipate at around 7 pm or so, but not before it allowed us all to get some pretty amazing pictures! The cells joined too much to create a squall line, which doesn't bode too well for tornadoes usually.
We stopped in Broken Bow, NE for some dinner at McDonald's and while we were leaving the parking lot we noticed a pretty good deal of inflow building into the sector of the squall that was to our north. We were going to look for a place to stop and take a few pictures but while looking we decided to check it out on our radar to see if there was any rotation or shear associated with the cell we were seeing. To our surprise, there was! We had a great deal of shear in that cell and we even had a meso-marker pop up within it. We quickly got back into chase mode and we were all instantly in a great mood again. We chased like never before--mainly because we were losing daylight and fast.
We kept a look on this storm and we were finding all kinds of roads to take to get closer. We had to be careful that we weren't getting into the "Bear's Cage" though because that's the most dangerous part of the storm where you can hit a lot of damaging hail and a lot of rain and then once you get right past that there could easily be a hidden tornado. Van 1 had their Threat Net going and in Van 2 we were keeping a close eye with GR Analyst.
I feel like today was one of the days I learned the most because I helped out a lot in Van 2 to get some soundings, look at rotation, find the best areas to target, and look for building storms. At one point we were able to locate a hook both visually and on the radar which saved us from passing it up.
As we chased this newly developing cell, we noticed some more mammatus clouds and what looked like a huge mesocyclone trying to form. It kept getting darker and the lightning was intensifying. We stopped a few times along the way to take pictures and none of us could leave too far from the van because of the amount of lightning going on just a little ways away. Once we did get out of the van though we were all bombarded with dust and pebbles flying at us in about 30 knot gusts because the gust front was moving in and moving in quickly!
We were getting nervous that this thing wouldn't drop something until dark because it was getting darker by the second and the storm was intensifying but wouldn't drop a tornado. We finally pulled off for good on a deserted dirt road (not usually wise by the way but there wasn't any rain nearby) and watched the storm for about an hour as the sun went completely down. It became pitch black and we watched the amazing lightning show. Today was a good day :)
We're now in Grand Junction, NE for the night and it looks like our best options for storms for tomorrow will be close by. I guess we'll see! Hope for the best, we're getting closer!
Good night!
how the pros do their work.
We headed out to start out in southeastern South Dakota and as we watched to see where things would start popping up we found ourselves flirting with the South Dakota, Nebraska border. The thing that saved us the most in actually finding storms today was just looking out the window. We started seeing some cumulus towers starting to build so we parked and watched them for awhile. We noticed that a lot of them were building and building fast. We needed to see if they'd break the caps and if more than one would do it...they did! We kept checking the visual satellite imagery and the radar to see if and when they'd start showing up and it took awhile but we were with that storm from its birth until close to its death!
We kept changing our trajectory to intercept the building storm but some of us were still skeptical about how severe it would actually get. After all, we'd seen towers build and dissipate before. We decided it was our best shot for the day so we kept following the clouds and predicting their movements and it finally started to pay off. The clouds were building fast and they were starting to join forces leaving an amazing sight!
The building storm finally starting showing up on the satellite and radar and we were finally able to get a better idea of what these storms were thinking and where they were heading. We followed them for a good while and even saw some mammatus clouds, shelf clouds, a hook in the storm, inflow, and what looked like some mesocyclones trying to form. All of which looked promising for a possible tornado...but that's wishful thinking at this point.
We followed and chased and were in great location all day but the storms started to dissipate at around 7 pm or so, but not before it allowed us all to get some pretty amazing pictures! The cells joined too much to create a squall line, which doesn't bode too well for tornadoes usually.
We stopped in Broken Bow, NE for some dinner at McDonald's and while we were leaving the parking lot we noticed a pretty good deal of inflow building into the sector of the squall that was to our north. We were going to look for a place to stop and take a few pictures but while looking we decided to check it out on our radar to see if there was any rotation or shear associated with the cell we were seeing. To our surprise, there was! We had a great deal of shear in that cell and we even had a meso-marker pop up within it. We quickly got back into chase mode and we were all instantly in a great mood again. We chased like never before--mainly because we were losing daylight and fast.
We kept a look on this storm and we were finding all kinds of roads to take to get closer. We had to be careful that we weren't getting into the "Bear's Cage" though because that's the most dangerous part of the storm where you can hit a lot of damaging hail and a lot of rain and then once you get right past that there could easily be a hidden tornado. Van 1 had their Threat Net going and in Van 2 we were keeping a close eye with GR Analyst.
I feel like today was one of the days I learned the most because I helped out a lot in Van 2 to get some soundings, look at rotation, find the best areas to target, and look for building storms. At one point we were able to locate a hook both visually and on the radar which saved us from passing it up.
As we chased this newly developing cell, we noticed some more mammatus clouds and what looked like a huge mesocyclone trying to form. It kept getting darker and the lightning was intensifying. We stopped a few times along the way to take pictures and none of us could leave too far from the van because of the amount of lightning going on just a little ways away. Once we did get out of the van though we were all bombarded with dust and pebbles flying at us in about 30 knot gusts because the gust front was moving in and moving in quickly!
We were getting nervous that this thing wouldn't drop something until dark because it was getting darker by the second and the storm was intensifying but wouldn't drop a tornado. We finally pulled off for good on a deserted dirt road (not usually wise by the way but there wasn't any rain nearby) and watched the storm for about an hour as the sun went completely down. It became pitch black and we watched the amazing lightning show. Today was a good day :)
We're now in Grand Junction, NE for the night and it looks like our best options for storms for tomorrow will be close by. I guess we'll see! Hope for the best, we're getting closer!
Good night!
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