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.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
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.
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.
10/11/11: CGs over Norman
I needed something to make up for the disappointment of not having anything to chase over the summer, and I got it late on the night of October 11, 2011. Seeing distant flickers out the window, I pulled up Weather Underground's lightning product and noticed quite a few CGs in some storms off to the west. They were inexplicably holding together in a cool, uninspiring environment for thunderstorms. I tried a couple worthless, overly lit roadside spots in northern Norman before parking in a neighborhood off Tecumseh Road and walking down to the sidewalk. There I was treated to a rapid succession of CGs in the distance to the west, as well as a couple closer strikes just to the northeast. I finally got something like a good lightning photo with the nearest stroke.
The highlights of summer 2011 in WV
In the midst of the unparalleled 2011 tornado season, I returned from the heart of Tornado Alley to my home in West Virginia, one of the least tornado-prone places east of the Rockies. I missed out on the Joplin storm and the May 24th Oklahoma outbreak by a couple weeks. With some Plains experience, I felt prepared to run down anything resembling a supercell that might go up within a couple hours' drive. Unfortunately, there were two problems. First, that didn't happen all summer. Second, I wasted a considerable amount of time searching for any kind of summer work, which I never found despite several employers' promises. Still, I managed to see a lot of the sky shows the Mountain State served up, however mediocre they were. I even got my girlfriend to venture out to a garden-variety thunderstorm to catch a little lightning! Being with her, my family, and my friends at home after a year in Norman made this an unforgettable summer. It was much less memorable meteorologically, but here are some of the highlights.
May 23: The only CG I caught this night connected Milton, WV, with an unimpressive Cb. Thanks to Heather for tolerating my obsession for a night :)
June 4: It's always a good night when you can shoot anvil crawlers 50 feet up the street from your house.
June 21: A modest squall line moved down I-64 into Scott Depot, WV; the most interesting feature was a shear funnel far in advance of the storms. When the gust front hit (second shot), it was a bad day for trash cans up and down my street.
June 23: Tornadic supercells in eastern Kentucky, one round early in the afternoon and another in the evening, fizzled but still brought severe winds well into West Virginia. In order: a panorama of Scott Depot before the evening storms; a shelf cloud begins swallowing the I-64 corridor; and an up-close view right up under the shelf in Nitro, WV.
July 11: A weak squall line, the remnants of a derecho that struck the Chicago metro, was only a distraction from the real display--sunset mammatus like nothing I'd ever seen at home.
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