Summer 2012: DC3 and drought

   Noticing that my two latest posts have been about serious stuff (took down a lengthy Chick-fil-A one to save space), I figured it was time for a weather-related entry.  Last year I lumped the whole summer's weather into one piece--it wasn't hard since I'd been in the Mountain State--and I'll just do the same this year.

   I had the chance to stay in Norman this summer, working for a National Severe Storms Lab scientist named Dr. MacGorman.  The day-to-day part of my job is data retrieval, processing, and archiving for the Oklahoma lightning mapping array (LMA).  The part you'd be interested in was a field project from May 15 to June 30, Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry (DC3), which involved all kinds of government agencies and a lot of researchers from around the nation.  The overall objectives dealt with how thunderstorms affect the chemistry of the troposphere, particularly how they transport substances from near the surface to the upper troposphere.  Where Dr. MacGorman and our team came in was taking in situ measurements of thunderstorms via balloon, as mobile radar crews and specially instrumented aircraft sampled the storms simultaneously.  We launched balloons that, when inflated, filled the back of a full-size U-Haul truck--which is exactly what we used to get them to launch sites.  Attached to each balloon, at least at first, were a particle imager, an electric field meter, and a regular radiosonde that measured temperature and humidity, as well as tracking devices.  As the project progressed, our balloons kept falling after reaching only 3-4 km into the atmosphere.  Since we were shooting for several times that altitude, the instruments for our final few launches were split between two balloons, which then topped 20 km.  Getting paid to chase storms was exhilarating, if sometimes exhausting, and I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.  Here are the highlights.

May 19:  DC3's first Oklahoma chase took us to the dryline in western/northwestern Oklahoma for high-based severe thunderstorms.  We stopped at an intersection at Leedey as the young storms grew.  The mobile mesonet (minivan with instruments on top) was my vehicle for most of the project.

We moved south to Moorewood to intercept and launch.  Two launch sites were decided against before we wound up in an open field near a small oil or natural gas facility.  

We launched successfully, though the balloon didn't reach its desired height.  At Arapaho, after the launch, we were treated to spectacular mammatus.

May 25:  After spending hours in an Altus, OK, gas station/Burger King, we ran down a left-moving severe storm near Erick.  We launched amid a barrage of close CGs but the instrument train dropped off the balloon before reaching cloud base.  A nice sunset was little consolation.

I spent the next week in Silver Spring, MD, at NOAA headquarters, for a scholarship orientation with three fellow rising juniors from the School of Meteorology.  We missed the best chases of the summer.

June 3:  Equipment failures made a trip to Memphis, TX, a total fiasco.  No launch.

June 4:  Paydirt in the middle of nowhere, roughly in the vicinity of Paducah, TX.  This was after driving through high winds and blowing dust to reach the storms.  We were surrounded by unsettlingly close CGs from launch time long into the night.  

June 12:  We blasted from Norman to Lubbock, TX, and immediately were in pursuit of supercells only a county away from the New Mexico border.  All the storms were splitting, and we positioned ourselves to catch a split from the only storm that didn't.  It left us in the dust, accelerating northward, and we proceeded to invade an IHOP near Texas Tech's campus.  We stayed up through the wee hours of the morning on the 13th to intercept an MCS moving into the Lubbock area.  It fell apart on top of us, yielding essentially no data, but letting us practice our new two-balloon procedure in driving cold rain.  Here's mammatus from the storms near New Mexico, in Seagraves, TX.

June 16:  It was one of several long, frustrating, and sometimes plain strange days wandering central Oklahoma in search of elusive pulse storms--ask me about the machete-waving motorcyclist in Binger sometime.  Persistence paid off with our best intercept.  We caught a severe storm just south of I-40 near Hydro, OK, and launched two balloons with lightning striking all around.  It was the first time I thought we were in serious danger from lightning, as we stood on top of a hill at an oil or gas platform and watched rapid-fire CGs hit in a valley below us.

We punched through this storm on I-40 in search of bathrooms around Hydro.  It was an intense experience to be piloting the mesonet.  Later, at a crop duster airstrip roughly north of Alfalfa, OK, a few crew members had their hair stand on end with a couple very close lightning strikes from decaying storms.  After the danger passed, the full arc of a double rainbow appeared.

   At the tail end of DC3, Oklahoma was plunged back into the bone-dry oven that is summer in the Southern Plains.  Norman went many weeks without receiving 0.1" of rain in a day.  Wildfires ravaged central and northeastern parts of the state, including a large area just south of Lake Thunderbird.  Flash forward to the last weekend of summer.  August 18 finally brought rain to central Oklahoma in the form of two morning/early afternoon sub-severe MCSs.  Here's the first one near Lexington, OK, and a roll cloud with the second one as it approaches OU's campus.

Higher education, not reeducation

Let me note again...my personal beliefs and views are my own and do not reflect those of my university or my employer.

   I have been informed that summer is over--rudely, by OU's don't-forget-classes-start-tomorrow mass email, and kindly, by the cool breeze through Essex Square's top landing.  So, back we go.  Or for you freshmen, here we go.  Don't worry.  We're all mad here.

   I guess it's mostly to new college students who are Christians, or who are considering becoming Christians, that I'm directing this post.  We can all relate to what you're about to encounter, but it's going to be nauseatingly fresh to you when it first reaches your eyes and ears and heart.  And just as I'm no longer offended by the compost aroma carried on the south wind directly to the National Weather Center parking lot, some of us geezers in our twenties have blocked out this stuff for long enough that we don't notice it anymore.  We might forget to prepare you, to the degree that we can.  So on behalf of us all, if you are attending a public university, here is your fair warning.

   No matter what you know to be true, no matter what everyone you love and respect has taught you, and no matter what has been accomplished in your own life, you will be presented with the following as facts in the near future:

Your life is dull.

Your standards are intolerant.

Your religion is hypocritical.

Your faith is unreasonable.

Your God is a lie.

   You can choose to accept these statements at face value, or you can challenge them.  That choice is yours and it's a monumental one.  I can't speak for the other side, but I chose to challenge this worldview.  I admit my execution of that choice has been shaky, but I have never reconsidered or regretted it.  When your professors and colleagues and friends give you these "facts," it really is okay to call their bluff by the way you live.  Here's how to start.

1.  Don't be conformed.

I can't understand the allure of wandering up the middle of the street at 1 a.m. Sunday, on your way out for the night, walking so you can become incapable of driving.  Of course it's fine--often necessary--to be a follower.  Just remember that the world's best followers are little furry guys called lemmings, famous for achieving terminal velocity en masse.  Know who you follow and why.  Be secure in standing out from the crowd.  Being in the minority doesn't mean you're alone, and it sure doesn't mean you're wrong.  Narrow is the gate.

2.  Beware of power distance.

In my introductory communication class last spring, we discussed the idea of power distance--how much of a person's authority or power in one area of life carries over into other areas, or how far that kind of power can get you.  Be aware of this phenomenon.  Your professor may be a brilliant scientist, and he or she deserves your respect in that field, but that doesn't make him or her a spiritual authority.  Faith is not science.  Many elite minds can't comprehend this.  The funny thing is, God meant for it to be that way.  Read 1 Corinthians 1:18-27 to see what our God thinks about this world's intellectuals and scholars.  When you hear precisely those people ranting about how foolish we are, it should bolster your faith because Paul, writing by the Spirit, knew two millennia ago that it would happen.

3.  Elect to receive.

I always cringe a little anytime OU's football team wins the coin toss and defers to the second half.  They're so explosive that if they start with the ball, they could very well be on the scoreboard within two minutes.  That sends a clear message to the other team and in OU's better seasons, the game is often over in the first quarter.  You have the same potential.  When you walk on campus, you've won the coin toss--choose to receive!  Take charge from the get-go by getting heavily involved with your church family.  Don't just play defense, trying not to give too much ground to temptation.  Go on offense, get stronger in your faith, and help reach out to others.  Draw first blood.  Put your adversary in a deep hole before anybody knows what happened.

  I hope this gives you a hint of what to expect on campus.  In spite of the challenges you'll face, the positives outweigh the negatives.  Maybe the biggest thing is that your faith becomes your own.  Nobody will wake you up on Sunday morning or keep an eye on you with the opposite sex or stay up till you come home at night anymore.  It is entirely between you and God.  In the face of so many new tests, your faith might not be all you want it to be for a while.  Mine still isn't.  But it's really yours, and you're better off working on a flawed, authentic faith than coasting along on somebody else's.  You're going to love the Christian college life.  I promise.

High risk in Oklahoma, 4/14/12

"Do you know how the clouds hang poised, those wonders of him who has perfect knowledge?" (Job 37:16)  This video frame from just outside Cherokee, OK, pretty well describes northern Oklahoma on Saturday.  It was by far the most successful chase anyone in our group has had--thanks to Tim and Branden for driving.

   With all the day 2 high risk hype for Saturday, Friday was overlooked as a tornado day.  I left work about 2:30 as the Norman supercell took form out across I-44 near Chickasha, since I was planning to leave for a church retreat in Madill at 4:15.  I called our campus minister at the Westside church of Christ as the hook echo became well-defined and learned he had already decided to delay leaving Norman.  In disbelief that this large right-turning supercell with a velocity couplet was not tornado-warned, I went to Hwy 9 on the west side of I-35, to spot as much as to chase.  A foray right up to the precip core, followed by a speedy retreat eastward, brought me to the Sonic across the highway from Riverwind Casino.  I watched curtains of rain wrap from south to north into the circulation, increasing in speed, and realized a tornado was spinning up less than a mile in front of me.  I ran back to the car and the college-age guy in the spot next to me casually asked, "Are there gonna be any tornadoes today?"  "I think that's one RIGHT OVER THERE," I said and drove off, calling NWS Norman as I dropped south on I-35 to avoid the outer edges of the rain-wrapped tornado.  Just as I got out my description of the forming tornado, I got the "call failed" tone, and that was the last phone call I got through to anybody for a half hour or more.  It's unclear whether my report was what earned Norman a tornado warning, but I like to think it had a part.  My video from Sonic is so shaky and dark that it isn't worth posting, but that wasn't my main concern at the time.

   I turned around and headed back north to Norman once it was clear the danger had passed, and saw damage up 24th from Hwy 9.  Taking 9 eastward out into rural parts of Cleveland County, I watched various areas of rotation and ascent at the back of the storm, catching a brief funnel on the far eastern outskirts of Norman.  Little Axe was a convenient and necessary stop for a couple gallons of gas before closing on the storm near Pink.  I met up with three friends and fellow chasers/met students in another car and we chased together from there, drawing extremely close to two areas of rapid rotation on Lake Road west of Shawnee.  We followed the storm west to Shawnee and saw a brief tornado several miles to our north, so far away and short-lived that nobody has a good photo of it.  It was about that time I finally got through to our campus minister, who told me the Norman tornado had struck the church building with a group of people inside waiting to leave for the retreat.  Thankfully, everyone there was uninjured, but the building's roof was peeled off in places and trees outside were uprooted or broken.  The decision had been made not to hold the retreat due to the damage and the expectation of more storms.  First and above all, I was relieved that my friends there were kept safe.  We were all a little disappointed that the weekend was canceled, but it was a small matter in comparison.  Pretty quickly after that, though, I started thinking about Saturday.  It had never occurred to me that I wouldn't be in Madill during the weekend outbreak, but now I was going to be chasing my first high risk day.  How often is road tripping to the atmospheric display of the year your backup plan?

   On to the exciting part with pictures.  Saturday was a circus in northern Oklahoma, and it was typical of the day that our little caravan comprised two cars with five people in each.  Our jumping-off point was Fairview, OK, a small town that we later realized was not all that small compared to others in the region.  It was my first trip to northwestern Oklahoma and the area is just as remote as it appears.  Cell service is spotty at best, and data is available maybe a third of the time.  There was a Sonic in Fairview where our group spent an hour or so watching storms blow up on radar, unwilling to run to the dryline if there was a chance of anything initiating ahead of it and becoming dominant.  Finally, we headed through Seiling to Woodward on the first tornado-warned storm that came close to Woodward.  Chaser traffic became evident in Woodward and was present for the rest of the day.  The car I was in, with Tim driving, got north of Woodward on OK-34 and turned east onto back roads to cut over to OK-50.  Back roads turned to dirt, and dirt turned to sand, but Tim managed to keep the car both on the road and on pace with the storm.

   OK-50 took us north to the Cimarron River at Freedom, OK.  Coming across the river and into town, a long, skinny funnel may have touched down briefly north of town.  This storm remained tornado-warned as we turned east on US-64 toward Alva to follow it.  We saw several rotating wall clouds and lowerings on the road to Alva, stopping to watch twice, but the storm was moving off to our north and was not producing at the time.  Confident that we could catch another tornadic storm by staying south, we let the first storm go and dropped from Alva southwest to the outskirts of Waynoka on US-281.  A Woodward radio station was giving the play-by-play account of the new tornado-warned supercell approaching Waynoka, and we watched from a hill east of town as it tried and failed to drop a tornado.  There may have been a rain-wrapped twister in there somewhere, but at that distance we couldn't say.

   Our mistake came here.  None of us could get radar on our cell phones (we're just college students, no satellite connections or anything) so we were unaware of the strengthening supercell catching up to that one from the southwest.  To stay with that storm, we rushed into Waynoka--where there was a rattlesnake festival going on and thousands of people had had to take shelter in town--and north from there on OK-14. We went through heavy precip, but managed to avoid hail.  On 14 we found cell service somehow, and realized the southern supercell was the only reasonable choice.  Turning east on 64 toward Alva once again, we drove through more intense rain and gusty winds as the northern storm sucked in precip-laden outflow from the strengthening southern one.  Tornadoes were being confirmed on our new target as we made a quick gas stop in Alva, then headed east on US-64 and south on 8 to intercept at Cherokee.

   Driving through Cherokee was a surreal experience.  We were seriously concerned that this town full of mobile homes and other tiny houses could take a direct hit.  The sky was orange in the west as we rolled through the heart of the town, Addison hanging out the window of the lead car yelling at residents to take cover.  Most continued to gawk on the sidewalk, even those in front of a trailer park.  Tornado sirens sounded just before we made it out of town and into the chaser convergence just to the south.

  We pulled off the wide shoulder of OK-8 there, at the end of a long, long line of chase vehicles.  A well-defined lowering, clearly rotating, came into view over an open field to our west just as we climbed out of the car and set up.  The show began immediately, as a funnel emerged, flirted with the ground for a few seconds, then touched down definitively.

   The first tornado dissipated, although it's entirely possible a circulation remained on the ground until the next touchdown moments later.  This new tornado quickly took on a mature stovepipe shape.

   As if this spectacular tornado wasn't thrilling enough to the chasers lining the roadway, a second funnel dropped, pencil-thin at first.  Twins!  It intensified as the first one began to fade and slowly rope out.  The latest tornado appeared to pose a threat to Cherokee, and chasers waited to see whether help would be needed in town.  Thankfully, the tornado passed northwest of most of the town, knocking out power and reportedly destroying a barn (we saw something lofted, probably the barn roof) but doing little else.

  By the time we headed back north through town, we had seen the entire life cycles of three tornadoes from one location.  This storm went on to produce several large, likely violent tornadoes after dark on its way to southern sections of Wichita, where significant damage was reported.  We left the storm at the intersection of OK-8 and US-64 north of Cherokee and headed home for the night.  About the time we returned to Norman, a tornado slammed parts of Woodward, killing at least 5 and changing the face of the outbreak.  Sirens reportedly did not sound, maybe due to the storm itself.  The daytime chase was exhilarating but for the second straight April 14th, the event will be remembered for a tragedy in a small Oklahoma town.  Thoughts and prayers are with Woodward residents today.

February appetizers for spring

   Although there's been no sign of anything like the blizzard that ushered in February 2011, this month has been eventful enough to tease chasers all over Oklahoma with the prospect of an active spring.  A poor chase day on the 3rd led me all the way to Fort Worth--we didn't chase that far, but we were close enough that I was told I had to try In-N-Out for the first time.  Totally worth it.  Thanks to Branden for driving and Sydney for introducing me to animal-style fries.  As far as the storms, we closed in on what looked like it would be a discrete, long-lived supercell in far N TX just as it began lining out like all the other storms in this low-CAPE environment.  Here's some of what we saw:

Supercell from north of Bowie, TX:

Other side of the storm:

Outflow boundary on the west side of Bowie:

Linear storms approaching Bowie:

Updraft trying to strengthen along the squall line, near Chico, TX:

   That about does it for that day.  On the night of the 12th into the morning of the 13th, Norman picked up about 2" of snow.  The lack of moisture near the surface prevented higher snowfall totals but also allowed the surface to cool enough, via the wet-bulb effect, for snow to accumulate.  Though all the snow was gone within 24 hours, roads were dangerous overnight.  A couple shots from OU:

  On the 20th, central OK through S KS was impacted by a round of marginally severe thunderstorms associated with a low up in KS.  Cold-core action around Wichita was limited, but a nice cell managed to get going from OKC to points just northeast.  We caught it as it passed over the city, produced a downburst (Mesonet in W OKC recorded 69 mph gust), and began looking like a solid supercell as it lost us in city traffic.  Tim, who was driving, managed to keep it in view until the far eastern suburbs.

Rainbow over Devon Tower:

Downburst over downtown:

Wall cloud (?) high over OKC.  This should give you an idea of what it's like chasing in a metro area.

  Sadly, one woman was killed in Ada when straight-line winds destroyed a mobile home on this day.

Another offseason storm day (2/3/12) in S OK?

   I'm pretty excited to be writing this discussion right now.  Whether the current forecast verifies or not, it's good to have a potential severe weather day on the horizon at the beginning of February.  Friday is going to be another one of those touch-and-go offseason days like November 7th.  The last 3 GFS runs suggest a surface low forming Thursday into Thursday night up around NW OK into the Panhandle region.  The 00z NAM tonight is hinting at the same thing, though daytime Friday remains out of its range.  If that low can form and deepen a little, it's a classic severe weather setup.  Model guidance suggests modest CAPE, sufficient shear, and plenty of helicity.  Moisture advection will have to occur rapidly as the low develops, but it appears 60F dew points have a good chance to cross the Red River.  NAM is a little more promising with moisture.  An upper-level trough, which the GFS tries to turn into a cutoff low through the day, will provide lift.  The SPC has noted the possibility already in its day 4-8 outlook.  That's really all I have to say about it right now--at four days out, numerical prediction is about all there is to go on when it comes to relatively localized severe weather events.  But just for fun, my target for Friday:  Ardmore, OK.  (I wish I had an obscure little wide-spot-in-the-road town to make me cool, but Ardmore's really where I would head if things didn't change.)

EDIT:  00z GFS obscures things a little, moving the surface low SE slightly, toward Euro solution which would mean no chase.  Just based on current guidance, I wouldn't go, but the setup will change a dozen times between now and then.

EDIT:  It's Wednesday morning now, and the 06z NAM is insisting the low will be farther east in SE KS, too far to go after such a mediocre setup.  NAM has been indicating a cold-core setup in S KS for several runs, with parameters sufficient for such an event.  The SREF this morning is beautiful for N OK cold-core or warm-front stuff, placing the surface low far WSW of Wichita, out closer to Liberal.  While this would be a huge stroke of luck, meaning we could start with Enid as a target and go from there, I'm only hoping for a compromise between the NAM, GFS, and SREF, putting a chance for cold-core storms around Wichita Friday afternoon.  SPC has gone Day 3 slight risk for a small area around the DFW metro, but shear is not as good down there and it appears one might have to take off eastward from there to actually chase--east Texas is both iffy terrain and a long way from Norman.  So it looks like cold-core or nothing for Friday.

EDIT:  Per 00z NAM and GFS, whole setup's gone to crap.  Going to do my p-math and intro homework and forget about chasing...

EDIT:  Chased it.  Everything lined out.  Was introduced to In-N-Out in Fort Worth so the whole thing was worthwhile.

11/7/11: Tornadic supercells in SW OK

  November 7--where do I even begin with this day?  I wasn't aware it was possible to be so pleased and so disappointed with a chase.  It was apparent from a couple days out that this Monday had potential.  In OU's student-run Oklahoma Weather Lab, I'd forecasted severe storms in the target area on my Saturday shift.  The only question was whether instability would be sufficient for any tornadoes within our range, given that we had morning classes.  Three of my friends, also OU SoM sophomores, formed our chase team for the day, and we headed southwest on I-44 just after one, bound for Lawton.  Coming up to the Chickasha exit, we made a unanimous mistake.  We could see supercells off to our west, though our target was still far to the southwest.  A photo posted to Facebook by Joel Taylor of Stormchasers fame confirmed a tornado in Elk City, farther north than we imagined a storm could produce.  With only this information, we took off on OK-9 toward Hobart.  After an eternity of small towns and their associated speed limits, we closed in on the first storm of the day, picking up an occasional radar scan via smartphone wherever service allowed.  We stayed with this storm just east of Hobart only a few minutes, watching its once-promising wall cloud grow less and less defined.  (I'm strangely inclined to call the inflow tail in the first photo "cute."  I don't know why.)

  On to the next one.  We dropped west and south on OK-9, skirting the precip core of our new target supercell--driving a Cobalt I'd like to keep through a good chunk of my adult life, I've begun to pride myself on avoiding even the possibility of severe hail.  The land here, just south of Hobart, was the flattest I had ever seen, except for mountains on the southwestern horizon.  This storm was fierce-looking, with a shelf cloud looming over its outflow and dominating the scene.  It dwarfed a short train that rolled past our location.  The mesocyclone was understated, nearly unnoticeable, until it tightened up and produced a wall cloud just up the road to our north-northwest.

  The precip wrapping around the meso was catching up, and we had to move.  In my obsession with avoiding hail, I made another mistake, this one all my own: I took off eastward into a network of dirt and gravel grid roads.  We got one last look at the updraft area and wall cloud before it lost us.

  Reaching OK-9 near Gotebo, we saw for the first time a radar image of the monster storm producing an EF-4 tornado in the Tipton-Snyder area.  Just from the hook echo, we knew we had to drop down and get on it.  We raced south toward the Wichita Mountains on OK-54, taking in a spectacular view of the back of the cyclic supercell about the time it was producing a tornado in the Wichitas.

  Turning eastward toward the storm's mesocyclone just north of the Wichitas, we saw we would have a difficult time getting any kind of position.  We could only make time going east, while the storm was moving northeastward.  Nevertheless, we slowly narrowed the gap.  The number of other chasers around increased steadily.  Stopping along a back road north of the mountains and south of the meso, we saw a rapidly rotating funnel, seemingly detached from the main area of rotation.  It momentarily looked as if it could touch down, but never did.

  Shortly thereafter, we caught a wide view of the massive flying-saucer-shaped mesocyclone and wall cloud.  It was in this area I managed to get the Cobalt mired on the shoulder.  Thankfully, with three people pushing and me nudging the accelerator, we dislodged it quickly and kept chasing.

  Though we pursued the storm as far as Binger through nightfall, the closest we came to any action for the rest of the day was south of Carnegie--a brief swirl of dust under a distant wall cloud.  Had we gone east on OK-9 from the second storm and simply waited for the storm of the day at Fort Cobb, we would have seen a tornado cross the road there, but such is the nature of chasing.  Even though we're paying our dues in terms of experience, it's undeniably exciting to see sights like this in the middle of November.  We keep getting better, and spring isn't all that far off.