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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

Day 5 of the Great Storm Chase!

Wow, another LOONG day! We started out in Rapid City, SD at a little after 9:30 am MDT and we just got to our hotel in Cheyenne, WY at around 10:40 pm MDT. We hit up a lot of sites today and didn't do any chasing at all because there was absolutely nothing to chase anywhere near us. It was a beautiful but somewhat cold day to catch in all these sites that were truly amazing!

We hit up a geology museum first in Rapid City and then we moved on to see Mt. Rushmore! I was amazed at how small it looked from the ground but it was so awesome actually seeing it in person and learning about how it was carved and all that. They used dynamite!! I guess you could say the sculpture was a dynamite idea....haha, sorry but the whole theme of our trip has been a pun war! We have daily competitions and the more you can do and the more creative the better!







After Mt. Rushmore, we drove higher into the Black Hills of South Dakota and we saw such amazing beauty! The site on top of the hills was just STUNNING! You could see from miles around, nothing like I've truly experienced before. It was really sweet to see Mt. Rushmore at about eye level miles away surrounded by beautiful trees and an amazing skyline. There was also a lot of wildlife roaming around like buffalo, deer, elk, donkeys, and antelopes. A lot of donkeys were even in the middle of the road just hanging out!





We also saw the Crazy Horse monument that's being built. It's such an amazing story that I didn't even know existed until I came out here! It's been in progress since 1943 and is taking such a long time because one man worked on it completely alone for a long time and they aren't and will not take any government funding! It's so cool and I can't wait to see it when it's finished!





We moved on after all the sites to head to our final destination for the day, our hotel in Cheyenne, WY. Wyoming was just as plain but beautiful as Iowa and South Dakota. We even drove through a town that had a sign that said, "Population 1." Haha! I didn't know that existed!!





I have to say, after spending all this time in the van with no one but guys is a little exhausting in and of itself! It's nothing but raunchy jokes, sports, and puns 24/7. I have to say, the names of some of these towns and gas stations truly aren't helping....I won't go into detail about the names because the innuendo is so strong that it wouldn't quite even be PG-13. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing that Heather and I are always in separate vans (the only two girls out of the 12 on our trip). We can't having the men perculating their ideas and jokes all in one place I guess...of course they use the walkie talkies for that.

Tonight was interesting because the hotel/motel we chose to stay in was EXTREMELY sketchy...Andrew was our trip planner for the day so he had to try to find a decent hotel under or at our nightly room rate budget and I had the computer with the internet in our other van so I helped to look at some of that stuff online. Well, Cheyenne is apparently extremely expensive so we only had a few options. One of which was the Rodeway Inn and we were able to book 4 rooms at $58 each...that should've been our first clue, haha. The ammenities on the websites I found included disco, toilet, and an AM/FM radio! Like I said, we didn't have many options! We decided to go for the hotel for this price instead of La Quinta because it was just a few dollars over our limit per room so we could save for something great in Denver. The jokes poured in when we came into the parking lot...the motel doubled as a bus station and there were some less-than safe appearing people hanging out and they all looked very angry. The place looked very rough and broken down and not very well lit...a few of the guys that were the most apprehensive took a look in a room before we actually checked in and found some questionable things under the pillow on the bed so we decided to move on to La Quinta. It was actually one of the funniest experiences of the whole trip though...VERY shady.

Tomorrow we're headed to Denver, CO to catch a Dodgers vs. Rockies baseball game because it's another non-stormm chase day. I'm really excited to finally be in Colorado with amazing sites and breathtaking beauty to take in! It should be great and it's only an hour and a half from where we're staying tonight.

Let's hope that what the Storm Prediction Center and we are predicting about some possibility of storms worth chasing coming into the Great Plains by June 3 is accurate. There's still hope! Hope for the best!

Good night!

Day 3 of the Great Storm Chase!

Well, this is a day late but I was so exhausted last night that as soon as we got to the hotel I changed and crashed! We've been booking some pretty long days and it's starting to take a toll on my body. We did get to chase a little bit yesterday (day 3) to no avail really, unfortunately.

Derek and I were the Day 1 people, thus the radar watchers and deciders of where to move in for storms, and we found some decent opportunities in northwestern Nebraska. We went to see the Badlands earlier that day as we drove from Murdo to Rapid City area.



We were headed right for where we expected the storms to move in and then a couple spotters in our van looked behind us and saw a tower starting to build which gave a good sign that we might've actually been moving away from something important.



We stopped and played some football on a random road that gave us a great view of the tower as well as our original storm that we were following. We took some readings and then realized that everything was pretty much crapping out on us. We didn't have much CAPE, no helicity, not much punching through of caps, etc. The weather was definitely not on our side!






It's been really interesting to actually see what's going on on the radar live! It's great to be able to see how it looks on the radar and then just look out the window to get an actual view of what that's supposed to look like; talk about a learning experience! Watching the visible satellite and seeing the bright white on there and then looking out to see massive cumulus towers is just phenomenal! We've seen some pretty sweet sights even if we haven't seen a tornado yet...there's still hope!

Good night!

Day 1 of the Great Storm Chase!

Wow! It's been such a long day of driving (about 9 hours) and we've set up for the night in Waverly, IA (about 70 miles or so northeast of Des Moines). I was still pretty aprehensive when we first started out and our drive seemed to be dragging on and on for awhile. We took a short lunch break at Subway in Crawfordsville, IN and then drove straight until a little east of Peoria, IL where we got out to stretch, use the bathroom, and throw the frisbee and football around for a few minutes.

Our next stop wouldn't be for awhile until we got to Walcott, IA where we stopped at the world's largest truck stop! It truly was a sight of beauty and it was massive! We went in for a little while and looked all of the hilarious bumper stickers and all that.





Our next stop was in Iowa City, IA where we stopped for dinner at a local pizza restaraunt called...get this...Bob's Your Uncle. We thought it was the only option for us to eat, of course! We couldn't pass up the opportunity to eat at such a great place that also had a dinosaur right outside of the gas station next door!



We're now resting up for the night for our next 10-hour day of driving! We're looking to head into Rapid City, SD and will likely hit up Mt. Rushmore and the Badlands on Sunday. We decided to make the most of the sights on this trip for right now because the weather patterns are horrible for chasing!

I'm partnering with another one of the 10 students to lead our 2nd day weather discussion tomorrow about what the weather will be doing on Sunday--likely nothing! There's a huge ridge over the west with a high pressure system right behind (clear skies) and not really a single storm of any worth in the whole country! There is a little action in Florida but we obviously can't chase there. There was a few popup nothing storms in northeastern Colorado and also in northeastern Nebraska today but nothing of worth to us either.




There's a stationary front that's chillin along that ridge in the west which doesn't bode well for the next few days as far as any type of weather. We're going to "waste" a few days in South Dakota and hope that the weather patterns start to work out the kinks to give us some chaseable storms. Let's hope for the best!

Good night!