It's been a fun ride, but this is gonna be my last post. For now at least, I may do it again when we go out with SLT in a couple of weeks, but we'll see. Either way, solo chase 2010 is now over. It's been a fun and exciting ride. I've learned a lot about weather as well as a lot about this country. The people out here are so incredibly polite and just plain nice. Life is so relaxed, people just don't seem to get hung up on crap the way we do in the northeast. That said...I miss home. Gonna be nice to get back home to my normal life.
Yesterday was probably the toughest day I've experienced since I've begun storm chasing. The set up was so dynamic. It was local. The chase country was flat and scenic. The only thing missing was storms. Our original target yesterday was a small town called Tecumseh in southeast Nebraska. We arrived in Tecumseh with the expectation that storms were going to explode rapidly. The atmosphere was incredibly unstable, to the point where you could feel it just being outside. It was brutally hot and tangibly humid, the kind of atmosphere where you would expect violent thunderstorms. Well...it just never happened. The cap was too strong. The cap is a layer of warm air a couple of thousand feet above ground level that suppresses condensation, thus not allowing clouds to form. Long story short, we "blue sky busted", as no storms fired in our target area. What an incredible disappointment it was. After waiting around for hours in Tecumseh, we called it a day around 6 pm, when the SPC issued a discussion that all but confirmed our fears that storms would not be occurring, or at least in a form that could produce tornadoes (a line of thunderstorms would go later, but nothing that would be remotely tornadic).
In any event, we went back to Adam's in Lee's Summit for the night, where we are again today. I leave tomorrow on a 645 am CST flight and will be home in the early afternoon.
I would like to extend my great thanks to Adam for making this all happen, as well as his family for graciously having me for the past three days. They have been so very hospitable to me, and I can't be grateful enough.
So the final statistics:
Confirmed tornadoes: 3
Possible tornadoes: 3
Supercells: 4
Largest hail (seen by me): Pea to penny size
Pizza Huts: 18
Well, that's it. Thank you and I hope you enjoyed reading my blog. I'll be sure to do it again next year.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Ouch...
Well yesterday was tough to swallow. figuring it was too marginal to chase, Adam and I, along with just about every other chaser in the world sat out of the tornadofest that was SE Colorado yesterday. Here is a picture taken by Roger Hill (www.stormchase.net/www.silverliningtours.com) of a tornado from a cyclical supercell over Baca County, Colorado yesterday. Never again will we be doubting the magic of Eastern Colorado...
In any event, rather than taking a chance yesterday, we hedged all of our bets on today, thinking it had potential to be a big tornado day. We ended up going to a Memorial day BBQ at one of Adam's family friend's lake front house in Lake Winnabego, MO, where we had a blast riding jet-ski's. It was my first time and I really enjoyed it. We made it all the way back to the dock without flipping over, then go figure, we tried to dock the jet ski and proceeded to flip right into the lake. Of course being the genius that I am, I didn't remove my one and only shirt before going on the jet ski, thus soaking it in the process.
So back to today. For a couple of days, today has looked like a half-way decent set-up on the GFS model, whereas the NAM model was a little less bullish. Well unbelievably, the GFS model, which generally in the short term is less accurate than the NAM is appearing to come to fruition today. As I write this, the Storm Prediction Center is in the process of upgrading today's risk to moderate, something we have not seen so far during our chase. They talk about the increased risk of Tornadoes, large hail and strong wind, mainly in IA ad NE. Iowa is yet to see a tornado this year, something that has never happened this late in the season since records began. We are hoping to change that today! So with that, we are gonna take off for somewhere near Beatrice, NE in about a half hour, which should leave us plenty of time before storm initiation. Beatrice should give us good road options in any direction on what could be a real good day. As always, there is plenty of bust potential today, but for me its the best setup we've had since the beginning of the trip. Tomorrow may hold some promise too, but it sure looks like our chance is today. Wish us luck!
PH count is now at 16.
In any event, rather than taking a chance yesterday, we hedged all of our bets on today, thinking it had potential to be a big tornado day. We ended up going to a Memorial day BBQ at one of Adam's family friend's lake front house in Lake Winnabego, MO, where we had a blast riding jet-ski's. It was my first time and I really enjoyed it. We made it all the way back to the dock without flipping over, then go figure, we tried to dock the jet ski and proceeded to flip right into the lake. Of course being the genius that I am, I didn't remove my one and only shirt before going on the jet ski, thus soaking it in the process.
So back to today. For a couple of days, today has looked like a half-way decent set-up on the GFS model, whereas the NAM model was a little less bullish. Well unbelievably, the GFS model, which generally in the short term is less accurate than the NAM is appearing to come to fruition today. As I write this, the Storm Prediction Center is in the process of upgrading today's risk to moderate, something we have not seen so far during our chase. They talk about the increased risk of Tornadoes, large hail and strong wind, mainly in IA ad NE. Iowa is yet to see a tornado this year, something that has never happened this late in the season since records began. We are hoping to change that today! So with that, we are gonna take off for somewhere near Beatrice, NE in about a half hour, which should leave us plenty of time before storm initiation. Beatrice should give us good road options in any direction on what could be a real good day. As always, there is plenty of bust potential today, but for me its the best setup we've had since the beginning of the trip. Tomorrow may hold some promise too, but it sure looks like our chance is today. Wish us luck!
PH count is now at 16.
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