05.24.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:21 am by Rebekah
Yesterday I went chasing with Jeff and Mark, Dean’s uncle who is in the US for a few weeks to primarily gather info for a film he is writing about Dean and his time in the States. We first headed to Clinton, where we sat for a little while as we waited for one of the cumulus clouds to take root and really grow. We got on one of the first supercells of the day just north of Clinton and saw two solid rope funnels come out of the side of the updraft base. They were rotating, and we started to get our hopes up.
We waffled a bit between staying on this storm and going for a storm just to our south. Our storm started to weaken a bit, and at some point around then we noticed a nice-looking supercell on radar to our north, up around Fairview. We decided to immediately make our way up there, especially as the storm was closer to the warm front and would probably have a better chance of sustaining itself and producing a tornado. Not long before we got to the slow-moving supercell, we heard reports of at least one tornado on the storm. As we drew near, however, the storm suddenly got absorbed by a small storm cluster to its northeast.
Disappointed and not sure what to do, we ultimately decided to go back south and aim for a supercell going southeast towards the Oklahoma City metro. As we got close to that storm, part of the storm cluster to the north broke off, became supercellular, and also headed southward. We thought we could stop in Edmond and wait for the storms to pass, perhaps giving us some large hail. However, the storms were moving extremely slow and started to dissipate and turn eastward before they got to the metro.
We made it back to Norman before sunset for once, after 325 miles and 7 hours. A lot of the storms really did have difficulty keeping their identities.
Today’s setup should be different, though, as the shortwave trough will be moving across the risk area and the shear will be higher.
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05.23.11
Posted in Severe Weather Forecast at 9:48 am by Rebekah
First, my heart goes out to those affected by yesterday’s storms and tornadoes, especially to those in Joplin. This year has been particularly bad for large tornadoes in populated areas, leading to record numbers of fatalities.
Today a surface low is moving into far northwest Oklahoma, with a warm front stretching eastward near the Oklahoma/Kansas border and a dryline that will tighten near the Oklahoma/Texas Panhandle border. Dewpoints are already in the upper 60s, though some of the moisture may mix out a little bit later in the day. There is a trough out west, but not much upper-level support in the Plains. In fact, there may actually be some height rises in the Southern Plains unless we get a little shortwave trough to come through. Instability will be highest along and ahead of the dryline, and shear will be highest along the warm front, of course. The shear is not going to be that great (especially low-level shear), but should be sufficient for supercells should storms form.
I should be available to chase after about noon or 12:30 today, so I’m planning on leaving Norman by 1 or hopefully sooner. My current target area is around Seiling to Enid, but I may head out west on I-40 to Clinton, and evaluate then what I want to do.
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05.20.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:53 pm by Rebekah
Jeff, Esther, and I went all the way up to Pratt, Kansas yesterday, in search of some elusive supercells and tornadoes.
However, as you may already know, there were two areas with supercells and tornadoes: southwest Oklahoma and just north of I-70 in western Kansas. The only photos I took were of The Weather Channel’s “The Great Tornado Hunt” vans and crew (their new storm chasing team with Mike Bettes and more recently Jim Cantore) and a street sign in Hutchinson that read “Random Rd”.
We did drive past the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, which sounds pretty awesome. They have the largest collection of Soviet/Russian space artifacts outside of Moscow, the command module from Apollo 13, and countless other interesting items. Following my recent trips to Kennedy Space Center and my revived space interest, I plan on visiting the place some time this coming week.
Anyway, we drove 550 miles over 11 hours, and at least we did see some frequent lightning, mammatus, and heavy rain as we approached Oklahoma City from the north on our way back.
It has been nice to finally get some good, heavy rain in this area. We had a large squall line pass through last night, and had a number of other thunderstorms roll through for much of the day.
Sadly, my final spring in the Plains is not turning out to be very good for storm chasing. I’ve got just couple more weeks around here for a nice setup to materialize…
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05.19.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:31 pm by Rebekah
Today could be a decent dryline day in southwest Kansas into northwest Oklahoma.
Jeff, Esther, and I are currently on our way to somewhere around Pratt, Kansas, not far from the expected intersection of a dryline and warm front. There is not much convective inhibition (there is plenty of instability), but there is also fairly weak lift, so hopefully we’ll get enough lift to have some isolated storms. If storms do form, shear is sufficient for supercells and even tornadoes.
You may remember I mentioned I had an eye exam this afternoon, but I rescheduled it for tomorrow morning. I did get my first good night of sleep in a while last night, so I’m ready for some storms now. 🙂
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05.11.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:19 pm by Rebekah
The cap won today in western Oklahoma. Yesterday it looked like today would be a fairly promising dryline day, but some early day convection kind of messed things up.
High clouds rather quickly spread over western Oklahoma this afternoon, and Jeff and I drove all the way out to just west of Buffalo (pretty much at the eastern edge of the Oklahoma Panhandle) only to see a line of mushy cumulus trying to get going but failing under the cirrus.
We’re on our way back to Norman now. It was disappointing to not see any storms in northwest Oklahoma, but at least we saw some rain, hail, and lightning, just north of Oklahoma City on our way up here!
The Storm Prediction Center has just issued a Mesoscale Discussion for this part of Oklahoma and southwest Kansas, mentioning that if convection can get going we could have some supercells. However, I’m not buying it right now (at least that we would have storms before dark), and I’d rather not wait around much longer when there aren’t even any solid cumulus congestus.
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