5/29/2012 - COD Trip 3 Day 5

On Tuesday, we targeted northwest Oklahoma. As we drove north from Wichita Falls, TX, a cu field northwest of Watonga, OK appeared on satellite in this target area. Sure enough, convective initiation occurred in this vicinity. We watched the southern storm develop and struggle for a while to become dominant. The storm had a rather narrow and high base initially, but was very slow moving. Soon, the storm turned hard right and dove southeast, getting into a better thermodynamic environ. As such, the base improved and became wider.  Shortly after, we felt the meso become established as inflow kicked up and maintained itself. Midlevel features became very prolific and pretty -- sort of upside-down wedding cake/stack of plates appearance. The storm then began to go through several RFD cycles, at times producing exciting lowerings with lots of cloud base action/rotation. Twice, RFD’s produced some dust plumes under cloud base, but we could not determine if they were rotating, but both were in locations that they had to be associated with outflow bits of vorticity. At least a few times, anti-cyclonic rotation was evident on the near side of an RFD or two.  All-the-while, we had a left split racing north, set to merge with our storm. Storm then went into mothership/cinnamon roll mode near Piedmont and Tor’d. We are unclear whether or not left split may have simply aided thermodynamic properties of the inflow to our storm, or if more dynamic processes were at work to help produce the tor. However, it appeared that the RFD managed to do it on its own. We plan to do a thorough review of the level 2 radar data if we can find some down time.  Because of new supercellular development to the west-northwest of our storm and massive chaser convergence, we decided to drop well south and try to flank new development from the west. We stopped just before the on ramp to 44 south from SR4; we had heard reports of a tor in the closest of the new developing supercells. Some in the group saw the tor between flashes from rather far. We opted to hang there for a while and take lightning pictures. We then hopped on 44 south to outrun outflow.  In Chickasha, we stopped again for pictures briefly after noticing power flashes that were produced by RFD outflow. A few more pictures, then ended chase and had dinner at Braums. 44 north to hotel in OKC. [Evan Anderson contributed to the text]

5/28/2012 - COD Trip 3 Day 4

Monday was another day that featured relatively high dew point depressions and lackluster shear. Alas, we attacked the storms that formed near Crowell, TX. We latched onto a high-based supercell that traversed the area between Vernon and Seymour. The storm wrapped up nicely northwest of Dundy, producing a relatively high, yet rotating, wall cloud. Lightning also sparked a fire that produced an intriguing smoke plume that, at one point, was being sucked into the updraft, and later, the outflow.  Storm interactions seemed to disrupt the supercell near Mankins. We progressed southeast toward Archer City where we were able to view a very beautiful, but outflowish, storm horizon. We let the storm follow us to Jacksboro were we viewed some amazing mammatus. Thereafter, we let it roll over us just west of Jacksboro -- we were "treated" to a lot dust and wind. We washed the car as we drove northwest of Jacksboro on the way to the hotel in Wichita Falls. But, before calling it a night, we took in an amazing twilight lightning display near Windthorst. Besides all the cow patties in the field, we thoroughly enjoyed the crawlers, zits, and CGs. A very satisfying day of storm chasing ... below are some stills and a short lapse.

   

5/27/2012 - COD Trip 3 Day 3

Sunday's storms were high-based and largely unorganized, which was no surprise given the large dewpoint depressions and lack of significant low-level shear.  Nevertheless, any day with storms is a good day. We took advantage of the day by intercepting several multicells around Red Cloud, NE, experiencing near-severe winds in Franklin, NE, watching the development of a shelf cloud that rolled over us northwest of Smith Center, KS, and even witnessing a unique funnel cloud along the leading edge of the shelf as convection above tugged on the shear along the outflow.  We grabbed some late night pizza in Osborne, KS before heading to Salina, where we overnighted.

View northwest of Smith Center, KS

Shelf cloud forms and races east.

View behind shelf.

5/25-26/2012 - COD Trip 3 Day 1/2

My annual jaunt with the College of DuPage began early Friday morning. We left COD at approximately 7:30 am with a forecast focus of the north-central Kansas area. The drivers did a terrific job of getting us to our target near Hays-Russell, KS just in time to watch convection mature. We hooked onto a supercell  between Russell and Hays; it produced a considerable amount of dusty swirls, gustnadoes, and dust blobs along the RFD and under the wall cloud. Despite the favorable environment, this storm quickly lost any distinct low-level rotation  west of Russell. We followed the storm east all the way to Lake Wilson hoping it would regenerate a low level mesocyclone, but it appeared to be just slightly elevated north of the warm front. We gassed up near theI-70/Lake Wilson exit and planned to slide west to latch onto  one of the two supercells to the southwest. Unfortunately, the onramp at this exit was under construction, meaning we would have to go east an exit to go west on 70. Instead, we ventured south and wrapped around the interstate on back roads. This delayed our intercept of the supercell to the west, costing us a close look at a tornado near Walker, KS. We did see the unique rope, but only from afar. We kept with the storm well after sunset, continually looking for backlit features in the notch. We finally drove through the RFD and headed toward the north to Russell. About 5-6 miles south of Russell, we could see a distinct funnel and probable tornado  backlit by lightning. We watched this rope and dissipate. We slowly crawled north as the slow moving mesocyclone moved off to the northeast. Unfortunately, we didn't have to wait to receive confirmation of the tornado as we came across a house that had been destroyed by the tornado. Search and rescue was ongoing with a quick response from the local authorities. We scooted by and drove onto Hays where we grabbed some dinner at Whiskey Creek and called it a night. Still and a couple time-lapse videos follow below.

Day 2 was not a complete bust, but I never even grabbed my camera out of the bag. We did see some high-based convection across north-central/northeast Nebraska, but the storms failed to partake in the extreme dew points across the Missouri River. We chowed down in Yankton and overnighted in Sioux City.

Stratus undulations along I-80 in Iowa.

Tire trouble! Thanks to Ryan and Leon for solving the issue quickly.

Supercell near Russell, KS

Supercell west of Lake Wilson. See time-lapse below for illustration of motion.

Lightning from decaying "first" supercell over Lake Wilson.

Not sure why the bolts this evening were more "neon tubular". Weird.

Grainy image of tornado near Russell, KS. Windshield wipers, bugs on glass, hand held long exposure, etc, usually don't make for great pics.

5/15/2012 - High-based Convection

High-based convection overspread the northern Illinois region during Tuesday evening. I hadn't planned to head out to examine any of the storms as the conditions looked marginal and I had promised Sharon I'd take care of Chase so she could visit with some friends. Well, I just couldn't resist the attractive force of the first clouds in a few days -- so, what did I do? I grabbed a camera, tripod, and my two-and-a-half year old son and we went south of town to watch it roll over us. Chase had a blast, pointing out the clouds and, hopefully, overcoming his fear of lightning and thunder (or, as he calls it, "boom boom"). In fact, I bet he is better at spotting storm-scale features than some on Spotter Network ;-) We ended up sliding over to the DeKalb wind farm, where we were able to grab a full double rainbow atop the northernmost towers. After the rainbow, I decided to call it an evening as it was past Chase's bed time.

Chase on his first storm excursion -- he's a natural! 

Animated gif of scene about five miles south of DeKalb, looking northwest. Another view, looking northeast, here. 

Rainbow atop the DeKalb wind farm.

Office lapse of storm ...

Office Lapses: Volume I

We have finally upgraded my Davis Hall office webcam to something a bit more useful to employ for time lapse photography. My office faces east, so I'm stuck with that perspective. I am working on obtaining a west view from the top of Davis Hall, but the lack of infrastructure and constant flooding on the 7th floor makes that project difficult. As for the current web cam setup: I'm still experimenting with the temporal resolution and viewshed, but even during this experimental period, I've been able to grab some very interesting features that you can only "see" when sped up. Below are some of my favorites from the past few weeks. I'll be sure to add more volumes of favorites in the future. Oh, though it isn't HD, I'd recommend expanding the view by clicking the 4-arrow, expand button.

Thunderstorms develop on 5/3/2012. Additional perspective in this blog post.

A full spectrum of atmospheric crazy in this one-minute clip from 5/4/2012.


Well, hello boundary! 20-second clip from 5/5/2012.


A confused atmosphere from 5/6/2012.


ACCAS and interesting cirrostratus formations from 5/11/2012.

Just an all-around fascinating lapse for 5/12/2012 -- just when you think it is getting boring, crazy stuff happens. Certainly worth the entire 4 minutes to watch!

5/6/2012 - DeKalb-Waterman, IL lightning

I was unimpressed with Sunday's severe weather threat as a morning MCS across Iowa had pushed most of the severe possibility too far east for me to reach from Sioux City. Thus, I got a late start, leaving the hotel by about 10 am. Eventually a target in north-central Illinois reared its head, but I was too late to reach the conglomeration of messy multicells and transient supercells south of I-80. By the time I got to the Quad Cities, I was happy to divert north around the convection and head home to see Sharon and Chase before dinner. At about 9 pm, I noticed a few small showers develop quickly on the radar across the I-88 corridor, which suggested the potential for elevated thunderstorms. Indeed, in about 20-30 minutes, the radar lit up like a Christmas tree. I grabbed a limited amount of equipment and drove a few miles south of DeKalb to capture some lightning. Early on, it was quite impressive -- I was able to grab a few good shots of lightning near the DeKalb windfarm, but eventually the lightning became shrouded in precipitation. I then decided to bust south of the line to see if the lightning was visible from that perspective. As soon as I neared Waterman and cleared the rain, the sky opened up like one of those plasma balls you can get at Spencer's Gifts in the mall. I setup shop in a couple locations south of Waterman, only moving when the lightning felt like it was going to have me for dinner. I missed THE shot: lightning struck about a mile away, hitting a transformer that caused a long-lived purble-green blowout. It was just to the right of my viewfinder. Argh. Anyway, quite a eventful evening that made up for the bust the day before. Sunday reconfirmed to me that the best lightning setups are elevated storms that lack a low-level stratus deck.

Stacks

Stack of ~10 frames shot ~5 miles south of Waterman, IL, looking northwest. An animated gif of this scene is available here.

Stack of ~4 frames shot ~5 miles south of Waterman, IL, looking northeast. An animated gif of this scene is available here.

Single Frames

Lightning strikes one of the turbine blades in the DeKalb windfarm.