Supercelluar Thunderstorm Chasing

Video Inside June 5, 2009 La Grange, Wyoming Tornado

dastark — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:08:14 +0000

There were several other storm chasers on the supercell that produced the June 5, 2009 La Grange, Wyoming Tornado. One such group was TornadoVideos.net (TVN). Reed Timmer leads this group and if you followed the Storm Chasers show last season on Discovery you would have seen how crazy he is when it comes to tornadoes. He loves making extreme videos, but he also is trying to get never before seen scientific data. He now has a vehicle rivaling the Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV) called the TVN Dominator. Its a Chevy Tahoe covered with a dark red titanium shell. The picture below is when it was first completed, but they have since painted it darker red. I saw it once on V2 on the interstate but it was to far away to take a picture of it.

They intercepted the EF-2 tornado on June 5 near La Grange and shot some pretty impressive video. The tornado actually went very close to if not right over their vehicle. They are collecting data and grabbed this information from their blog.. “The goal of this vehicle is to more efficiently deploy our tornado probe in the path of tornadoes with our new probe deployment tray (see pictures of the rear below), and to get extremely close to tornadoes and scan vertical wind velocities with our single beam radar (which will be mounted in the roof bracket in a week or so). Direct measurement of these vertical winds has never been done before’, and we hope collection of this data will increase substantially our understanding of tornadoes, and the damage tornadic winds can cause.”

So with the above mind watch the following video at the link below

Video INSIDE La Grange, WY Tornado From TornadoVideos.net

Lastly, their measured wind velocities were impressive. The highest 3 second average was 150.2 mph, with 155.2 mph being the maximum 1 second wind gust.

Awesome VORTEX2 2009 Videos

dastark — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:52:42 +0000

The Weather Channel has some good interviews and videos up on their website. I have linked them here for you viewing pleasure. They still have not posted the video of our live footage from June 9. I really like the videos of the only tornado that VORTEX2 2009 intercepted and obtained data on. Enjoy

Watch La Grange Tornado Develop With Analysis From Dr. Greg Forbes.. Also You Can See Inside The Tornado at 1:40

Watch La Grange Tornado Develop

La Grange, WY EF-2 Tornado Live

La Grange, WY EF-2 Tornado Live

Watch The La Grange, WY Tornado Roar By

Watch as the La Grange, WY Tornado Roars By

Summing up VORTEX2 2009:

VORTEX2: Just Getting Started

Beginning Analysis

The Analysis Begins

MRI of a Tornado

MRI of a Tornado

V2 2009 Last Chase Photos

dastark — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:55:06 +0000

I have finally gotten around to getting my photos off my camera from our last chase on Saturday June 13. I believe I have mentioned that the day was not looking very promising once we got our balloon data from our launch early in the afternoon. The atmosphere was really capped where any type of air motion upward would be put to a halt. The cap finally broke somewhat late in the afternoon and we had some storms to obtain data on. We were a good 60 miles from the initial storm development as we were located in Channing, TX. The storms had initated just northwest of Amarillo, TX. NSSL2 had to stop on US 287 to let the western edge of the storm pass us by. There was very heavy rain and pea sized hail. This is what the sky looked like as the storm approached.

The initial surge quickly passed and we continued on. It turns out this was not the Armada’s target for this day as a new stronger cell developed. We drove eastward to intercept and launch a radiosonde. We were not quite sure if this storm was classified as a supercell or not, but it sure was impressive looking from behind it. This was a very intense bubbling updraft at this point.

National Weather Service radar was indicating reflectivity of nearly 75 dBZ when I took the photos above. This high of a reflectivity means hail is falling. After our first post-storm launch, we drove east to catch up with the storm to prepare for our next launch. However, the storm was collapsing rapidly. Several vehicles closer to the storm were reporting seeing blue skies right near where the highest reflectivities where showing up on radar. About 10 minutes later, operations were called off on this storm. We stayed at our launch site for a few minutes because we saw some really interesting hail stones in the grass. Remember, the pictures above with the bubbling clouds was over this location about 15 minutes ago so the hail was on the ground a good amount of time and not at its original size when it first hit the ground.

I measure this stone to be nearly 1.5 inches in diameter.

Stones the size of quarters. Note the one on the left has a clear outer edge with a white center. I will explain what this means shortly..

Another stone nearly quarter sized with a clear outer edge and white center.

This stone was nickel sized but had rings in it with clear and white.

So why does the hail look like this? Hail stones grow inside the thunderstorm. They grow inside the thunderstorm updraft. These updrafts can be extremely fast (Speeds exceeding 100 mph) so the hail has trouble falling down so it will be tumbling and hitting other stones. The tumbling and hitting other stones is apart of a theory on how lightning is caused but I will not get into that. Inside the updraft there are layers of the atmopshere that are more saturated then others. The drier layers will be more white and less dense as there is less moisture available to form the hail stone. The more saturated layers will appear clear and will be much denser. So as the hail begins to grow it gets lifted into different layers with different amounts of moisture hense the rings and different looks to the stones. The more ragged looking stones means the hail was tumbling inside the updraft.

On our drive to our final hotel stay during V2, there was an awesome sunset..

I will be continuing to blog over the coming days. I have some neat things to share and will post some final thoughts on the experience of a lifetime so keep checking back!

Back In Cary, NC

dastark — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 04:40:58 +0000

Just wanted to pass along that I am back home in Cary, NC. I will have many more updates to come with more photos and thoughts about the experience of a lifetime.. VORTEX2

Day 34-35: The End Of V2 2009

dastark — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 06:31:48 +0000

This is going to short… Day 34 we travelled around waiting for something in a marginal environment to no avail. We ended operations early and headed to Liberal, Kansas to spend the night. Day 35 ( June 13) , we travelled to the Panhandle of Texas. It was looking promising this morning, but when the sounding units launched balloons early afternoon along a north south road about 30-40 km apart, our hopes dwindled. There was an extremely strong cap that required temperatures to warm into the 110′s in order for it to be broken. Luckily there was a boost from a disurbance aloft, but it was not enough to produce a tornado. We ended up targeting a storm that quickly died once the Armada took some data on it. I did get some sweet pictures. We even stopped in a location that received some really cool looking hail stones. I will show you the pictures later. Its late and we have to take care of some data business in the morning before we head to Norman, OK from Amarillo, TX to turn in our trucks. Our goal is then to begin the trek eastward to Raleigh. We wont be doing it all at once, but we hope to knock down the mileage, stay somewhere maybe near Little Rock or Memphis and drive the rest of the way on Monday.

Day 33: Drive, Drive, Drive and Then a Storm!

dastark — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:41:49 +0000

June 11 was an early departure day for the Armada. The coordinators were having some major difficulty pin pointing targets today. Their initial feeling was staying in western Kansas or going west to eastern Colorado would not produce so we drove south. Our first waypoint was Sublette, Kansas. There, the field coordinators had a face to face meeting at a gas station to determine where we travel next. Colorado or the panhandle of Texas? They decided on Texas as they felt that would be our best chance for a supercell that could produce a tornado. Our next waypoint was Pampa, Texas, but before we even got there they changed our target to Shamrock, Texas. It was nearly a 4 hour drive to Shamrock. WAIT, do not go that far south.. stay in Canadian, Texas which was north of Shamrock. We waited there for about a half hour before we got some depressing information… Our next destination is Boise City, OK. Boise City is located in the panhandle of Oklahoma by the way so we had to travel back north. But that is not all the traveling back north.. our next destination was Springfield, CO.

Finally we find out a supercell has developed off the high terrain of the Rockies near Pueblo, CO so we drove further north of Springfield to Lamar, CO and then west to La Junta, CO. Thankfully, we had a storm to target that National Weather Service radar indicated had strong rotation. A tornado warning was issued on this storm. My sounding trucks mission is stay launch balloons behind the supercell or in the region after the passage of the rear flank downdraft (RFD). Since we were coming from the direction the storm would be passing through, we had to go southwest to let the storm pass first. I managed to get a picture of what may have appeared to be a wall cloud. The tail of it was pointing towards the precipitation on the right.

A few minutes later as we were continuing to drive south, we noticed these formations. Probably just some vigrously rotating scud, but could this have been a funnel, or at least the storm trying to form a funnel? It did not last long though..

After some waiting and driving closer to where the storm passed through I was able to stop capture some impressive images of the storm.

The updraft shown here was definately rotating..

The rear flank downdraft finally passed where we were located so we went ahead and launched a balloon to collect data. Once the balloon was launched, we continued to follow the storm from behind. We entered La Junta,CO to hear the tornado sirens going off. Tornado warnings continued for the supercell. Once our first launch was completed, we found another site to launch from in La Junta,CO to obtain more data from behind the storm. The supercell was interacting with another supercell coming in from the north and they eventually merged into one storm with the northern cell becoming the dominate rotating updraft. The hail core was deep and there were several reports of very large hail anywhere from golf balls to even a few baseballs. We continued to follow the storm from behind and were able to get one more launch off before sunset. Our last location the cold air from the storm was impressive. Looking into the grass, we saw some hailstones that still did not melt. We do not know how long they were there, but I found a quarter-sized stone.

The sun was also setting so the backside of the storm was lit up very nicely!

The armada obtained very interesting data today on a pair of supercells that traversed through eastern Colorado. We were able to collect data on 2 supercells that were tornado warned the whole time. The sounding units had 4 coordinated launches during operations. My sounding truck was only able to launch 3 times though as we had to delay one of our launches in order to let the RFD pass through. The drive to our hotel was quite interesting also. as there was quite a bit of tree debris on the roads from the hail. We even passed through a town where the ground still was partially covered from hail. It looked like it had snowed!

After a long day of driving, we got a storm and obtained really interesting data. What I also think is important to note is even in such a close timeframe, most computer model forecasts did not handle the situation very well which made selecting a target extremely difficult. It goes to show you how diffuclt it is to predict where thunderstorms will develop let alone supercells.

Day 32: Grasping at Straws

dastark — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 05:49:52 +0000

That was the name of the game on June 10. We were told the only real targetable region was in southwestern Kansas during the morning weather briefing. It was not known whether or not storms would initiate due to morning precipitation and overcast skies for most of the day. Finally skies began to clear in earnest and the atmosphere became weakly unstable. There was enough of a lifting mechanism to generate storms late in the afternoon, but they never could really organize into supercells. They seemed to be more multicelluar storms that continued on through the evening through outflow. This outflow can be seen by shelf clouds on each storm as we tried to collect data in the evening. Because there was no discrete cells, the sounding teams called off operations early and headed to our hotel in Dodge City. The drive back was quite interesting as the storms developed into a large complex at sunset that made for a slow go and some cool photos.

This was what the storm looked like when the Armada was obtaining data.

Shelf Cloud!

More shelf cloud

One of the brightest rainbows I have ever seen.. Its also a double rainbow!!

Day 31: Spectacular Supercell Intercept; On-Camera Launch

dastark — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:42:09 +0000

Spectacular visually that is… More on this shortly

First though, Storms developed quite early in central Kansas today. Around 9:30 CDT, a heavy downpour with plenty of lightning and small hail passed through Salina, KS where we were staying. This complex of storms created a complicated scenario for our target later in the day. The storms helped create a cool, stable layer of air that was racing southward towards southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma where a warm front was located. Our morning mission was to head out towards Wichita, KS to get south of the boundary of this cooler air. On our way out of the hotel, The Weather Channel crew including Mike Bettes stopped us and asked if they could follow us and film our balloon launch. We agreed making sure that they were aware we have a coordinated time we need to get the balloon off and to make sure they would not get in our way. We arrived at our destination shortly after 12 pm CDT. We got our radiosonde and balloon ready while Mike Bettes and crew filmed. This footage was being shown live on weather.com. As we let the balloon fly, I noticed we lost our tracking satellites and had to scrap the launch. We got another radiosonde and balloon ready and this time they went live on TV. The filmed us getting the balloon set-up and letting it fly. Mike Bettes then came over to me as I was navigating and keeping an eye on our communications while the launch continued. So I got on live TV today.. I was told that the video would be online sometime so when I find it I will post it here!

Now on to the storm… As I said earlier, the initial convection appeared to have altered the thinking of a SE Kansas target. The more favorable environment was over a bad road network with a lot of hills which is terrible for chasing. Instead we headed west in hopes of convective initiation from an approaching disturbance. It turns out this was the correct target as storms developed just south of Dodge City, KS. On the way there we saw hundreds of chasers not with V2 on the road to our desitnation. Initially, the storms were not severe or superceluar but the strongest storm split into two with the right moving cell quickly organizing into a visually spectactular Supercell. This was our target storm for the day. It produced golf ball to baseball sized hail. There is also an unconfirmed report of a short lived tornado about 5 miles west of Greensburg. Thankfully the storm weakened before it got to Greensburg.. The Doppler on Wheels (DOW) radars are going to be reviewing their data to see if there was indeed a tornado. Either way, the V2 armada documented a supercells lifecycle from beginning to end. As far as the mobile sounding units, my sounding truck obtained a vertical profile of the atmosphere behind the rear flank downdraft (RFD). We also obtained data in this region during the storms demise. The other sounding units obtained data in the forward flanks and inflow regions. The storm only lasted for about an hour and half, but like the title says was visually spectactular!! Enjoy some photos!!

Approaching the storm..

Spectacular structure!!

Possible lowering/wall cloud visible..

And behind the storm where we launched from…

Supercell moving away and slowly weakening..

Where Was NSSL2 (My Sounding Truck) During June 5 Tornado?

dastark — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:08:36 +0000

I have had several people ask me just how far away I was from the tornado on June 5. I grabbed an image from our field catalog that basically shows the storms position with several of the vehicles around the storm. I have highlighted a ROUGH estimate of the tornado track and location on radar as well as circled where NSSL2 was sitting for most of the tornado’s lifetime. This region is known as the rear-flank of the storm. Shortly after this radar image, we got a strong gusty winds and a 4-5 degree temperature drop from the Rear Flank Downdraft (RFD). It is to my understanding that a full tropospheric sounding from this region of the storm has never been observed until ours! If it has, it is certainly not a common dataset. Click the image to make it larger!

Day 30: Down The Home Stretch

dastark — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:22:10 +0000

No operations today.. Instead the V2 Armada travelled to get in a position for potential targets in Kansas. The current weather pattern is unsettled out in our domain area so it is very likely that we could be operating the last 5 days of the project. The Day 2 outlook (Tuesday) from the Storm Prediction Center is very promising for supercells and possible tornadoes. The sounding teams backed up our data, filled in our data spreadsheets, uploaded our launch site photographs and did a helium tank swap to get our trucks ready for the home stretch… Only 5 more operation days left on VORTEX2.