Greetings again, I'm starting up again by looking at the weather highlights I've experienced since December of 2022.
Winter Scenes
22-24 December 2022:
On a trip to see family in Kaslo, BC, we knew we were getting into trouble more than a week before when we saw the arctic outbreak on all of the numerical guidance runs like the ECMWF from 10 days before. BTW, Kaslo is located 100mi north of Idaho on the shores of Lake Kootenay.
We spent large sums of $$$ purchasing snow boots and other winter gear. We didn't come up with an engine block heater solution for our rental out of Spokane. But as it turned out Kaslo is in a relative oasis when it comes to truly bitter air. The high resolution models showed that the coldest air would sink down the Frasier river valley to our west and in the next valley to our east. (Oddly enough there's another Kootenay river to the east).
Certainly lake Kootenay had some influence on warming the lower air, and with it, some neat effects for which the
East Shore Internet Society's webcams were ideally suited to capture. I just have to share these time lapses from the 21st and 22nd to show what a 400' deep, 60 mi long lake, that never freezes, has on producing its own lake effect.
We had some neat views too.
This summer thunderstorm-appearing scene on 22 Dec 1234 pm PST was courtesy of 0ยบ F air flowing over Kootenay lake producing lake effect convection. The following snow showers gave us a few inches of snow earlier in the day.
We had active convergence zones under the lake effect convection, and some produced outbreaks of vortices.
2022-12-24 Tree Avalanches
A few days later, i managed to capture these novel phenomena in my nephew's back yard in Kaslo. We had close to 20" of snow with high snowfall rates continuing which led to large snow loads forming in the trees around the property. With light winds, the loads kept building until the trees would unload them quickly, like an avalanche. What would follow would be a cascade of snow and a downburst that would fan out. At least these weren't dangerous like real avalanches but they were a nuisance when a particular pile of snow would decide to release over our heads while we were carrying groceries inside.
Perhaps more appropriately, they were more like thunderstorm downbursts where excessive precipitation loading can initiate them. The similarity ends there because these tree avalanches don't have the ability to cool the air anymore than it is to assist with negative buoyancy, and there certainly isn't any melting going on, like in their thunderstorm downburst counterparts. The NWS has a great explanation of thunderstorm downbursts.
16-17 March: Winter Storm in NM
This storm wasn't one for low elevations as much as a powder bonanza above 7000' MSL. The first day we went into the Valley Caldera and into snow shower heaven. These were heavy showers that would give us an alternating white-out to pure sunshine experience.
16 March 1451 MT
16 March 1509 MT
We were located at the base of the arrow in this GOES-16 cloud phase RGB. The image shows a complex assortment of clouds in liquid (blue), glaciated (green), and cold-topped (yellow). I tried to find the particular cloud associated with this scene, and given that it's just about in top of us, I have to admit it's associated with the more bluish cast cloud under the arrow below (the image was taken at 1451 MT). The photo shows mostly falling snow under the cloud and thus I cannot see the liquid portions of the cloud. But the clouds to the left part of the panorama above do appear to have that more clumpy appearance of active condensed liquid convection. And there were liquid clouds following the shower as it passed to the east of us in the bottom picture. But I suspect we're seeing showers on a scale that's hard for the GOES to pick out in the near IR bands. If you look at the animation, you may see that these showers were passing through wave clouds on the west side of the caldera and maybe scrubbing back and forth may reveal them more easily.
The ABQ sounding a couple hours later pretty much reveals the cold instability prevalent around the area. These showers were moving to the east as would be expected with the wind profile in the sounding. There were even
The next day 17 March
More overnight snow left behind a magical scene in the high terrain. Santa Fe ski area received something like 20" of powder overnight and a healthy deep snow cover. It took a lot to get these at 12kft MSL, namely in the form of a challenging route uphill.
Severe Weather 2023
This year presented an odd season of severe weather to Oklahoma and the surrounding Plains states. First of all, central OK was an epicenter of tornado activity that started early in the season but then continued into July. The June to early July action was unusually high for places that should've seen the season decline. And this was especially true for areas from Arkansas to southern Georgia!
Let's start with 26 February and the Norman tornado. It was a big day for so early and the first moderate risk of the year for OK. The Norman NWS has a great
summary page on this event. Take a look at it before viewing this video.
Early on the emphasis of greatest risk was northwest of Norman. We were only seeing a wavy line coming for us. But looking upstairs revealed that a supercell was embedded in the line. See it below with the elevated scan as the storm was just passing east of Chickasha. The tornado warning was covering a low-level circulation on the north side of a bow. But looking aloft, the storm east of Chickasha was sporting a solid mesocyclone and a BWER. Those features persisted for an hour before when the storm was north of Apache. No wonder there was so much lightning with the storm to the northwest of my spot when the storm got closer.
A little lesson:
The NWS Warning Decision Training Division covers all of these tornado predecessor signatures in its flagship Radar Applications Course, especially the lesson on identifying tornado hazards. With this environment, the watch and and the environment that screams tornado, I can't have enough radars to evaluate this storm. So for you spotters and chasers, watch out for not checking the latency of the data. Also, the level-III data doesn't include the higher scans I show below. It's encouraging that some radar providers are offering level-II but that data doesn't include dealiased velocity data. Hopefully level-III will include all scans soon.
About 57 seconds into the video, you see leaves blowing to the north and then abruptly turn about and blow to the south. It looks like I came into the outer periphery of the tornado cyclone. However this radar scan shows something different. The vortex wasn't coming upon me, it was a forward flank boundary, or the outflow boundary that hit. Clearly the boundary was amazingly sharp, and it may have shown remarkable shear. After it passed, there was strong inflow into the back of the tornado and that's where the wind increased so much.
The days afterward, I was amazed at the massive recovery mobilization underway. The Lloyd Noble parking lot (1/4 mi on a side) was half full of electrical bucket trucks from the entire state and outside. They used our spot for their mobilization.
I could say a lot more about the damage survey but I will leave that for another blog.
19 April Central OK tornadoes
Okay, another tornado, wait, 18 tornadoes, within 30 minutes of our home. Of special note was this picture of the Cole, OK tornado just a couple miles west and yet obscured by rain. From the south, there was a slot with a pretty good view as Sean Ernst demonstrated.
The view was probably helped by being in a slot of no rain yet there is probably more to it. The bottom line is that being in the path of the tornado, like we were, doesn't always afford the best view but does guarantee that we'd have to move out of the way.
However, there was a sweet spot at 7:45 pm where our rear view dash cam provided a remarkable view to the west as the tornado wedged out, briefly. This was to be a theme when trying to get out of its way this year.
21 June: Matador, TX
This story occurred on the first day of summer! And it was just four days after the town of Perryton, TX was devastated by another tornado. Photographically, this was a tough storm to deal with. First, it exploded as the final storm in a string that zippered south from east of Amarillo that made positioning hard. It was also embedded in an airmass that was full of high end moisture but also far too hazy for good views beyond a couple miles. Look at the axis of haze right into the storm in northwest TX.
Add a never-ending barrage of cloud-to-ground lightning, and there was no getting out of our vehicle.
When the storm exploded and began to form a tornado, rain also wrapped around to compound visibility. We got this view at 7:57 CDT as the tornado began. Even enhanced a bit, the tornado was a suggestion, though enough of one to know. We were 10 minutes prior to Matador getting hit.
A few minutes later, this was the view, again out our rearview dashcam while we were a mile north of Matador.
In five minutes, the tornado plowed through west Matador while we were driving south to get out of its way, hence more rear views. There was little in the way of visual cues; the storm wasn't visible beyond a mile away. And the sirens didn't blow until a couple minutes before the town was hit.
Even the Lubbock WSR-88D radar had trouble pinning down the tornado location due to side lobe interference. The blue dot was where we were at 8 pm (two pics up).
The storm was well depicted once we were really close but by then the only way to get out of harms way was to be already in a vehicle driving away from it. As the tornado narrowed and drifted off of south-bound rt 70, we could take a stop and view it.
Finally, here is a
video of the sequence. I'm not full of words on scene as I tended to be quiet while focusing on getting out of its way. NWS Lubbock also has an excellent
web page on this storm.
BTW, Matador was hit and there were fatalities. It could've been worse as the main portion of the town escaped on its east side.
Storm Art
A supercell on 02 April south of Laguna Park, TX lasted quite awhile, starting out near Stephenville, TX as an HP but then evolved backward to this dry-end classic as it encountered a cap. The storm performed enough to be photogenic and the residents were happy the expected tornado potential for the day didn't pan out. Here is the SPC
events page for the day.
The supercell before striking Cole, OK on 19 April
This storm's updraft was much wider than the preceding supercell or the pics from Laguna, TX and it clearly became more tornado than expectations from earlier on.
Cole again? Yep. This pic was taken on 11 May in a much more relaxed setting. There was an abundance of research assets deployed on this storm with great datasets being studied. The rest of my family saw this and I vicariously witnessed it driving back from KC. Here is the WFO Norman
event page for today. (photo by Daphne LaDue)
An embedded supercell west of the National Weather Center on 15 June. I was embedded in the Norman WFO warning ops but managed to get out and sneak in some lightning pics. The aqua cast above the lowest plates seems to be a common feature with dense and wide precipitation cores whether daylight or embedded lightning is the light source. This was a big event day for Norman's and Amarillo's county warning areas. The damaging Perryton, TX occurred today, as well as a significant tornado supercell tracking through southwest Oklahoma. See
Norman's and
Amarillo's events pages.
A supercell east of Plains, TX on 27 May. This storm didn't have the aqua color, perhaps the core wasn't thick enough to attenuate the longer wavelengths. But it did have this yellowish green color suggesting some of the sunset colors were being attenuated but not all. This storm did produce a tornado on the TX/NM border and I was there with my partner, Harald Richter, but the tornado was not obvious unless with a closer view. SPC has an
events page here, and Jeff Piotrowski has a
post about this.
A nasty hybrid supercell/bow west of Fort Supply, OK on 17 June. This storm blew through Laverne with one tornado reported in the vicinity. But the big story was the hurricane force winds and then the continuing swath of wind reports all the way into eastern OK where other tornadoes were reported. SPC has an
events page on this storm.
Lightning flashes over downtown Florence, IT on 27 August. I had a lucky hotel room with a view for this event which occurred around 0200 LT. I set up the camera so that I didn't have to think when the expected storms rolled through.
Rapidly developing storm north of Bristow, OK on 23 September. This became a supercell briefly but was embedded in too many other storms for it to complete its transition. The storm of the day was southeast of Ada which I'm happy to see made
Alex Spahn's year highlights.
A fall storm west of Weistheimer Airport, Norman on 04 October briefly gets that look. It was quickly consumed by other storms but a brief unexpected photogenic structure is a bonus on Daphne's birthday. Here is SPC's
events page.
More will come in part 2.
