Final V2 Thoughts

Only saw one of these -- but one is better than none!

So, after having a few weeks at home to relax and recover from Vortex2, I have finally gotten around to posting my final pictures and thoughts on the great adventure/experiment. After the excitement of seeing our tornado and big hail in Wyoming, the mobile mesonet fleet escaped to Cheyenne and Omaha to repair windshields, which ended in a lost day for us. The fleet chased after two supercells in NC Nebraska, but neither produced anything tornadic. Our next big chase day was June 7th, which brought us along the Missouri River near NE Kansas and NW Missouri. This day brought yet another change to my mesonet team (it was getting a bit old by then admittedly), with Ben and Al as my new crew. The storm we were on was quite tough to set-up on, but once we did, it appeared to be close to forming something tornadic on a few occasions. Nothing did form out of it other than mushy hail and strongish winds though, providing a nice case for why tornadogenesis did not occur. However, it did have some nice structure to it, and we learned why that area is really not very ideal for chasing whatsoever.

Portions of the Updraft -- it had some nice spirals at one point in time

The wall cloud early in the storm

Same wall cloud, different time (a bit earlier than the last shot)

After this storm, we drove through quite a light show to get into Kansas, and we moved our way westward the next day, even making a stop at a winery. On the 9th, we intercepted storms near Dodge City, KS. The drive up to this intercept was a bit humbling in that we passed through the town of Greensburg on our way, a town which just two years ago was destroyed by an EF-5 tornado. Although they are recovering, there is still a lot to be done there, and you could certainly feel the power unleashed on that town by mother nature. Fortunately for the town, this storm did not produce a tornado, although it had some good circulation to it. This day was intriguing for driving, in that the fleet came across some of their worst roads yet. Despite our best efforts to destroy the undercarriage of the mesonet, everything held together, and we were treated to another beautiful storm, though it again lacked anything tornadic.

Entering Greensburg, KS

Our wall cloud -- I would have liked to drive under it, but it was out of our storm-relative mission :-(

The wall cloud losing it's punch -- you can see the clear slot chewing it up
The updraft had quite a look to it -- a real 'mother ship' kind of shape at points in time

After this storm, we proceeded to stay in Kansas for several days, and intercepted storms for 3 straight days. On the 10th, we intercepted storms near Sublette, one which did produce a tornado, but not where we were intercepting. In fact, the tornado occurred after operations were called off, and rain was blocking our view of the circulation. The storm did have some attempts at forming weak funnel clouds, but nothing all that impressive. However, it did have a nice shape to it, and twice formed 'trick' wall clouds -- wall clouds that looked very impressive and drew our attention away from the main circulation core. Regardless, it was another nice storm despite the missed tornado.

Our 'wall cloud' -- it was pretty disorganized

Weak attempts at a funnel -- but Al and I agreed that it counted

The trick wall cloud -- it looked better than what we had, although still outflow dominated (note the tilt)

This was as we raced out in front of the storm on the way to the hotel -- nice structure and CG lightning

After a bit, we stopped to take pictures of the storm -- somewhere in there is a tornado masked by rain :-(

On the 11th, we had the longest chase day of the V2 campaign -- 600 miles of driving. It was a bit of a frustrating day, as we dropped south toward Texas with an early start, only to turn around and head NW to Colorado (roughly 100ish miles from where we had started the day). However, we were rewarded with a very nice looking storm, though again lacking a tornado. The storm did allow for some nice hail though (nothing damaging, but some new dents), and some of our stronger winds that we've observed damage on (a few downed branches). It had a nice layered structure to it, although I wasn't able to get any pictures of that. However, after obs were called off, it was back-lit by the setting sun, giving a beautiful view.

The wall cloud as we approached -- not bad!

Not quite sure on this, but it looks like some horizontal rolls -- suggesting some circulation

The updraft -- we were almost directly under it, so scaling to get it all in was impossible

The storm near sunset -- very nice looking

A bit of CC lightning too -- always a nice treat

The 12th and 13th were kind of bust days for us, with nothing happening on the 12th, and a deployment on the 13th that kind of had the feel of 'why not?!?'. Our storm on the 13th, east of Amarillo, literally evaporated in front of our eyes, challenging the Childress storms from earlier in the project for fasted storm death. It had a bit of hope for a short period, but then the weak circulation occluded and it was like a derailed train -- it rapidly ended. An unfortunate end to the experiment, but fitting given the year.

Headed toward the last storm

The Anvil looked nice

And...poof there it goes!

When all was said and done (including the road trip back to State College from Amarillo, we covered ~12500 miles (keep in mind we weren't there for the first week). We passed through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. It was an experience I will never forget for sure, and one that I would love to do again if the opportunity presents itself. Thanks to everyone who made my trip so memorable, and be sure to continue checking in on my summer adventures, including trips to Bar Harbor! And of course, my journeys up to Montreal late in the summer to begin my grad school career!

I can has Tornado?!?

Video of the tornado as it moved out of the rain a bit for our first great view

Okay, so reallllllyy fast recap of what we did the day before, then the fun stuff :-)

On the 4th we intercepted supercells near Cheyenne, Wyoming, which were pretty cool, but didn't produce any tornadoes. It did have a nice shape to it though, and it dropped a LOT of hail on I80 -- but we were too far ahead of it to see that part. That's it...because the next day was WAYYYY better.

On the 5th we moved into Nebraska, and then into Wyoming again to play the upslope potential. As we pushed westward, three storms were firing up in eastern WY, only two of which were within reason for us to intercept. Lucky for us, the southern-most storm began to evolve into a supercell, exactly what we were looking for. With conditions better for tornadoes that day than almost any other day we've had this project, spirits were tentatively hopeful. When we saw the wall cloud that the storm had produced, we became a LOT more hopeful:

Distant view of the updraft -- it certainly looked mighty good

Our probes first assignment was to go north and sample the forward flank downdraft, which is an area of typically 'calmer' weather, which for this storm meant occasional torrential rain and hail up to golf ball sizes. We did one big pass to the west, and turned around when we saw a beautiful updraft feature on the backside of the storm:

The updraft from N/NW of the storm -- this gave us good hope that this storm would produce something special

After this, we booked it eastward knowing that the storm was quite likely to produce a tornado at any moment, and we needed to complete our storm-relative mission of sampling the inflow just ahead of the tornado, and the gust front features to the northeast relative to the tornado. It also happens that this position allows for OUTSTANDING views of the tornado, not to mention from really up close. We began our transects on a NE/SW highway, and we were able to pass back and forth in front of the circulation 4-6 times before finally bailing out to the north. This gave us a view of the tornado that was truly spectacular:

The tornado from a distance -- this was our first view of it and we couldn't really tell if it was on the ground

This was from our transects -- beautiful tornado possibly into the EF-3 range

The view as the tornado was working in and out of rain bands

A bit closer -- this was the best vortex shape we saw -- after this it began to lose some strength

Our last pass to the north -- this was as the tornado dropped south and roped out

After making our several transects, we made our final transect northward knowing that we would both sample the mesoscale frontal features and also find large hail (given what probes 1 & 3 had found -- they were already out of commission with major windshield damage). We ran into baseball and softball sized hail, leading to us receiving the bronze metal for windshield damages on the day, meaning we had several cracks, but not enough to end our day.

Our hail damage -- a bronze metal on the day, but still something of concern no doubt -- all for good data!

The tornado continuing to rope out, from a distance

From there, we pushed eastward through hail, and finally found ourselves out in front of the storm. As the storm caught up, the tornado roped out and eventually disappeared, and didn't appear to produce again. However, it came close as we made our final transects on the day, and we even were able to sample some surface circulation despite no tornado forming.

The mesocyclone later in the storm -- we thought it might produce another tornado, but no such luck

So close -- but these were just good looking scud than funnel clouds

In the end, it was an incredibly successful day from both a scientific and chaser prospective, and certainly a day that I will never forget. The next few days appear prime for chasing right through the end of the project, so wish us luck!

Pretty mammatus clouds as sunset from our target storm, from the south

Marginal to sub-marginal is better than down days!

Our fearless leader, leading us into battle :-)

We had a few chase days over the past several, both of which involved marginal to sub-marginal conditions. In other words, we had relatively low CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy), and barely enough shear (changes in wind speed/direction) to support supercells, but we chased anyways! The reason we are doing this is because these storms still provide valuable data sets, even if they do not rotate or produce tornadoes. Unfortunately I only have half of my pictures because my camera is in the probe and has the other set of pictures still on it. But that doesn't matter (because I'll probably just put them up later anyways!).

On the 29th, we traveled northward through Central Nebraska to chase a storm that had okay features to it. Unfortunately, it was in very dry air, and it quickly deteriorated as we approached it from the Southeast. Despite a bit of disappointment with the storm itself, some of the other storms around it provided some beautiful cloud structure, and it provided quite the lightning show (although no pictures were caught of that):

Big Anvil to our South -- it was very nice looking

It had some cool features throughout

The sunset lit it up to an incredible color

After a down day, we chased again on the 31st, travelling into Western Iowa to chase another storm that looked quite good. We found a few pea-sized hail stones, and not much beyond that. Once again, it was a nice looking storm, but not too much came out of it. There was some intrigue in that we wanted to see what would happen if we had a lot of low-level shear and little higher up, while still having okay shear. In the end, we had no rotation, likely due to really high cloud bases once again. Regardless, the chase was better than just hanging around.

North flank of the anvil and updraft with the mesonet rack

Southern flank of the anvil

Cloud bases from the North -- not bad looking, but at a really high elevation

The sun did all it could to break through the clouds

On the 1st of June, we headed back into South-central Nebraska to chase more possible storms. These storms had a lot of lightning (videos and/or still-shots will be posted later), and some hail, and even had some reported funnel clouds and gust-nadoes (all weak, but rotation none the less!). Just to our east, there were also tornado reports. Although we didn't see anything ourselves, it was encouraging to see that we are slowly getting closer to studying an actual tornado.

Our hopes are also getting high as the weather finally appears to be modifying into a more favorable pattern this upcoming weekend into next week. Although there is always concerns about the models, it looks like we will finally get some moisture and shear into the VORTEX2 domain, finally giving us an opportunity to perhaps chase and study what we've been after all this time. Everyone is being careful about getting too upbeat or 'cursing' the group, but it is certainly tough to contain the excitement. In other news, I was shifted into a different probe this week, probe 7. This change was made to ensure that everything runs smoothly for the remainder of the project, but it also includes a change in storm position. I'll still be involved in what is called 'punching the core' -- in other words driving through the heaviest precipitation and hail, but now we'll be doing it just in front of the circulation, adding a whole new level to the chase challenge. I'm sad to be leaving probe 3 (Chris and Kiel), but I'll have some new responsibilities now which makes it a bit more exciting in some ways too. Wish us luck!