Yesterdays forecast panned out quite well and the V2 armada had its first storm intercept of 2010! It was a very long and eventful day but I'll try to give you a mini recap here. We began in Hays Kansas where the excitement in the morning was definitely more noticeable than previous morning meetings. I snapped a few pictures of the parking lot because I think it's cool. Media were on hand and the folks from Storm Chasers on the Discovery Channel rolled in to do their thing.
There was some uncertainty if our best chances were east or west of the armada's location in Hays, so they decided to send our soundings team east to Salina to sample the atmosphere and help in the decision making process. We made the 90 mile trek eastward, where we were as nowhere as we could be (anyone? anyone?), and launched our sounding from a truck stop parking lot. The atmosphere showed significant capping (which inhibits storms) so we got the call to turn around and drive 90 miles back to the armada in Hays. By 3:30pm the call came down to head west toward a small town called Wakeeney, where I snapped this picture of the photogrametry team setting up their equipment to capture storm development to our south.
From Wakeeney we monitored some clouds starting to grow into storms in the far northwest county of Kansas. Eventually one developed enough moisture to begin significantly precipitating and around 7:30pm the Field Coordinator (FC) declared it our first target of 2010. We headed northwest toward Hoxie and from there panned out into our storm relative positions. My truck NSSL2 moved back east to a small town called Edmond where we found a nice quasi-ridge feature to launch our far-inflow sounding. At this point it was starting to get dark and we were a full county away from the storm (as is the case for the far inflow team most of the time) but we got our sounding off cleanly and I snapped a few pictures.
Centered on the main updraft region of our target storm. Features are very hard to distinguish because of the fading light but you can see the FFD extending off to my right and a hint of a RFD to the left of the updraft region.
Artsy picture of NSSL2 framed by the storm in the fading sunlight as we packed up our sounding gear and prepared to redeploy.
Unfortunately darkness lead us to call off our chase before we could redeploy and get into another position to stick with the storm. Safety third after all. This storm never did develop a tornado but I think our measurements will help understand why. The cell dropped some hail and had multiple instances where the TVS (tornado vortex signature) alarm went off, meaning the radar had observed rotation in the storm consistent with the development of a tornado.
After launching our sonde NSSL2 made the 90 minute trek back to Hays Kansas where we started and ended our day. I'm writing this morning waiting on the morning meeting where everyone anticipates we'll get the order to return to Norman for the weekend. The atmosphere doesn't appear favorable and it looks like Monday will be our next best shot to chase. I anticipate the weekend will be spent doing laundry and enjoying all of the culture of a fine mid-western city.
Could you add some somewhere to me?
ReplyDelete