New Anvil building; taken with my IR lens
So this is a few days behind, but we finally got our hands on a good storm the other day (Tuesday)! First though, a quick recap of the day before, where V2 continued its streak of protecting the Plains from storms. Not really, but in all seriousness, it was pretty insane, as we managed to intercept 3 storms only to have all three fall apart as soon as we arrived.
Updraft with clear slot building
Storm #3 anvil and updraft, with cool sunshine on the edges
The next day was, for me, the best day of chasing we have had by far. It was a long day, but we managed to have fun along the way. We departed Childress, Texas and drove eastward just south of the Red River. Some of the experienced chasers from this area noted that there have been wild camel sightings along this route in the past, so naturally, all the probes we on the lookout for them. Eventually, the leading probe spotted them, and we all pulled off on the side of the highway and checked them out.
They were cool with us ... enough for people to feed them even
They were not too happy at first though, as they formed a defensive circle of a sort
But then they scoped us out and deemed it okay
After that fun, we continued eastward, where we played the always fun game of ‘hurry up and wait’ … in other words, get to where you need to go quickly, and then wait for long periods of time when nothing initiates storm-wise. Eventually, we got storms to fire up in our relatively good environment, but there was one issue: our primary storm of interest was headed straight toward Ft. Worth, Texas, which is an impossible chase (logistics = BAD…REALLY BAD). So, we were not too happy. However, our luck changed, as the storm of interest split (common for supercells). What was uncommon was that the storm we focused on, the left mover, actually had good strength to it. Typically, this storm moves to the left and essentially dies, as it typically is fighting the environment it is in. In this case, it instead strengthened into a pretty strong storm, and we had something that was much better for chasing.
Approaching the storm -- it had a nice shape to it on the SE edge
As we entered approached the storm, it actually had a good hook in the radar returns, with somewhat of a velocity signature suggesting rotation, which had everyone excited that maybe we would finally have a tornadic event to study. We had a good deal of things to keep an eye on along the way, including large hail (1.75 inches measured – and estimated greater than 2 inches based on what we saw and heard), heavy rain, and several areas of lowering clouds.
1.5 and 1.75 inch hail in Chris' hand
More sneaky scud trying to look like a tornado...one day we'll see one! (I hope)
This storm was known as an HP (high/heavy precipitation) supercell, which made for some difficulty when intercepting as visibility became quite low at times. We also had a lot of trees to deal with, which presents a good deal of difficulty when you have a large rack of instruments that you don’t want to damage or destroy. It also seemed to be a very confused storm. This is because left moving storms typically have anticyclonic (clockwise) shear (rotation) on them, which this storm had initially. However, it tried several times to gain a cyclonic (counter-clockwise) rotation to it, resulting in several possible areas to watch for rotation. Regardless, there was too much outflow (air being forced into the ground and outward by the downdraft), which prevented any of the circulation from reaching the ground. This is in particular a good thing because we passed directly below the rotation as we left the storm. At that point, the radars recorded rotational speeds of 60 m/s, or 150 mph, which would have done some nasty damage without a doubt. However, the data provided to us through the projects vast amount of instrumentation confirmed that it was a safe path to take (one of the good parts about having six radars posted at one storm).
After this storm, which will certainly be one of the best documented/studied left movers in mesoscale meteorology, we shifted upward first to Norman, Oklahoma, then to Topeka, Kansas, and now to Grand Island, Nebraska. We’re back in a marginal pattern for supercells and tornadoes, but we’re certainly hoping that in the near future the tide will turn and we’ll finally get a series of great storms to intercept for good scientific study!
