Vittorio's Voyages

New Diagnostic Weather Data Webpage

2011-12-16T05:30:00.001-06:00

Friends interested in meteorology:

It is often taught that meteorologists should first diagnose what is currently occurring in their forecast location, why it is occurring, and how it will impact a future forecast. However, it has been my experience (there are likely differing opinions here) that many forecasters today love to skip right to the forecasting step, without taking the time to make a proper diagnosis of what is currently occurring in the atmosphere. They have become so dependent on products (e.g., model QPF) without a proper understanding of how or why the model is generating precipitation. Unfortunately, this model "cancer" has left these forecasters with nothing more than a crutch on which to blame their failed forecast. Don't misunderstand me, computer models are certainly the best tool for forecasting as they can solve fundamental atmospheric equations far more efficiently than any human. However...

What good is any forecast without a proper diagnosis?

Would you purchase a block of shares in a company based solely on a projected stock price? I sure hope not!

Would a good doctor give you medications to treat a disease without some sort of diagnosis?

As you know, there are plenty of graphs and charts on they web that provide diagnostic information for meteorologists (e.g., surface maps, sounding plots, cross section analysis; I have over 10 pages bookmarked!) However, if you are like me, you are often left saying, "What about other fields," or perhaps more commonly, "there has to be a better way to present such data." Personally, I find many plots hard to read, rather cluttered, or just plain visually unappealing. IMO this is partly due to the fact that many people and organizations that present such data care more about ease of production and content rather than the presentation of that data to the user. Surely content is important, but it is ultimately how the user will interpret that data that makes all the difference in the forecast process! Of course, the main challenge here is that personal preference differs amongst forecasters. Some forecasters like a particular color scale, others do not. Some are colorblind. Some cannot interpret a map that is too cluttered. This is similar to one of the main challenges facing graphics design artists!

Last spring I set out on a mission to create appealing maps and provide unique diagnostic fields that I have trouble finding elsewhere on the web. You'll see that many of the maps I provide are nothing more than "pretty colors" to the untrained eye. However, I've tried to make the graphics as visually appealing as possible without sacrificing content (maybe they don't appeal to you; that's fine too!). I'll be the first to admit that the use of a map with a pretty color scale and neat graphics means little if the user fails to interpret it correctly. Unfortunately, this is not a skill you can develop overnight (just ask a veteran forecaster). My favorite reminder of this comes from Bosart (2002):
If you don't like a particular map or would like an alternate color scale, e-mail me and I'll see what I can do. That is one of the [only?] benefits of working on such a product by yourself).

Okay, now for the goodies:

The URL for the new page can be found at http://vgensini.myweb.uga.edu/wx

Fields currently offered:

Observational (Based on Sounding or Surface Stations)

300, 500, 700, 850 mb isosurface
0-500m MLCAPE
Precipitable Water
12h 500mb Height Change
Sounding profiles for selected upper-air stations
Surface stations
2m θ_e
Surface moisture flux divergence
Cross Sections: KGGW - KLCH ; KLBF - KWAL
Isentropic analysis at various θ levels

RUC Initialization Fields (00h Forecast; Interpolated to a 211 AWIPS grid ~80km)

300, 500, 700, 850 mb isosurface
300 mb Divergence
500 mb Absolute Vorticity
500 mb Absolute Vorticity Advection
500 mb Absolute Vorticity and Water Vapor (my personal favorite)
700 mb Absolute Vorticity Advection
700 mb Frontogenesis
500-700 mb Layer Average Q-Vector Divergence
500-850 mb Wind Crossovers
850 mb Temperature & Moisture Advection
Trenberth Forcing Term

For more information on the fields, visit the metadata link.

Perhaps my favorite aspect is the ability to select the "ani" versions of these products to easily mouse over previous hours to provide an animation of the trends in the field. This trend analysis is key in a proper diagnosis.

I'm still struggling a bit with exactly how I want to display the hyperlinks to the products. I'm not a big fan of the current frames approach I am using, but the UGA student web-server is currently limited (no access to php). Perhaps this format change in the future when this page migrates to a new web hosting solution.

Enjoy!

4km WRF-ARW Test Simulation

2011-10-24T01:04:00.007-05:00

I apologize in advance for all of the acronyms in this post. Actually, no apologies neccessary since this is my own blog ;-) I've attached an animation of a test 4km WRF-ARW simulation of the outbreak of severe convection in the Southeast U.S. on 27 April 2011. The 24-hour run is initialized with 32km data from the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) @ 1200 UTC. Parametrizations include: WSM6 MP, NOAH LSM, MYJ PBL, and RRTM radiation. 1km AGL reflectivity (Dbz; fill) and updraft helicity (> 50 m^2/s^2; contour) are displayed. Nothing too fancy that hasn't been done before...just a test.

(click to animate)

4km WRF-ARW forecast sounding for KBHM valid 2300 UTC 27 April 2011

0-1km SRH > 300 m^2/s^2 in the presence of CAPE > 2,000 J/kg. Yowzers!

Another Failure of the Warning Process

2011-09-06T15:51:00.008-05:00

During Labor Day 2011, remants of Tropical Depression Lee spawned a preliminary count of 13 tornadoes across FL, GA, NC, SC, and VA. This is not uncommon of land-falling tropical systems, but this setup in particular was favorable for rotating updrafts in northeast quadrant of the cyclone. As the afternoon progressed, a small cell formed near Newton county and began racing northeast towards the University of Georgia (Athens, GA). What happened next was yet another example of multiple aspect failure in the warning and information dissemination integrated process (note: there are many storm warning and response examples that are both good and bad. Many of these will never be reported on in the news, unless they happen to be a media-defined tragedy. Thus, this is simply a documentation of one of the many failures I have seen in recent years).

The cell in question prompted a tornado warning at 4:43 P.M. EDT from WFO FFC:

BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED

TORNADO WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PEACHTREE CITY GA
443 PM EDT MON SEP 5 2011

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN PEACHTREE CITY HAS ISSUED A

* TORNADO WARNING FOR...
EASTERN CLARKE COUNTY IN NORTHEAST GEORGIA
OCONEE COUNTY IN NORTHEAST GEORGIA
NORTHWESTERN OGLETHORPE COUNTY IN NORTHEAST GEORGIA

* UNTIL 530 PM EDT

* AT 442 PM EDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM CAPABLE OF PRODUCING A TORNADO NEAR
WATKINSVILLE...MOVING NORTHEAST AT 30 MPH.

* OTHER LOCATIONS IN THE WARNING INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO
BOGART...WHITEHALL...ARNOLDSVILLE...CRAWFORD AND WINTERVILLE.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

WHEN A TORNADO WARNING IS ISSUED BASED ON DOPPLER RADAR...IT MEANS
THAT STRONG ROTATION HAS BEEN DETECTED IN THE STORM. A TORNADO MAY
ALREADY BE ON THE GROUND...OR IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP SHORTLY. IF YOU
ARE IN THE PATH OF THIS DANGEROUS STORM...MOVE INDOORS AND TO A
BASEMENT OR INTERIOR ROOM ON THE GROUND FLOOR. STAY AWAY FROM
WINDOWS. IF DRIVING...DO NOT SEEK SHELTER UNDER A HIGHWAY OVERPASS.

THIS IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND LIFE THREATENING SITUATION. THIS
STORM IS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING STRONG TO VIOLENT TORNADOES. IF YOU ARE
IN THE PATH OF THIS TORNADO...TAKE COVER IMMEDIATELY!

IF YOU SEE WIND DAMAGE...LARGE HAIL OR SIGNIFICANT FLOODING...WAIT
UNTIL AFTER THE STORM HAS PASSED...AND THEN CALL THE NATIONAL WEATHER
SERVICE TOLL FREE AT 1 8 6 6 7 6 3 4 4 6 6.

A TORNADO WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 1100 PM EDT MONDAY EVENING
FOR NORTHERN GEORGIA.
&&
LAT...LON 3373 8330 3370 8340 3372 8344 3380 8349
3390 8364 3391 8363 3397 8354 3393 8351
3393 8342 3390 8339 3402 8330 3400 8322
3405 8313 3403 8311 3401 8305 3404 8296
TIME...MOT...LOC 2044Z 215DEG 28KT 3382 8333
$

Here is an animated .gif of the lowest-tilt BREF (left) and SRV (right) just before and during the issuance of the warning from FFC (click to enlarge).

What's sad is that so-called "storm based" warnings have been in effect since 2007! There is clearly no immediate threat to western Oconee county, yet the polygon would certainly indicate otherwise to the untrained eye. Additionally, the warning text mentions "strong to violent" tornadoes possible with these storms! Really? Violent tornadoes without a sustained supercellular mesocyclone?

While this particular failure lies in the hands of the warning forecaster, how about an investigation into the dissemination of this information from the NWS to a typical user (in this case, we will examine a typical student at UGA). Remember that for the integrated warning process to be successful, all facets must execute their responsibilites promptly and correctly. Most students are signed up to receive SMS text message alerts and phone calls from UGA in the event of an emergency. In this particular example the UGA campus was not in the tornado warning polygon issued by FFC, nor was there an immediate threat of a tornado. However, somewhere deep in the crappy policy drafted by UGA, it *probably* states that sirens will be sounded and campus put on alert when Athens-Clarke county is put under a tornado warning. Regardless, the emergency plan was activated, and I received a text message alert to my phone at 4:49 P.M. EDT:

Recall that the warning was issued from the NWS at 4:43 P.M. EDT. So, 6 min. passed before I received the alert from UGA. While I have no way of knowing if this time fluctuates from event-to-event (this is my first emergency alert), I can say that 6 min. is unacceptably slow for a tornado warning. In fact, in at least half the cases, this 6 min. would expire the lead time of warning issuance by the local WFO effectively giving the user "no warning." As if that was not enough, the UGA emergency call alert happened 5 min. post-text at 4:54 P.M. EDT:

By now, 11 min. have passed since the warning issuance from FFC. Yes, there may be challenges to getting information to that many students in a timely manner, but it would fail miserably in the case of a real tornado emergency. I mention all of this to say that we *have* to become smarter on all integrated warning fronts. We have the technology to do this! GPS location + GIS mapping software can easily determine if you are in the defined threat area. In fact, our technology of software development (e.g., radar displays) have far outpaced our technology in the branch of warning dissemination (the two are nearly night and day IMO). Of course, none of the information dissemination really matters if we keep seeing foolish cover-your-@$$ type warnings from local WFOs...

Bayes' Theorem

2011-08-31T02:39:00.004-05:00

An elementary example of applying Bayes' theorem in meteorology can be found here. Enjoy!

Forecast Precipitation from Hurricane Irene

2011-08-25T14:19:00.003-05:00

Millions (50-60+?) of people are going to be impacted by Irene...

Trip 5 "Other"

2011-07-24T13:37:00.004-05:00

For me, formal storm chasing has ended for the season (20,000+ mi. since May 1!). Here are some category "miscellaneous" photos taken during CoD's storm chase trip 5. I'll still be blogging during the offseason with cool pictures and videos as they arise, so check back often!

This scene sums up many roads across South and North Dakota this year
Trip 5 participants...great group!
Mean looking rotation near Bowdon, ND
Time to sacrifice!
Burn baby burn!
Moon hanging like a jewel in the sky (somewhere in SD)
My definition of "Dirt Road Anthem"
Dine and Jamie in front of a canola field (Near Medicine Hat, Alberta)
Cloud droplets can look so comfy at times!

7/16/2011: Bowdon, ND Tornado

2011-07-17T09:35:00.004-05:00

After a sacrifice to the weather Gods, trip 5 managed to document a tornado near Bowdon, ND yesterday. This was certainly the highlight of the trip, and I am glad that many good people got to experience their first tornado with us! In the morning/early afternoon, it was uncertain what the exact forcing mechanism was going to be for convective initiation (see afternoon MCD). However, by late afternoon, it became clear that sustained supercells were going to grace our presence. We targeted the first cell showing signs of convective battering near Bismarck, and raced for our morning target of Bismarck to Jamestown. While we were a little "late" to the party, this cell produced a nice stovepipe tornado ~ 5 southeast of Bowdon. We hung with this cell for the remainder of the day, but it couldn't establish more signs of strong low-level rotation (see time lapse). We stuck around to watch lightning for a little while before calling it a night in Fargo. More pictures of the entire trip when I return home...

Time lapse can be found here.

7/9/2011 Bismarck (HP) Bombs

2011-07-08T21:54:00.004-05:00

Friday marked the first day chasing with CoD’s trip 5 (last trip of the year for CoD; sort of a last moment decision for me as I have a lot of research going on). We overnighted in a pretty swag Comfort Inn in Black River Falls, WI, before making a long journey to our target of Bismarck, ND. The long haul paid dividends, as we were treated to a meaty HP supercell near Solen, ND. The storm tried to produce a tornado several times before crossing the river, but just could not get circulation to the surface. The rapid vertical motion was rather impressive, just missing a downdraft/clear slot to impinge on the “sucking scud.” Additionally, it appeared that the low and mid-level circulations were not in harmony at times.

If you have ever visited this area, you are probably aware of the limited places available to cross the Missouri River (crossing in Mobridge, SD & Bismarck, ND; none in-between). Thus, we had to let the cell push east as we busted through the rear flank back north to Bismarck. By the time we caught back up to the cell near Lebanon, ND, it surprised us with some more rapid vertical motion and appeared as if we may get our treat just before dark. Unfortunately, things rapidly fell apart and the cell congealed into the quickly eastward moving MCS activity. We are staying in Aberdeen, SD tonight with eyes on southern SD into NE tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Animation of this setting can be found here. (Best chance for tornado occurs near :17 s mark)

6/25-7/1 Gatlinburg, TN Adventures

2011-07-05T11:29:00.006-05:00

It took 25 years, but my first trip to the Smoky Mountains proved to be one for the memory bank. I had the opportunity to hike to the top of Mt. Leconte (elev. 6593'), whitewater raft, and zipline! If that wasn't excitement enough, I took Jenna to Grotto Falls and proposed to her! She was very surprised/excited, and I couldn't be happier. Enjoy the pictures and videos!

Panny view from Cabin
Grotto Falls...She said yes!

Mama black bear is hungry!

Rainbow Falls
Rainbow falls (slow shutter speed)

Matthew and Whitney scale the base of Rainbow Falls

Tony taking in the view from the side of Mt. Leconte

Panny from S side of Mt. Leconte

What a view!

Additionally, here is a day and night timelapse from our deck.

6/20/2011 Almena, KS & Stamford, NE Tornadoes

2011-06-22T17:49:00.006-05:00

6/20 featured an interesting "cold core-ish" type set up in the central Great Plains with another SPC moderate risk for severe weather. Walker and I enjoyed breakfast at our overnight hotel (Ramada Inn) in Kearney, NE before deciding to venture southwest to intercept some elevated convection moving our way out of northwest KS. On our drive toward this cell, we stopped for lunch at a local diner (Frosty Mug) in Franklin, NE, and closely watched the evolution of this cell. After lunch, we decided to go after this cell after it appeared to quickly become surface based. It was a little tough to get "suckered" south into KS, as the 1630 Z SPC tornado risk (and most of the high-resolution model guidance) suggested that the environment along and northwest of I-80 in central NE would become quite favorable for tornadoes during the late afternoon and evening. Nevertheless, we continued to chug towards this cell. It turned out to be a good decision, as the now surface based supercell ended up producing several tornadoes, including a beautiful half-dust ingested tornado south of Almena, KS. I was in charge of taking video while Walker took stills (days like these can be very stressful alone, and it was great to have another person in the car). Thus, you'll have to wait for Walker's post for the (IMO great) still photos. Until then, enjoy the video and suboptimal pictures that I have uploaded. I apologize for the jerky video in some parts as the wind was pretty intense. We followed this cell north ending up near Stamford, NE, and along the way we witnessed several tornadoes that quickly became rain-wrapped. We eventually broke off with this storm (it was our original plan to do so), to catch up with convection firing further E along and north of I-80. I suspect that this convection didn't have the same storm-relative directional shear that was present with our initial storm (inflow winds were northeasterly into Almena/Stamford storm, while storms to the east were in an environment characterized by southeasterly surface flow) and thus failed to "produce." One of the more interesting features throughout the day were the numerous small (what appeared to be) forward flank mesovorticies. These vorticies exhibited tornadic rotation and often produced swirls of dust at the surface. Certainly a day that I will never forget. We ended the day in Lincoln, NE feeling like champions. Kudos to Walker for helping navigate a rather poor road network along the KS/NE border...look for his post in the offing.

Rain-wrapped barrel tornado (end of Hill City, KS wedge that Mike U. witnessed)
New emerging meso and attendant tornado

Video capture of needle-cone tornado S of Almena, KS (approx 2:25 PM CDT)
Video of the entire event here
Watch out for dust! (approx 2:30 PM CDT)
Dust filled meso begins to occlude as its crossing near the highway 36/60 junction
And another...
Tornado roping out near Stamford, NE

A beautiful fibrous sky near Stamford, NE

6/19/2011 Highway 34 Supercells

2011-06-22T14:07:00.004-05:00

6/19 marked the beginning of a mini chase trip to the Great Plains as a slow-moving late June high-amplitude west coast trough led to a moderate risk of severe weather from the Storm Prediction Center. Walker Ashley and I departed northern Illinois early on the 19th with our eyes set on on far western NE or even eastern CO as lee cyclogenesis was forecast to advect sufficient moisture for supercells into the region under sufficient bulk shear corresponding to a tightening height gradient. After bailing on some initial crapvection in eastern CO, we latched on to the westernmost supercell forming near Haigler, NE. This storm looked great initially, but quickly became pinched off of high theta-e air from the cell to its immediate east. Realizing this, we darted east towards the dominant cell and caught up with it in the Stratton area where we observed a brief ground dust swirl that was reported as a weak tornado in the storm report log. We stayed ahead of this monster all the way to the Cambridge/Arapahoe, NE area, all the while exhibiting a beautiful upside-down wedding cake appearance. We drove north to overnight in Kearney, NE, where it turned out to be a pretty stormy evening.

Initial robust supercell development near Haigler, NE

Brief dust swirl near McCook, NE
Click for animation

6/15/2011 Moonbow

2011-06-15T22:54:00.009-05:00

Decaying convection ahead of a small, compact shortwave trough provided a rather unique (and admittedly unexpected) chance for night photography (~10:30 PM) in my backyard. The environment was characterized by relatively robust CAPE in the lowest 3 km, with sufficient shear as noted by the 00z DVN sounding.

Although the rather impressive lightning display decided to quit as soon as I set up my tripod (figures!), I still managed to capture a few shots that I thought were pretty unique. As the small cell was approaching;

Yellow '+' indicates my position

light from a full moon in the low southeastern sky yielded enough light to produce a rainbow! I was shocked at first to see this, let alone find out later that it showed up in a couple of my pictures. The rest of the photo session was characterized by very stable air behind the cell where stars were shining like diamonds.

Moonbow! (hard to believe this was at 10:30 PM)

Dad taking in the view...

Facing south after cell passage

Ani-GIF of the Big Dipper (click to enlarge)

6/3-6/4 Down Day & CO Bust

2011-06-07T16:00:00.003-05:00

6/3 featured a down day as long-wave ridging was controlling most of the central CONUS. While weak storms did fire in northwest KS (as we anticipated), we opted for a day in the Badlands of South Dakota and ended the day camping in Scottsbluff, NE in preparation for an upslope opportunity in Colorado on 6/4.

Campsite near Scottsbluff, NE national monument.

6/4 was yet another moisture-starved setup in eastern CO. We were hoping for a few landspouts with the very steep low-level lapse rates, but the cap would have none of it. We met up with CoD Trip 3 in a park near Kiowa, CO and watched a few cells quickly form and fizzle out.

Marius (trip 3 CoD) is victim of a frisbee "you threw it, you get it" rule

5/12 - 5/22 CoD Trip 2

2011-06-07T15:32:00.002-05:00

From 5/12 - 5/22 I assisted teaching the College of Dupage's experiential learning thunderstorm laboratory course with colleague Paul Sirvatka. Every year there are 5 trips that each take 14 lucky participants into the beautiful, vast emptiness that is the U.S. Great Plains. The trip is open to anyone and differs from most storm chasing tour experiences in that it is relatively cheaper, and allows one to earn college credit! We do our best to allow students to learn the intricacies of severe weather forecasting while enjoying severe storms and awesome local food (typically BBQ!). Below are some pictures of my account on trip 2. Also, a big kudos to Jeff and Jim for safely driving us on our 3500+ mi. journey!

All smiles as we leave CoD!

First stop! Lunch @ Wildwood Smokehouse & Saloon. Near Iowa City, IA. 5/15/2011

Thumbs up for Wildwood!

Paul happy to be back at Jess & Jim's (S side of KS city). 5/15/2011

Nothing left on the table after leaving...yum!

Lunch @ Hog Wild BBQ Pit. 5/16/2011

Dinner @ BJ's in Norman, OK. 5/16/2011

Dinner in Guymon, OK 5/17/2011

Clarke very excited to get some real brisket.

Dinner in Oklahoma City, OK. 5/18/2011

Lunch in Guthrie, OK. 5/20/2011

Dinner in Wichita, KS. 5/20/2011
Trip 2 participants
My attempt at comically describing a high-based supercell
HDR shot of the "storm of the trip." Near Emporia, KS. 5/21/2011
More pictures from this day can be found here.
My my...Is that a clear slot I see?
Tornado moving northeast out of Emporia, KS. 5/21/2011
Video capture of a tornado moving toward Reading, KS. 5/21/2011
Watch video here.
Paul frustrated trying to find an semi-inverted glaciated non-rotating wall cloud. 5/22/2011

Interested in chasing with the College of DuPage? I recommend visiting this link first.

6/2/2011 The Little Cell That Couldn't: Part 2

2011-06-03T01:13:00.003-05:00

Thursday featured a rather lengthy drive north to Mobridge, SD with hopes for an isolated supercell near sunset. Trends during the late morning/early afternoon began to suggest that the best convergence was occurring a bit further west across western SD. Knowing that the cap was atomic and nothing was going to materialize till late evening, we sat in a park in Mobridge with CoD trip 3 and talked through potential convective scenarios. The main issue was that our new western target would put us on the west side of the Missouri River with only a couple road options for crossing on our inevitable route back towards the east (this turned out to be trivial as the storms died before crossing...). In short, storms began to fire in our new target in an area of enhanced convergence along a dryline. These storms were, well, disappointing. I think they were struggling with the cap, but like yesterday, a dominant updraft was absent. We followed the multicell mess back to the Mobridge area, and shot a few lightning photos on the way back to our overnight location in Fort Pierre, SD. Tomorrow doesn't look to great, but we may chase in southern Nebraska/nw KS. More than anything, it will be a repositioning day for better storms in CO on Saturday.

Ryan takes in the best view of the day...

HDR attempt at the multicell mess

6/1/2011 The Little Cell That Couldn't

2011-06-02T07:34:00.003-05:00

After staying in Omaha, NE on Wednesday, Thursday exhibited a slight risk of severe storms across our target area of sw NE. While driving to the McCook, NE area, a nice towering cumulus field was beginning to develop on the nose of a rather impressive theta-e axis. We played some frisbee in Barnett Park while watching cumulus batter each other, trying to figure out which "pulse" was going to become the big show. A rather persistent area of moderately strong battering was occurring just to our east near Cambridge, NE, so we headed that way to check things out. The first initial updraft/downdraft was maturing visually and through its radar appearance. I had really hoped that this storm would set the stage for the rest of the day, but that turned out not to be the case. The storm presented a nice updraft base and vault region, with a rugged scud-sucking wall cloud. We were on our own road with nobody in site...definitely a highlight of the day! What occurred for the next several hours was rather frustrating. The storm became very "pulsy" in nature and could not decide on a dominant updraft. We stuck with this Little Cell That Couldn't until it became very laminar and shelfy in nature near the Elm Creek, NE area, then broke it off and headed back northwest to our overnight location in North Platte, NE, where we ran into CoD trip 3 at the local Applebees. Today looks rather interesting, albeit a pretty lengthy drive. We will be departing for central Dakota shortly...

Looking good to start!

Panny view of the laminar appearance

5/24-5/25 2011 "High Risk" of Busting

2011-05-26T10:21:00.006-05:00

Tuesday and Wednesday featured "high risks" of tornadoes from the Storm Prediction Center (SPC). I have a poor history of chasing high risk events, mainly because there is just too much going on dynamically to make for an easy chase. Both setups appeared favorable for long-track, violent tornadoes, but the morphologies of the storms (especially on Wednesday) made for a convective mess that made for very difficult visibility. As an example of why these type of days are so frustrating, I have included a radar image depicting all of the messy storm interactions and hundreds of chasers all searching for the same prize.

These big days typically offer plenty o' CAPE and Shear leading to a large convective overturning QLCS later in the evolution. On Tuesday, we were caught too far north (we drove from IL earlier in the morning), despite high risks for tornadoes in south-central KS. We ended up staying in Springfield, MO that night in preparation for and IL play on Wednesday. The IL setup proved just as "messy." Thus, despite two high risks, I only took my camera out of the bag one time! This occurred near St. Louis on Wednesday as a clear slot began to cut into a wallcloud. After making a quick report to the NWS, the storm produced a funnel cloud that lasted for about 30 seconds. I thought this storm may produce a tornado, but quickly dissipated and became outflow dominant. In all, two high risk days proved to be two relatively expensive car washes. Sorry for the poor quality of the funnel picture, but it was a frame capture from Ryan's video camera. I will be down from chasing for Memorial Day weekend, but plan on chasing the following week.

Weakly rotating lowering near St. Louis, MO

Rapidly rotating funnel just minutes later

5/22/2011 Another Iowa Letdown

2011-05-23T14:11:00.004-05:00

Paul Sirvatka and I were excited in the morning with our target area being just E of DSM. I'll offer a few thoughts as to why I think the supercell potential was limited through the afternoon in this area (feel free to debate this with me, as I may be incorrect). Without going back and doing a substantial reanalysis, it appeared to me that the gravity wave that induced an MCS in east/central WI created a meso-high in its wake, causing pressures to rise creating a small surface ridge in eastern IA. This location was then characterized by largely unidirectional hodographs with little 'focus' for convergence and plenty of large-scale ascent ahead of the approaching shortwave. Thus, especially after the very beginning of the event, many storms were multicellular in nature. I'm sure there was more going on, but those are just some of my initial thoughts. The environment of the Joplin, MO tornado was comparable to the environment eastern IA (via 00z 23 May upper air observations), but IA and IL were lucky this time.

5/21/2011 Emporia/Reading, KS Tornado

2011-05-23T10:32:00.006-05:00

Woke up in the Oldtown district of Wichita with a tough forecast on our plate. Go north to Emporia, KS with a better probability of storms, or wait in Witchita, KS and points east with potential for more isolated supercells moving into higher θ_elater in the evening. Decided to stop and hang out at El Derado Lake State Park while watching towering cumulus to our NE (initial Emporia cells). Filled up with gas in Cassoday, KS ($4.06/gal!; very high for the plains) after leaving the park while watching towers immediately to our W. Main tower was relatively mushy and orphaned several times. At this point, we had a sinking feeling inside, with several reports of a beautiful supercell and attendant tornado just outside of Topeka, KS. We decided to cut our losses and begin to head northeast on the KS turnpike. Just as we pull onto the turnpike, we began to notice signals of rapid strengthening (anvil knuckles/ radar echo tops). Unfortunately, we were now on the turnpike with no exits until emporia (figures). After backtracking to the storm, we were treated to a picturesque high-based supercell near El Derado. We then got back on the turnpike and paralleled the now looking multicelluar mess. Morphology of the storm through this next stage was rather interesting. Radar evolution suggests a split occurred, with two separate updraft echo tops. However, visually it almost appeared as if the "left split" was now beginning to slow and deviate to the right of the mean flow. This cell pulled a Pacman on the updraft to its southeast and merged into a beautiful bell-shaped monster. While it did not initially appear tornadic, Paul Sirvatka (CoD) noticed a small clear slot begin to cut from the west towards the location of the updraft (no great wall cloud or rotation was present at this time). We reported this via Spotter Network, and about 10 min. later a well-defined funnel began to form. We checked back in with the National Weather Service office in Topeka to let them know that a tornado appeared imminent. Tornado began to impact the outskirts of northeast Emporia and moved off into the countryside. We followed the storm to Reading, KS where we witnessed several power flashes and a new lightning illuminated elephant trunk tornado (we later found out that EF3 damage and 1 fatality occurred in Reading). The supercell had a beautiful bell-shaped appearance and was easy to see with some of the best lightning (anvil zits & CGs) I've ever seen. After this tornado occluded, Paul and I called off the "tornado" chase and hurried north on I-35 to get ahead of the storm (we had a hotel in KC in preparation for 5/22/11) to photograph lightning. A quick lightning pitstop near Wellsville, KS offered a "cherry on top" to a rollercoaster day. Met up with former adviser Walker Ashley and shared stories before calling it a night.

Initial high-based supercell

Supercell near Emporia, KS

Clear slot beginning to cut...

Tornado!

Wide shot of tornado as it moves northeast out of Emporia

Cherry on top!

5/20/2011 Cold Pools & Cutoffs

2011-05-21T10:18:00.005-05:00

Yesterday was the first 'good' chase day for the students enrolled in College of Dupage's ESAS 1800 experiential learning lab course as a vertically stacked 'cutoff' low has been creating unfavorable supercell environments across the Great Plains. We started the day in Norman, OK, with eyes on two potential targets (S central KS & N central TX). We opted for the northern target, which was characterized by marginal CAPE and less than ideal hodographs (backing in the upper-levels). While storms never exhibited any rotation and were surely not to be imminently tornadic, the bubbling CU up and over the cold pool along Hwy 61 between Pratt and Turon KS offered for a pretty view in the early evening hours. We finished the day off in Wichita's Oldtown district with steaks and beverages from Whiskey Creek Wood Fire Grill. Today (Saturday) looks like a play near the Flinthills in KS with tomorrow shaping up to be interesting in IA/IL. More pics later as we are about to leave for lunch...

Jeff and Paul discuss the importance of nanometers per fortnight
CU's bubbling up over the cold pool near Pratt, KS

5-13-2011 Gentelman's Chase

2011-05-13T16:16:00.004-05:00

Didn't really expect much out of today as I am killing a few days in DeKalb, IL with my former roommate Ryan Coomer before heading out on another chasing expedition this weekend. We got on a multicell early that was interacting with a cold front and the lake breeze from Lake Michigan. The storm produced a brief wall cloud and made for a little excitement. A few good chase days in the southern Plains look possible in the offing...

Rugged wall cloud feature near Sycamore, IL

Almost had me excited...

5/8/2011 Consolation Prize

2011-05-09T10:34:00.004-05:00

Capping inversion held most of the day across our initial target of E central Nebraska. A few cumulus started to exhibit vertical development near Oneil, NE, but quickly morphed into orphan anvils with a lack of focused convergence. Storms began to fire in a post-frontal airmass in S central South Dakota, so we drifted towards the border and our overnight location of Winner, SD. A stationary supercell north of Winner proved to be in reach (this storm was nearly stationary for over an hour), so we jogged north to investigate. This proved to be a consolation prize for a relatively frustrating day. Lightning was impressive, along with some great sunlit mammatus.

Sluggish Start to May

2011-05-06T19:45:00.005-05:00

After Ma' Nature's vorticity frenzy in April, a slow start to May led to a day spent at Starved Rock State Park in Utica, IL. I highly recommend visiting this park for hiking and sightseeing if you are ever in the area. We will be leaving in the morning for the first day of a mini chase vacation while making a last minute decision on the typical north vs. south play. Better dynamics, low-level shear, and precipitation probabilities to the north, while better instabilities along the dryline to the south, albeit with a stronger cap. However, the southern play may lend to better positioning for storm prospects on Mon. and Tues. I'll likely make a last minute decision in the morning after looking at data.

Lovers Leap (looking NW)

Starved Rock Point (looking E)

Radar, Winds, and Tornado Warnings

2011-04-29T20:52:00.002-05:00

Okay, this is my last animation for this incredible tornado outbreak. Amazing to see how the surface winds remain southerly, contributing to substantial clockwise turning hodographs.

April 27 Tornado Reports and Warnings

2011-04-29T12:45:00.005-05:00

Quite a remarkable job by the National Weather Service local offices throughout this event.

WSR-88D View of the Historic Supercell

2011-04-28T21:04:00.005-05:00

Weather Surveillance Radar WSR 88-D (88 is for 1988, the year it began being implemented; D is for Doppler) is the primary nowcasting tool used to issue severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings for meteorologists working at local National Weather service offices. It is a vital infrastructure that has saved countless lives. Below I have provided an animation of a moving-window radar view of a very long-track supercell that originated in Mississippi before finally decaying in North Carolina. While it is not clear yet if the storm was producing a tornado throughout its entire life, it will certainly go down in history as one of the longest track supercells ever! Base reflectivity is shown on the left, and storm-relative velocity on the right. It is important to keep in mind that as the storm is moving, the altitude at which the radar beam is sampling is constantly changing. This is especially important when the storm gets far away from the radar site. Enjoy, and please respect copyrights.

Warning Frenzy

2011-04-28T14:37:00.004-05:00

Unbelievable number of tornado warnings in the past 24-hours. Hats off to local WFOs and the SPC for what I consider to be a very well-forecasted event. More maps to come as the details become clearer...

Mid-April Madness Animation

2011-04-18T17:48:00.001-05:00

http://vgensini.myweb.uga.edu/animations/April2011.mp4

Mid-April Madness

2011-04-16T20:16:00.006-05:00

Today marks the finale of a 3-day severe weather episode across the Central and Eastern U.S. As memorizing as tornadoes can be sometimes, they can become particularly dangerous in densely populated areas as we saw today. The damage pictures are sad and amazing at the same time. My thoughts are with those who have been impacted by the events of the previous days...

Meteorologically speaking, this system was amazing. I don't have time to go into further detail at the moment, but I have annotated a surface weather map of significant surface features and severe reports from the three-day event.

OK Wildfires

2011-03-11T19:30:00.004-06:00

What a busy day of natural disasters! While the tsunami triggered by a record-breaking earthquake early this morning has caused grim pictures and videos from coastal areas of Japan and Hawaii, closer to home, an outbreak of wildfires across east-central Oklahoma has forced many residents to evacuate their homes. Below I have included a visible satellite animation of the central great plains from late this afternoon. I like to tell my students that a visible satellite image is like a digital camera on steroids in geostationary orbit above the Earth's surface. Therefore, if a fire is large enough, one can typically see the smoke plumes caused by the fires.

The first frame of the .gif animation has surface winds overlaid to illustrate the resulting direction of the smoke plumes.

(Click to animate)

Sometimes, It's Good to Nerd Out

2011-03-06T14:18:00.013-06:00

A cold and rainy Friday-Saturday in AHN led to a rather 'nerdy' 36 hour marathon of learning the ropes of the WRF and RIP software (RIP is a post-processing package). I've found that grad-school (especially when you are living by yourself), can lead to these moments of 'in depth,' 'in the zone' thinking that are better left blossoming. I'm sure that many other students that have been here before can attest to this. While not necessarily useful right at the moment, I am sure that these tools will come into use during my dissertation.

Anyone who is familiar with my current research knows that I love to look at historical atmospheric states (or simply, weather history). Specifically, I like to examine those states that are favorable for the development of severe storms. One way researchers can examine this history is through the use of reanalysis data. Reanalysis is an assimilation of all data available for a particular time, then a modeled "best guess" of the atmosphere is produced. Obviously, as one goes back further in time, these approximations of the atmosphere become difficult due to the lack of observations (i.e., the National Weather Service didn't start launching weather balloons until the late 1930's).

While nerding out with WRF, I decided to pull some data from 3 May 1999, one of the most well known tornado days in history. I won't go into much detail regarding the environment, as it has already been published on extensively. Rather, I'll offer some eye candy of the 2100 UTC environment as diagnosed by reanalysis.

2100 UTC SLP (contours), 0-6km Shear(blue), surface wind (red), SBCAPE (fill)

The black "+" in the above image is roughly where the sounding below was calculated. The exact lat/lon is printed on the sounding graphic, but it is roughly near Chickasha, OK.

2100 UTC 3 May 1999 sounding for Chickasha, OK via reanalysis

1-30-11 Winter Weather Discussion

2011-01-30T11:40:00.001-06:00

Monday's Snowfall Potential

2011-01-08T11:58:00.002-06:00

Part I: 50+ Years of Hail Data

2010-12-09T10:35:00.013-06:00

As 2010 comes to an end, I though it would be interesting to investigate the past 50+ years of the severe weather climatological record. While there are plenty examples of the problems with severe weather reports (e.g., Doswell and Burgess 1988;Grazulis 1993; Brooks and Doswell 2001; Brooks and Doswell 2002; etc.), they are the only "ground truth" data available to researchers. For part 1 of this series I will be examining hail data; however, I plan to examine tornado, wind, and all reports. It should be noted that all data presented in this series is courtesy of the Storm Prediction Center's (SPC) SVRGIS dataset.

Quick hail facts from 1955-2009

6.6% of hail all reports can be considered significant (+2" in diameter).
May exhibited the highest frequency of severe reports per year at ~1,080.
An average year will see 4,654 severe and 308 significant severe hail reports.

Below, you will find a potpourri of climatological maps/graphs regarding hail data. Enjoy!

(Click for animation)

Watch closely and you will be able to see urban areas and CWA boundaries...

References:

Brooks, H. E., and C. A. Doswell III, 2001: Normalized damage from major tornadoes in the United States: 1890–1999. Wea. Forecasting, 16, 168–176.

Brooks, H. E., and C. A. Doswell III, 2002: Deaths in the 3 May 1999 Oklahoma City tornado from a historical perspective. Wea. Forecasting, 17, 354–361.

Doswell, C. A., III, and D. W. Burgess, 1988: On some issues of United States tornado climatology. Mon. Wea. Rev., 116, 495–501.

Grazulis, T. P., 1993: Significant Tornadoes: 1680–1991. Environmental Films, 1326 pp.

(EDIT 12/09/10: Added normalized county map)

Damage and Comments on 6-5 Tornadoes

2010-06-06T19:21:00.006-05:00

Damage pictures from the tornado that passed through Streator, IL can be found here.

A copy of the NWS PNS statement can be found here.

National Weather Service lead forecaster Gino Izzi and I covered the Magnolia to Streator damage and came up with high-end EF2. There were a few arguments for EF3 at a location in Streator where a 8" cinder block (with steel reinforcements) garage was partially destroyed. Given that all of the surrounding damage was indicative of EF2, Gino and I did not feel comfortable assigning EF3 in that location. East of Streator, there were 6 high tension power lines down. DOD/DI for these lines is low end EF3, but there were no structures to confirm any of this damage so I'm not sure if Gino is counting it. According to everything we can piece together (including reports from Paul Sirvatka) the low-level rotation was phenomenal with intermittent touchdowns. Maybe the velocities just off the surface were EF3 allowing the high elevation/tension wires to become susceptible.

Things to note:

1) There is no special recipe for tornadoes :)

2) LLJ is *very* important

3) WFs in IL are magic

4) WFs in IL are very magic

I've archived a bunch of data from the setup and hope to analyze it in the coming months after I finish working on my thesis.

6-5 Western IL Tornadoes

2010-06-06T00:42:00.002-05:00

Quick update:

What a day. Don't really care about the tornado count, but it was somewhere near 5. Doing a damage survey with WFO LOT tomorrow morning early, so will be brief:

Witnessed the Elmwood tornado, although not from the vantage point that Walker did. I'm sure some are going to have some amazing pics/video. Thing was beautiful! Didn't get too close...instead stayed back and enjoyed the structure as storms were moving 40+ mph.

Will have much more (including video) soon so check back...

Quick picture from our vantage point:

Weak Evening Convection

2010-06-02T23:51:00.001-05:00

Click here for a time lapse of some slow-moving weak convection just NW of McNabb, IL during the evening of 6/2/2010. Nothing too spectacular as it was weakening while approaching. I hope to do more night time lapse like this in the near future.

More CG's

2010-06-02T00:29:00.004-05:00

Another trip west of Ladd, IL to shoot lightning out ahead of an approaching MCS.

Radar loop of the approaching MCS

5-24 Lightning

2010-05-26T11:18:00.004-05:00

Another venture out west of Ladd, IL to shoot some lightning on 5-24.

Radar capture from the "Radarscope" app

5/17-5-24 Chasing with CoD

2010-05-25T22:13:00.006-05:00

Since I've been lazy blogging, I figured I should probably make one big post to get back on track. This post contains the rest of the College of DuPage storm chasing trip (trip #2) that ran from 5-14 to 5-24.

Waiting for storms to initiate in a park (Iraan, TX)

Roll/Leedy storm. Best picture of the trip IMO.

This storm eventually went on to produce the Bowdle tornado (EF 4 rating).

Funnel cloud!

Quarter hail with the culprit supercell in the background

Dumas, TX supercell

Dumas take two

Mothership NE of Dumas

Brandon takes a picture shortly before the storm hits Dumas

Ahhh! Sometimes you don't need a tornado to make a great photo!

Mammatus

Roll/Leedy take two.

5/16 Crapvection

2010-05-16T23:33:00.005-05:00

Yesterday (5/15) was a complete bust with no ‘cool’ images worth showing. We ended the day in Sonora, TX with beers and great stories after another long day of driving. This morning, we again targeted the Fort Stockton, TX area and actually got convection to develop via the Del Norte Mountains to our Southwest. It was apparent during morning analysis that anything convection was going to have a hard time becoming sustained in the weak atmospheric wind shear and lack of mesoscale convergence. We drifted south to catch up to these storms, but they could not sustain themselves without the aid of the mountains. After grabbing some dinner, a nice storm formed to our northwest and began moving toward our location. Unfortunately, as daylight began to wane, so did the storm. Below are a few images despite a rather unexciting day in the beautiful country of southwest TX. Off to Odessa, TX for a good dinner and beers. Tomorrow looks to be the best day of the trip to this point...

Storm forming on the Del Norte Mts.

Storm NW of Midland before sunset. I believe Dr. Walker Ashley was in very good position for this storm, so keep an eye on his blog for a post.

Saved by the Bell

2010-05-12T00:58:00.005-05:00

Targeted the Clinton, OK area like most and got a pretty decent sunburn. Drifted north closer to the warm front as many convective towers failed to sustain any sort of deep convection. Right as we were about to call of the chase, a couple back to back strengthening radar scans from the storm SW of Woodward caught my attention. As we closed in, the storm became tornado warned. While we were not able to witness any sort of low-level rotation, we were treated to some great structure right before sundown. A saving grace for a disappointing day...

Sunset LP supercell near Woodward, OK

Nice ending to an otherwise disappointing day

Time lapse of LP supercell

A higher resolution video can be found here.

2010 Chase Season Starts with a Bang

2010-05-11T09:23:00.008-05:00

5/10

The 2010 chase season started with a bang for me on Monday. After starting the day in Springfield, MO, it was quite evident that all of the ingredients necessary for tornadic thunderstorms were coming together along the dryline in western OK. After stopping near Wellington for a quick sandwich and data crunching, a storm began to fire just east of the dryline near Chester. The storm quickly induced tornado warning and we were able to intercept it near Lambert. Its appearance was 'elevated' at best during a time when the inflow region of the storm sat nearly stationary for ~15 min. on a day when storm motions were over 40 kts. to the northeast! Due to poor road options, we were forced back east on highway 11 which presented a major chaser convergence issue. By this time, the RFD had kicked and a very strong low-level circulation was present on radar. Since we were chasing the storm east as it was crossing Highway 11 from the southwest, we inevitably crossed the damage path. While some of the damage appeared tornadic in nature, very strong (I can verify :]) RFD winds were likely the culprit to many shredded trees and downed power lines. We were able to witness a rare anti-cyclonic tornado just east of Cherokee. While it was only a brief spin-up on what turned out to be a very big day for tornadoes further to the South, it was a good way to dive right back into chasing after a very long winter.

Walnut size hail. Some was as large as tennis balls!

Briefly tornadic anticyclonic rotation on Highway 11 near Cherokee

Golfballs covering the ground

2 1/2" hail with the culprit supercell in the background

As for today...

I honestly think that today's setup is much more chaser-friendly. The environment down along the Red-River near 00Z is progged to be pretty favorable for supercells with at least an outside shot of bagging a tube before the storms turn to HP bombs. Also, storm motions will be much more manageable. If there is just enough lift along the retreating boundary, this could turn out to be a sleeper day that many have written off...

I will be adding some videos later today/tomorrow...

12/8-12/9 Snowfall

2009-12-10T13:54:00.006-06:00

Wanted to show a cool visible satellite image (click to enlarge) of the vast snow cover from the 12/8-12/9 mid-latitude cyclone. Neat features such as Lake Winnebago, WI, Harlen Co. Lake, NE, and many of the Midwest rivers and their tributaries show up quite nicely.

2009, The Year Without a Summer?

2009-08-30T21:56:00.004-05:00

Many folks in the Great Lakes / Northeast region have deemed this year as the "one without a summer." Take a look at the graph below showing the temperature departures from the latest 30 year average for Rockford, IL. After cool, dry northwesterly flow to the start of May kept severe weather and temperatures cooler than average across a good chunk of the central/eastern U.S., temperatures quickly bumped up to well above average in the back half of June under periods of southwesterly flow (and hence an increase in moisture & severe weather reports). For the majority of July and August, the Great Lakes and Northeast region have been back under northwesterly flow aloft. Sometimes, this flow aloft can be interesting in the mid August time period as MCSs (and occasionally derechos) can be spawn near the upper-level jet stream. However, this flow has lasted for such a long time (and has been so deep latitude wise) that cold fronts have routinely made it to the central Gulf of Mexico. This has in turn left the Midwest with well below average dewpoints for the majority of July and August, and thus little severe weather to talk about.

7/10/2009 Forecast

2009-07-09T12:28:00.003-05:00

Quick look at a composite chart I've made for tomorrow. Any severe weather will be highly dependent on the amount of instability we recieve in the green shaded area.

Henry, IL Fireworks

2009-07-05T10:12:00.005-05:00

Couple shots of Henry's fireworks from the 4th...

Joe & Kade pose at the carnival

Commute (Metra)

2009-07-05T09:16:00.004-05:00

Time lapse of Metra's UP-W line from Ogilvie transportation center to about Elmhurst.

Commute

2009-06-25T20:29:00.002-05:00

Time lapse of about half of today's driving commute. I wish it went by that fast!

Chicago Hustle & Bustle

2009-06-23T21:22:00.004-05:00

Time lapse from the 23rd floor of the Boeing building looking down to the meet-up of Lake Michigan water and the Chicago River. Notice the color difference from recent rainfall!

6/22/09 Highway 20 Tornadoes

2009-06-22T10:59:00.011-05:00

Sunday featured an interesting set-up for tornadic supercells in central IA along a northward advancing warm front. After a late start, Hampton IA was our initial target. After hopping on HWY 20 west of Waterloo, IA we busted west to catch up with some cells forming near Fort Dodge, IA. As we pulled up to these cells, a nice wall cloud formed and after some organization, produced a tornadic circulation east of Owasa. After heading east to watch another circulation forming near Dike, IA, we kept heading east to stay ahead of the slowly moving storms. We were able to see the tornado with debris cloud that hit structures in Dike, but the pictures turned out to be non-existent as the contrast was terrible. Oh well. We chased visual the entire day with help from Gilbert Sebenste and Alan Black giving us radar updates over the phone, as I didn't have the power cord for my laptop...Argh! (Thanks to them...) Gilbert navigated us south after the Dike, IA storm south to another tornadic supercell heading for Iowa City. After busting through precip, we were once again treated with nice juicy inflow, and as the long exposure shows, a HP supercell. Not bad for a Sunday chase!

I will update with a time lapse from todays activities when I have time.

Initial wall/funnel cloud near Owasa, IAStorm begins to get a nice clear slot

Touchdown near Cleaves, IA
Cleaves, IA take twoCleaves panoramic shot

Sharp flanking line heading into the Cleaves storm

Night view of a supercell near Nichols, IA

6/19/09 DeKalb Sunset

2009-06-22T09:53:00.004-05:00

After a round of severe weather over much of Illinois, DeKalb was treated with a beautiful sunset on the back side of an eastward advancing MCS.

6/7/2009 What the Hail?

2009-06-08T12:07:00.006-05:00

On Sunday, NIU alum Dustin Oltman and I ventured out to the Middle Mississippi Valley to try to catch some tornadic supercells since this year has been such a bust for me. I was happy to get out and try my luck in a place that I have never chased (nor do I want to again...). Despite crappy terrain/roads, we were able to cross the Mississippi River into NE Kansas and catch up with a beautiful slow moving LP supercell in Jackson county Kansas. This cell had some awesome structure and a very intense updraft! After watching this cell develop an inflow band and attendant wall cloud, it started to weaken and we decided to catch up with a supercell that looked awesome visually just to our south (we chased most of the day without internet, Argh!). This storm had some of the largest hail I have ever seen (up to baseball size on the ground after at least 15 minuets of melting). This storm also went on to produce grapefruit size hail in the town of Guthrie, Missouri. About the best day you can have without getting a tornado!

Intense updraft of an LP cell (looking west) in Pawnee county NE

Same position as above, looking SE to another large mushroom supercell

Storm 1 gets an organized inflow band and wall cloud

Storm 1 (I need a wide angle lens! This thing was awesome...)
Significant hail in Richardson county Nebraska

5/17-5/18 Friends in the Foothills

2009-05-23T10:44:00.006-05:00

Monday & Tuesday provided "down" days for storm chasing in the great plains. Being so close to CO already, I decided to stay with friends from the 2007 NWC REU that now go to grad school at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. This was my first time to the foothills and I must say it was quite impressive. I was able to sample the local cuisine/beer before heading out for the NE panhandle on Wednesday.

Looking down to the CSU Atmospheric Research Campus
CSU Football Stadium
Yep, you guessed it...we went right past the sign!
Foothills/Man made lake/Horsetooth mt.

It's May right?

2009-05-16T12:19:00.006-05:00

Thursday featured a down day with hope on Friday for a severe weather episode in south central KS before a cold front scours the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the Yucatan peninsula and kills any possibility of severe weather for the next 5 days. Instability was again high with weak wind shear (similar to every set-up this May). After looking at some data in Medicine Lodge, KS, I decided to drift northward to intercept a line of developing cells just north and east of Pratt. These storms were ugly to say the least and featured a shelf with very cold outflow. This week has again verified multiple times that it is much better to have a balance of instability and wind shear rather than just oodles of one...While following these cells all the way back to Braman, OK, my vehicle decided that it was going to make my evening interesting. An inner tie rod (part of the steering assembly) broke and sent me skidding off the road. After waiting for 2 hours for a tow truck, I was towed back to a garage in Wellington, KS. As if this wasn't enough, it was pouring down rain with cloud to ground lightning striking profusely from above. Needless to say, I was not a very happy camper last night! I did grab some photos from yesterday and the vehicle is now back in working order. Whew!

Typical view of the approaching shelfShelf passing overhead. Looking south towards Conway Springs, KS

Looking east out of the whales mouth

5/13 Have you seen my soopercell?

2009-05-14T10:55:00.010-05:00

Wednesday featured an interesting set-up for severe storms in west central OK as a cold front was rapidly plunging southeast into a very unstable airmass (see 18z OUN sounding below). We were certain the cap would break at some point and that severe storms would break out along the front, however, the tornado threat appeared low given the very crappy speed shear. Sure enough, storms initiated in close proximity to our target of Canton, OK and quickly became severe thunderstorm warned for large hail (some members of the V2 project ended up with shattered windshields). We stuck with the "tail end charlie" isolated storm and watched with frustration as it would never really get its act together. You could tell these blobs didn't have a chance to produce tornadoes as inflow into these storms was probably less than 10 mph. Argh! Anyway, we played with an interesting lowering shown below until the sun started to set where we then headed to Binger, OK to sample the hail core under a shell gas station awning. Nickels to quarters was the verdict...As expected, the tornado threat started to increase as better low level shear was introduced via the low-level jet. Too bad this is a nocturnal phenomena! I am convinced that if shear was a little better, this would of been an outstanding day...

18z OUN sounding. CAPE...check, Shear...hmm

Cu timelapse near Canton, OK
Unorganized lowering...Inflow was very crappy...
A few "anvil zits"
Rain wrapped TVS just south of our location. Whew!

5/12 CIN sucks!

2009-05-13T09:33:00.007-05:00

Yesterday featured a set-up of wasted ingredients with a stout cap in place over much of the great plains. Not much time to tell a long story today, but we intercepted a cell near Tuila, TX and dropped south to catch another cell near Plainview. Followed this cell all the way to just north of Childress, TX where we caught up with the VORTEX2 clan.

Morning target forecast

Long exposure just north of Childress, TX
Polarized view of a pretty cell north of Childress

"Crawler" lightning near Childress
Convergence!

Morel Mania

2009-05-03T21:44:00.003-05:00

Sunday's beautiful weather allowed for one of my favorite springtime hobbies, morel mushroom hunting! Unfortunately, we didn't find enough to make a huge meal, but we did find some of the larger morels that I have seen come out of the woods near our home. My dad and sister found over a dozen about a week prior to today, but we still wanted to check the same places due to the favorable morel weather that has existed this spring so far. Morel's like warm nights and ample rainfall (like many fungi). We've had no shortage of precipitation in Illinois this spring!

A few Morel's from Sunday's hunt

I will be leaving some time this week/end for storm chasing in the plains. This year, you will be able to track my storm chasing location in real time here. Stay tuned for updates!

Early Season Severe Weather Setup

2009-03-08T22:37:00.003-06:00

On Tuesday morning, showers and thunderstorms will be ongoing north of a stalled warm front near the Interstate 72 corridor in association with strong convergence as the low-level jet impinges on the 850mb warm front. I don't really see this activity being severe as soundings during this time period are totally saturated and lapse rates marginal. Soundings actually look more tropical than anything, and would expect the main threat from this early morning activity to be flooding with more heavy rain likely added to already saturated soils. On Tuesday afternoon, a shortwave trough will eject out of the Southern Plains and become negatively tilted as it passes through the upper Midwest. At the surface, an elongated area of low pressure will house an advancing warm front near the Interstate 80 corridor and an advancing cold front near the IA/IL border. Perhaps the most interesting feature during the late morning and afternoon is the presence of very dry in the mid-levels of the atmosphere. This slot of dry air will be advected over a the early morning high RH air-mass, and as this slot of dry air begins to make its way into the area (around 18Z or so), clouds should begin to thin and allow for some sunshine in these areas. If this materializes, instability in the warm sector will quickly increase as temperatures rise with the passage of the surface warm front and dewpoints rise from moisture advection and the evaporation of the morning rainfall. With the center of surface circulation near central IA at this time, surface winds in a majority of places in central Iliinois will have a southerly to southeasterly component (even south of the WF). Just 1 km above the surface winds at this time will be howling near 50 knots out of the southwest creating ideal directional shear in the lowest levels of the atmosphere. I see "mini" or "low-topped" supercells as the greatest threat with this system in central and west central IL as the thermodynamic environment will struggle to become unstable. Given the ample directional shear and dry air aloft, I see damaging winds and isolated tornadoes as the main threat. Not to mention storms will probably already have a forward moving component that is already near severe criteria. However, severe hail would certainly be possible given rotating supercell updrafts, but lapse-rates in the lowest 3 km are not all that impressive and may be one limiting factor to this entire setup. However, I plan to chase since I am on spring break, and am currently targeting near or just west of Galesburg, IL.

My "Convective Outlook" for Tuesday March 10th.

Unique Snow Bands

2009-02-19T12:41:00.004-06:00

Click to Animate

This mornings visible satellite showed a unique pattern of snowfall across the Upper Mississippi Valley. After some review of the features present and some collaboration with forecaster's at the NWS in Davenport, IA, it seems as if a very small mesoscale wave produced enhanced lift in a banding effect as noted by the multiple parallel lines almost evenly spaced. It also looks as if the fetch was ideal for the band furthest to the west to have some river enhanced moisture in NE IA and SE MN. Thus, this band furthest to the west is brighter than the others due to its enhanced snowfall. Not a single model picked up on this very tiny mesoscale feature. One good reason to leave a chance of precip in your forecast!

Ice Storm Damage

2008-12-20T11:34:00.006-06:00

Gusty winds overnight caused more tree limbs to break around the area. As an intense arctic high builds over southern Saskatchewan this afternoon, winds will increase out of the North gusting up to as high as 40 mph. This wind will wreak havoc on many of the ice covered trees and power lines in the area. I have a feeling that the damage from the ice storm will be done overnight tonight by these very strong winds...Here are some more pictures I took this morning.

6" diameter tree limbs down

Turkeys scurry across the field

12/18 - 12/19 Ice Storm

2008-12-19T16:54:00.006-06:00

Below are some pictures I was able to capture early this morning after an ice storm glazed our house with 3/8" of ice. About an inch of sleet fell before the freezing rain, so a mess of ice is now packed solid into the side roads and driveways.

Ironic?

We lost a few branches around the yard...

Bird feeder is an ice palace

Snow Update

2008-11-30T20:57:00.003-06:00

Storm total of 4"of wet slushy snow as of 9 PM in west DeKalb.

Level II radar loop of the entire storm (large file)
Animated GIF of the snowfall so far (large file)

Notice the melting after the initial accumulation, then the reaccumulation of snow when the sun started to set.

A typical view outside our complex

California Wildfires

2008-11-16T11:46:00.005-06:00

A few people have been asking, and I haven't blogged in a while, so I thought I would talk about the wildfires in Southern California that have devastated over an estimated 10,000 acres through early Sunday morning. Fires continue to blaze early Sunday with some incredible pictures coming in to CNN via their I-report feature. Earlier this week, the Storm Prediction Center had a critical outlook for fire weather in Southern California due to a reversal of flow down-sloping off the Santa Ana's towards Los Angeles. These Santa Ana winds occur when east-to-west flow develops over the Santa Ana mountains, descends, and becomes very warm and dry.

Surface map illustrating the warm and dry conditions favorable for wildfires

These winds, similar to the Chinook winds that are frequent this time of year, can easily reach 50 mph! This obviously helps to spread a wildfire and makes a firefighters job virtually impossible. A diagram I pulled off the internet helps explain this process visually:

The windward side of mountian ranges feature many different types of trees and vegetation that are supported by the plethora of precipitation that the windward mountain side receives. If you now reverse the flow of the air in the diagram above, the warm and dry air is decending over forests and in this case towards million dollar pads in eastern Orange county.

Pesky high pressure contributes to east-to-west flow over the Santa Ana mountains
Visible satellite image of the wildfires in SoCal (click to enlarge)

DMB at the Gorge

2008-09-04T21:17:00.007-05:00

Unbelievable. That pretty much sums up this year's labor day weekend at the Gorge. Dave Matthews Band was headlining the weekend as he has in the past, but this weekend would prove to be a special one for fans and for the band. It was the first trip to the Gorge without saxophone player LeRoi Moore. LeRoi's death was a surprise to many, as an embolism from a June ATV accident would ultimately end his life. The band was very emotional during their 30th appearance at the venue and played with passion that some bands can only dream of. The band put on some of the best shows of the year, and as always, did not fail to awe. The Gorge is truly a magical place, and if your favorite band is lucky enough to play there, I highly recommend attending.

A view from the hotel in Seattle
How much can you pack in a PT cruiser? Good thing we're good at Tetris!
A view of our campsite
A view from the top of the lawn. What a venue!
Cliff overlooking the Columbia River

The Best of July '08

2008-07-31T19:58:00.011-05:00

A collection of my best pictures from this month. Enjoy!

A rapidly rising tower forms a pileus cloud

A nasty early morning MCS produces 70+ mph winds on 7-21-08

7-21-08 radar loop (click to enlarge)

A female white-tailed deer feeds in the backyard

A blinding CG on 7-8-08

7-8-08 radar loop (click to enlarge)

Father's day or son's Day?

2008-06-15T22:01:00.013-05:00

Father's day is usually all about Dad's, but this one certainly seemed like it was a gift to me instead of my father! The day started off with a bang as I was awoke early to a small elevated MCS traversing through Illinois that produced a beautiful shelf cloud according to Tavis's pictures. The MCS quickly exited allowing for rapid destabilization from late morning till early afternoon before a large thunderstorm complex quickly blew up right over top of us. This storm produced the largest hail I have seen to date in Illinois!

Anvil shield from the early afternoon convection to the west

Penny to walnut size hail!
Posing with a handful of small hail

Little did we know, the storms were not done yet! Yet another round of storms initiated off to our west with some surprising structure. These storms were very intense and very short lived. My guess is that they relieved any of the instability that the early afternoon convection missed...
This storm fired and quickly produced a wall cloud type lowering before quickly dissipating...The images were taken with my phone and are not of the best quality...One thing to observe is the northwest flow nature of the storm and the "reflection view" of a typical southwesterly flow supercell.

Notice the precip core on the left side of the storm rather than the right...

Things quickly settled down after this exciting storm to a normal father's day. We were treated to a beautiful sunset and some hard to photograph hummingbirds!

Breathtaking sunset
Reflection of CB off of the lake

Dad posing next to his pride and joy
Curly enjoys the evening
This guy was hard to photograph!

6/11--Deadly Iowa HP's

2008-06-15T21:23:00.006-05:00

The day after my birthday was shaping up to be an interesting day for tornadic supercells in western IA. After picking up Dustin in Oglesby and Travis (another NIU chaser) near Princeton, IL, we headed for our initial target of Council Bluffs, IA. After passing through the Quad Cities, I noticed that the right front tire was shaking violently and that it was going to need to be replaced. Luckily for us, a tire center in Des Moines was able to get us right in and after about an hour of labor, we were back on our way to western IA. We arrived to our target a little behind schedule, but were excited to see the rapidly strengthening storms off to our SW.

Shot of an initial supercell forming to our west

Unfortunately for everyone involved, these storms quickly what meteorologists call HP or High Precipitation. These storms are often very hazardous to many for lots of reasons...Storm chasers and others in the path of the storm because it is very hard to find and identify where circulations are in the storm; National Weather Service forecasters because they rarely have ground truth of these circulations until after they have wreaked havoc on their targets; and their obvious title of very heavy rain producers that causes flash flooding in a matter of minuets.

HP storm that quickly "wrapped up" and passed over the Boy Scout camp...

These sort of situations are always a blow to the stomach to everyone involved and no chaser ever wants to see anyone injured while chasing after mother nature...One chaser even had to bail out of his vehicle after realizing that a circulation was passing right over him! This day was certainly a dangerous chase day, and my thoughts and prayers go out to everyone that had their lives changed due to this event. After staying ahead of the HP blob, it started to coalesce with other HP monsters into a large MCS. We stayed ahead of this mess of convection on I-80, stopping frequently to sample the shelf and lightning.

Typical view of the shelf along I-80 just west of Des Moines

CG bolt near Des Moines

6/4-6/5 Bust and Realization

2008-06-09T18:57:00.013-05:00

Everything seemed to be falling into place for a two day severe weather episode, so Dustin and I decided to head to the NE, IA border to catch some action. Initially, Wednesday seemed to be the day that was going to an appetizer as the orientation of the upper level trough was still positive and less progressive than the progged upper level flow for Thursday. We basically figured that any convection we could catch Wednesday would be icing to the cake. In summary, Wednesday turned out to be better than Thursday despite the better looking atmospheric conditions on Thursday (more on this later).
After reviewing some data while stopping at Sonic in Des Moines, IA, our initial target was Aurora, NE. While driving to our target we noticed many storms firing of to the west of Aurora near Kearney and Grand Island. We still decided to keep our target due to the very agitated nature of the cumulus clouds outside our windows between Lincoln and Aurora. To our liking, a pair of supercells fired along this northward lifting boundary and put us in the perfect position to chase.

Initial storm north of Aurora, NE, lacking strong low-level inflow
The TIV (Tornado Intercept Vehicle) contemplates on a target

Storms seemed to be lacking a low-level inflow, and with darkness approaching we decided to call it quits near Lincoln, NE. While checking into our hotel, many mexican men were standing outside of the entrance to the hotel amazed by the wind, rain and lightning from the leftover convection. Did I also mention that they were downing 24 oz. beers? Sure enough, we found one of them with a phone up to his ear passed out on the steps leading up to the room.

Yes hunny, I'll make it home for breakfast tomorrow.

After a few laughs, we noticed that the lightning on the backside of the convection we were following was amazing. Must say that it was the best display of anvil zit lighting that I have seen to date.

"Anvil Zits" outside of Lincoln, NE

Dessert after the main course.

After returning to the room, attention quickly turned to Thursday's chasing prospects. After waking up to the largest Storm Prediction Center high risk that I have ever chased, I was anxiously awaiting the afternoon convection. Even though the morning high risk was primarily for a threat of damaging wind, it was apparent that a small area in E central NE was becoming ripe for tornadic supercells (see MD below).

Mesoscale Discussion issued shortly after we left Lincoln

I will now go into quite a bit of detail about Thursday's bust...

After choosing York, NE as a target we noticed some convection starting to fire on radar to our west near Grand Island and we immediately traveled west to scope out the action. It was obvious that these storms were not tapping the uncapped surfaced based instability that the SPC mesoanalysis was showing (see below).

17 Z Surface Based CAPE

Notice the lackluster appearance of the convection along the boundary in S central NE

What was happening? You can clearly see that the storms in northwestern KS were thriving in an environment that seemed much less favorable for supercellular convection. After a few minuets of watching this convection moving out of CO and into KS, we decided to try to intercept these quickly moving supercells, with a flying V appearance on radar, as they would hopefully move near the Red Cloud, NE area. The pair of supercells was moving into a very favorable environment rich with extreme theta-e and backing winds along a N-S oriented pseudo dryline. All I could keep thinking is that this was it, these were going to be the storms that we have been waiting for... We made it to Red Cloud, NE with time to spare and fueled up while watching radar. We were very curious to see what was going to happen when these storms hit the boundary and moved into a much better conceptual severe storm environment. The radar scan after the storm hit the boundary, and I mean right after, the storm immediately lost all of its rotation and started to dissipate into a non-severe shelf cloud. WHAT? Hmm...You would THINK that this storm was moving into a much more favorable environment. What was wrong with the airmass on the east side of this boundary? It was clearly having trouble sustaining any sort of an updraft the entire day. One hypothesis could be that the airmass to the east of this boundary was capped despite the RUC's analysis in the SPC mesoanalysis. Wouldn't this boundary help break that cap?

What happened when the supercell that looked so good on radar hit the boundary? Boundaries are supposed to be areas of enhanced vorticity and wind shear. Was it the orientation that storm crossed the boundary that made it dissipate and turn into a shelf cloud? So many questions were running through my mind on the long drive back to Illinois...One thing for sure is that we as meteorologists still know very little as far a mesoscale processes in these sorts of situations. Who knows, maybe someone will do a case study for the event, but I find it unlikely due to the lack of 18Z soundings behind this psuedo dryline... Now 0-5 while chasing high risk events and 0-4 inside of PDS tornado watches. I'm becoming more frustrated every time I see a high risk...one. It always seems like there is just way to much going on!

Disappointingly, the best picture of the day

Time lapse of the shelf cloud

Bust, War Wound, & End of Trip 1

2008-05-27T00:25:00.004-05:00

Today started off at the Budget King motel in Salina, KS. I have to say that the stay was not that bad considering how cheap we got the room. Anyway, it was evident at the beginning of the day that we were going to have to head south and west to catch nice convection during the day. Our initial target was Greensburg, KS although we ended up just east of Greensburg in Pratt, KS so we could grab some food and some internet data. As you may remember, Greensburg was the town that was devastated by an EF-5 tornado on May 4th, 2007. We began heading towards Greensburg after noticing that an outflow boundary from early morning convection was sagging southwest through our area. It was a nice cool down, but we knew we wanted to catch the initiating storms to our southwest and then follow them as they interacted with this mesoscale boundary. These storms were again outflow dominant for the most part, as well as large hail producers. In fact, while chasing the only good looking storm on radar back towards Pratt, we were munched by the core of another developing storm. This was by far and away the largest hail I've ever encountered... We were pounded by hail anywhere from about penny to egg size. The vehicle sustained a small windshield crack just above the drivers side, as well as other small dents on the roof. Fortunately for us, we were able to get out of the large hail core and head east of Prat and eventually called it quits in Wichita, KS. Numerous chasers stuck in the hail core behind us reported tennis to baseball sized hail in the location that we were just able to get by. Unfortunately, many of those chasers suffered broken windshields and windows that immediately ended their chase. Overall, a great chascation with a cooperative weather pattern and some great supercells as we will call an end to trip 1 while a ridge dominates the central plains for a couple days. Will post pictures of the war wound tomorrow, and unfortunately we do not have pictures of the large hail because we were trying to get out of it!

Initial Convection...

Outflow + Scud = No Tornadoes!

2008-05-25T22:17:00.007-05:00

Last night we camped at Cedar Bluff State Park with about 10,000 little bugs that looked like ticks. I'm not sure exactly what they were, but I can tell you they were very annoying. After cleaning up camp, we migrated to back to the headquarters this year (Hays) and soaked up some data as well as some Sonic breakfast and Arby's lunch. Mmmm...healthy! While choosing a chase target in Hays, we sighted a small storm on radar developing off to the west of were we had just been camping the previous night. Around 12:30 P.M. this storm became severe warned, and 2 radar scans later, tornado warned. We were in very good position to intercept this storm, in fact, we were one of very few chasers of the many in the plains this week on this initial storm. In short, this storm produced a very picturesque wall cloud and very intense inflow. We got caught behind this storm after photographing the most beautiful inflow band I have ever witnessed. While behind this storm, we were munched by quarter to golf ball size hail. I was amazed we didn't break the windshield or sustain any damage to the vehicle! Overall the day was marked by outflow dominant storms and low hanging scud that prompted sherrifnadoes and eye catching structures that you swore would go tornadic. Tomorrow will be another chase day as our chascation has been marked by 1 slight, 4 moderates, and 1 high risk from the Storm Prediction Center. I think we picked the right week :)

Beautiful wall cloud
Golfball hail anyone?

Inflow band

Frustrating day!

2008-05-23T23:27:00.003-05:00

We awoke to a great severe weather set-up across west central KS and headed back to Scott City, KS after staying in Phillipsburg last night. After a PDS tornado watch was issued, we were able to get on the first storm that initiated near Dighton, KS. I have to say, we have been making very good decisions as far as initiation is concerned. This storm produced a photogenic supercell with attendant wall cloud, but just couldn't develop enough low level rotation for a tornado. After drifting north all the way to Wakeeny, KS with this storm we learned about a tornadic supercell that was crossing I-70 just to the west of Wakeeny. This storm produced several tornadoes and I have already seem some great pictures from other chasers of what appears to be a large wedge tornado. Overall, we were basically bouncing back and forth between supercells and ended up not seeing a tornado. The storm we followed to the north had LCL's of nearly 100 m and was very hard to tell what was going on. We later found out this storm was producing a rain wrapped tornado. Oh well! Looks like we will camp in KS tomorrow and sit out the chase in eastern NE and western IA tomorrow and try to catch some storms in southern KS on Sunday. Frustrating day, but to be expected every once in a while...

Severe thunderstorm near Scott City, KS.
Intense inflow sucks up dust from a field.
Funnel cloud just north of Scott City, KS.

Long haul pays off!

2008-05-22T23:56:00.004-05:00

We awoke in Goodland, KS to a classic climatological severe weather outbreak set-up in which a warm front was rapidly lifting northward, while a dryline was mixing eastward. We decided to head south to Scott City, KS around 12:15 P.M. and noticed the first reflectivity echo starting to form just south of our target. After gassing up and realizing the show was going to start early, we played with an outflow dominant cell just to the east of Scott City just before noticing that a cell was quickly becoming organized to the south of the original storm. This cell had a beautiful wall cloud and ended up producing a tornado in southwest Gove county. A funnel was extending to the ground and we were able to see attendant dust clouds at surface for a solid 5 minuets. We were playing catch up to this storm for most of the day, and ended up watching it cycle many times before calling it quits in Phillipsburg, KS. Overall a great day, and looks like we will have another chance to catch supercells along the dryline in either KS or NE later day.

First tornado in SW Gove county KS.
Woo Hoo!

More Moisture Please!

2008-05-21T23:46:00.005-05:00

Tuesday was largely a travel day as we drove nearly 900 miles to Scottsbluff, NE. We camped near Scottsbluff National Monument which I have to say was pretty nice compared to what I was expecting. We awoke in the middle of the night to the lawn sprinklers shooting water into our tent! Argh! After waking up in the morning we dried out the tent and headed south to Fort Morgan, CO. The first storm initiated around 2:00 PM and we were on it shortly thereafter. It was very high based as many storms in these situations tend to be. We were hoping for some high plains magic with low dewpoints, but unfortunately the upslope flow just didn't have enough moisture to realize any highly organized supercells. I was pleased that we picked a good target and managed to get on the storms that looked the best on radar. We are currently staked out at the Holiday Inn Express in Goodland, KS and will be anxiously awaiting what appears to be a significant severe weather outbreak on Thursday; or so we hope!

Some high based, moisture lacking crapvection.

Negative Helicity

2008-03-20T10:09:00.005-06:00

I captured this image this morning after looking at visible satellite over the Gulf of Mexico and pondering over the idea of negative helicity. Most of the Storm Relative Helicity that meteorologists think of is in the sense of a WAA regime in which the winds turn clockwise as you increase in altitude through the atmosphere. In this case one can see the winds at the surface are out of the NE, while just a few thousand feet higher in the air, they turn to the SW. This is a textbook CAA scenario for much for the Gulf Coast. The cooler temps are also reflected in the 11 AM surface observations...So not many MET's think about helicity in the negative sense, but if you had upward vertical motion in that sort of a field, it would provide the parcel with the ability to rotate clockwise, instead of your normal counter-clockwise rotating supercell. Because this type of wind profile is associated with CAA, we can usually eliminate any possibility of storms being able to tap into "negative helicity."

Nearly a 180 Degree Turning of the Winds w/ Height

CAA for much of the Gulf Coast

New Orleans, LA, Hodograph Shows the "Negative Helicity"

Forward, Together, Forward

2008-02-23T17:01:00.002-06:00

NIU will forever be changed after tragedy struck our campus on Feb. 14th. Events like this often leave us asking, "Why?" This may turn out to be one of those situations that may not have an answer, but it saddens me to know that students trying to further their education would have their lives cut short from such a heinous act of violence. I have met so many wonderful people during my stint at Northern, and I could not imagine enduring what others are going through with this week. Times like these make you step back and take a look at what is really important in your life, and for me that has been the cruel realization that lives can be changed in a matter of minuets. I have learned to make sure to not take things for granted, as they may not be there tomorrow.
Another thing on my mind is the media attention surrounding the case. I understand that the media has needs, and companies will go to great lengths to get media coverage nowadays. However, I do think that this may have a negative societal impact. IMO, the media is giving way to much attention to the people committing these crimes. For instance, if you were mentally sick enough to think about committing suicide, people now can get all of this attention for committing a violent act from CNN...etc. (Virginia Tech was a prime example of this) I'm not saying that news companies shouldn't cover these stories, but I think they need to regulate the amount of information released to the public. Food for thought I guess...

Rockin' Research

2007-07-25T15:22:00.000-05:00

In my office

Talk about flash flooding!

Hard to believe that summer is almost over! The research is winding down and it is now time to start wrapping up my paper and final presentation. I do have to say that this has been one of the best summers of my life, and the overall experience and networking that I have achieved out here is a once in a lifetime experience and I am thankful for that! Soon it will be back to the grindstone to finish out the senior year...I'm looking forward to coming back to NIU and finishing out strong :) Wish me luck next week for my final presentation!

Eat, Sleep, Project

2007-07-03T13:33:00.000-05:00

Cool replica of the NWC

Title of the blog seems appropriate right now due to the fact that this project has owned me the past couple weeks. I am currently studying convective parameters from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis with Harold Brooks of the National Severe Storms Lab here in Norman. I have been writing code, making spreadsheets, and analyzing graphs to help further understand the climatology of severe weather parameters. The NCEP/NCAR reanalysis is basically a 40 year model output study that created point based variables for 18,048 points on the globe. I have been writing a program to determine which points are valid, in our area of concern, and then decipher all the data e.g. CAPE, Deep Shear, LCL's. So far it has been rather challenging, but rewarding. If you would like to know more about the data and subject, let me know and I can send a slide show to you that I have been working on. Adios!

Pleasant Surprise!

2007-06-14T00:14:00.000-05:00

MD issued as we were leaving
Tornado!

Yesterday at lunch I jokingly told the REU group that they better bring their chase gear to work today because it may be our last chase. When Dave Imy and I were working on the Day 2 outlook for today we did not think storms would have the potential to become tornadic due to the lack of mid level support and icky wind shear. Needless to say, today told a different tale. Around lunch time we decided that we would chase for sure as many of the BufKit soundings indicated shear increasing my mid afternoon as well as plenty of instability to feed the storms as they form. We decided to head out around 1:30 P.M. to our target, Watonga, OK, and by the time we got to Watonga we immediately decided that we did not want to go any further west and instead wanted to stick with the outflow boundary from the early morning convection that was moving Southwest with time. A small cell fired along the boundary, but it looked as if it was having trouble becoming rooted in the boundary layer and not accessing all of the available energy that was at the surface. We got on the storm anyway and continued to follow it while we were all yawning due to the crappy outflow that was dominating the HP blob. All of a sudden, and I do mean sudden, the storm decides to get its act together and we see a clear slot come diving in from the west on the storm and great mid level rotation starting to wrap up nicely. This is actually the second time this has happened to me this year and has been quite mysterious. Anyway, a wall cloud quickly formed and spawned a tornado that touched down for about 15 seconds, then lifted. This particular tornado did this routine 2 different times before becoming rain wrapped and out of our visibility. It looked as if it was still on the ground the last we saw, so who knows how long the tornado was actually on the ground...Pictures didn't come out that great due to the very poor lighting, but with a little bit of contrast I was still able to pull off this picture. I took a lot of video from start to end to hopefully I can edit that sometime this week. That's all for now...

National Weather Center

2007-06-11T17:56:00.000-05:00

My ID
Front of the NWC

First ever operational Doppler Radar
Chase that didn't pan out...

Its been a while since I've posted, but yes I am still alive and well :) The summer is starting off very busy with a lot of small tasks to take care of i.e. id's, parking forms...Apparently the government feels the need to know everything about you and your cousins before they will allow you to perform tasks. Josh and Amanda visited this weekend and helped me ring in my birthday celebrations with the REU crowd. In case you haven't noticed, we feel the need to celebrate and enjoy life a lot ;) It was awesome seeing the looks on their faces when I toured them through the weather center and all of the cool facets of Norman. By the way, if you are ever in Norman, make sure to try the Hideaway restaurant in downtown Norman on Campus Corner. They have awesome pizza! For the most part thus far I have been working on a computer program for Harold Brooks and trying to get it to do what I want it to do. It's a fairly complex program that involves a lot of nested looping and array arguments; aka It's going to take me a while to finish it, but when I am done it will be able to compute several statistical calculations with meteorological variables. Harold has code for a similar program that was coded in FORTRAN, but I only know C++ so therefore I am stuck writing the program from scratch which is definitely a pain, but a great learning experience. I really had no idea how much computer programming comes into play in several meteorology related research projects. Anyway, I am job shadowing Dave Imy at the Storm Prediction Center tomorrow and couldn't be more excited. I finally get to see how the Convective outlooks are made, as well as try my hand at some meso-analysis with the forecasters. Should be interesting!

Red River Valley

2007-06-02T15:27:00.001-05:00

Beautiful Mammatus near Lawton, TX
Double Rainbow

Yesterday we got sucked down towards the Red River near Lawton, TX to chase a HP looking blob. I must say we got into the heaviest rain that I have ever seen before! After catching a few shelf cloud pictures, we headed back towards Norman where we able to get great pictures of mammatus and a sweet looking double rainbow! Chase season looks like it is starting to ramp up with a trough setting up over the western conus which will make for an active severe weather period ahead so check back for pics soon!

Bricktown

2007-05-30T16:38:00.000-05:00

REU 2007 Group
Memorial Wall
Reflection pond & seats for the victims

Last night we ventured to the OKC bombing memorial and Bricktown. We enjoyed dinner at a very nice Italian restaurant and then visited the memorial where the federal building once stood...Very cool!

First Day in Norman!

2007-05-28T16:07:00.000-05:00

Almost There!

My Room...

Our Apartment Complex
Living Room
The World's Largest McDonalds!

After a long drive, I have finally arrived in Norman. I have been here for 1 hour and I already love it! The town is very nice and seems like a great college town. I snapped a few pictures while driving, but there will be many more to come! By the way, my address for this summer will be :

Sooner Hotel
Victor Gensini
300 Kellogg Drive
Norman, Oklahoma 73072

Pictures From Trip 1

2007-05-25T11:43:00.000-05:00

Cows trying to decide if they should die now or later...
Picturesque HP Supercell near Graham County KS
Same storm about 20 min prior
Wednesday's MD for the panhandle
Flash Flooding in Stillet, TX

I took video during Tuesday's tornado so I will try to post links to clips soon. If you would like to see more pictures just let me know.

Long Day...

2007-05-24T01:08:00.000-05:00

Currently riding in the car on the way to Oklahoma City where we are going to stay and make the journey back to DeKalb tomorrow morning…Today was well, in one word, frustrating. Everything looked to be in place for discrete supercells along the northward retreating boundary. We arrived in Perryton, TX after grabbing lunch at Bob’s place in Mead, KS. After wasting some time watching some little boy cleaning his lawnmower, we saw towering cumulus to our South and waited for the SPC to issue a tornado watch. Shortly thereafter, the PDS tornado watch was issued for our area. At that point, we were a little North of where we would have liked to be...We had to make a decision to head south and try to core punch the already HP feature-like storm, or head west and try to circle around the developing supercell. We decided the latter and headed around to Borger, TX to catch I-74 which would give us a north-south option for our storm. Today we had radar up and running after blowing a fuse yesterday; and after heading north on I-74 and watching the system for a while it was obvious that the system was becoming outflow dominant. We decided to head back to Borger (now our 4th time this trip) to try to catch a tor warned storm that was forming off to our southwest. The shitty road network of this area really hampered our ability catch up to these storms. They were not isolated supercells like we were hoping for, which is probably due to the fact that the cap was a little weaker today as convection was starting to fire around 12:30 to our northeast. I must say that after yesterday’s taste of severe weather had me wanting more, but overall I am happy with the trip. I visited 3 new states (OK-TX-KS) and saw my first tornado of 2007. It was a great trip and definitely worth the 900 mile drive to Liberal on Sunday.

Tornado #1!!!

2007-05-23T14:13:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was what storm chasing is all about. The day started off in Shamrock, TX and after a few glances at data, it was apparent that we were going to have to head north towards West Central Kansas. Our target was Dodge City, KS, and we made it there in plenty of time to grab some food and check over data. The moisture axis was a little to the east of DDC, but better convergence do to the dryline was occurring just to the west of DDC. From Dodge City we headed North on Highway 23 and followed a towering cumulus field just off to our West. It was apparent that the cap was strong, and we were hoping for a storm to pop the cap and tap into the energy available. Sure enough, the storm we were following eventually turned into an HP supercell with great mid-level striations due to good upper level rotation. We stuck with this cell on the southern end of the boundary while it went through a few cycles of occluding and reforming. We realized that we were a little too far to the West of the storm, so we hopped on I-70 and traveled East towards Wa Keeney, KS. At Wa Keeney, we went north to keep up with the developing storm, and then the fun started. As we were getting great pictures just to the Southeast of the HP supercell, the mesocyclone wrapped up nicely with an obvious RFD clear spot punching in on the western side of the storm. Watching the rotation of the meso and the wall cloud was miraculous. A funnel cloud quickly spun up and we were treated to a brief tornado touchdown just west of highway 283 in Graham county KS. The funnel was visible for almost 10 min when the funnel roped out in a beautiful fashion. We then saw another HP type cell starting to form to our South and West and we realized we were going to have problems. We stayed to watch the mesocyclone occlude and then knew we had to head South on 283 to get out of the precipitation forming to our Southwest. Heading south, we were pounded with nickel to penny size hail that covered the road and reminded me of January! Our maneuver south paid off as we found out that the nickel to penny size hail we encountered turned into tennis ball size hail in Northern Graham County! We then decided to head east on I-70 to get ahead of the HP cells that were quickly evolving into intense linear convection and racing eastward. Booking east put us near Hays, KS where we were able to quickly book a room and head back out to catch some lightning pictures. While taking lightning shots, a tornado warning was issued for Ellis County which is where Hays is located… Heading back into town, people were going crazy thinking that Hays was going to be destroyed! We had a great view of the storm with the frequent lighting and we were sure that there was not a tornado with the storm. Needless to say, the storm barreled through Hays and produced prolific lightning, hail, and wind. It was definitely a great end to a great day. Today we are on our way to Borger, TX in hopes of an even better day than yesterday…Today moisture and shear both look better than yesterday so we will see what happens… :) I will be posting many pictures tonight...

Panhandle Magic

2007-05-21T22:50:00.000-05:00

Bubble Toes

Texas Panhandle....Beautiful...

Great picture day and hopefully it will get better tomorrow. Currently in Shamrock, TX and hoping to head somwhere into West Central/North KS tomorrow to await storm intiation along the dryline. Had high hopes this morning for the panhandle of TX to produce, but the limiting factor today, which has been the case with alot of setups this year, was the lack of moisture. Tomorrow dewpoints are progged into the 60's across most of Central KS and even into NE! We will also have support from the upper level trough which will hopefully help to drive the dryline Eastward into our area. As of right now, tomorrow seems like the best chance for a supercell, if any storms can break through the cap, before the cold front plows through the great plains on Wed...

Bass, Beer & Buddies

2007-05-14T18:51:00.000-05:00

Surprise!
The Group

Cool Cake!

Cousin Matt with a Largemouth Bass

Wow, what a start to the summer...After working a few AM hours at the family grocery store, my cousin convinced me that we should try our luck at bass fishing...I thought that it would be an easy excuse to get away, grab a few brews, and catch up with him. Amazingly, his beer to fish ratio this time was respectable...After hurrying in, I cruised over to Ladd because my girlfriend and her parents wanted to take me out to eat one last time before going to Norman. Unexpectedly, I walked into the back room of Illinois Valley Bar & Grill and 21 people were there to yell SURPRISE!!! Needless to say I was shocked! The group consisted of a few friends from high school, my family & grandparents, my girlfriends family and friends, and the DeKalb crew ;) After enjoying some fine food and a couple Millers, we journeyed back to Jenna's house where we finished the night off with some brew and entertainment in the form of Josh playing JJ and DMB on the guitar...Overall a great night and one that I will remember forever! Thanks to everyone that came, especially the DeKalb crew who made quite a journey to get to the IV, and everyone who brought gifts which was totally unnecessary! On a side note, Coomer and I are going to try and catch some nice pictures of the linear convection that is advertised to push through the area tomorrow. 18Z models have backed the system up quite a bit which would bring it through our area around peak heating...This could lead to a nice wind threat and hopefully we will be able to catch a few good pictures!

Where is May going?

2007-05-11T00:14:00.002-05:00

Unbelievable how fast the time is going...Currently 15 days until I journey to Norman to have the greatest summer of my life; at least I hope so...Finals are over and it is time for some serious R & R before the next journey begins. I am trying to see as many people as possible before I leave so get a hold of me if its been awhile and you want some lunch/beverages etc... In the meantime, hopefully we will have something to chase in the near future as I am itching to chase convection. Not even kidding, I would probably chase a cumulus cloud right now. It actually looks like more of a summer pattern at the moment, but maybe mother nature is just reloading and this season is just getting started? I'd like to think this anyway ;) As for this summer, I've decided that I'm going to be a photographer, so be ready for LOTS of pictures! I will try to post about 2 times a week depending on time issues/chases/projects etc. so maybe more maybe less... Adios everyone! OU here I come!