Yesterday, I had the privilege of taking a young weather enthusiast and aspiring meteorologist on a one-on-one tour of the National Weather Center. I nearly always jump at the chance to interact with kid weather weenies. How often do you get to assure one that they’re not alone when they lie on their backs in the grass and watch the cumuli bubble overhead? Or that their science and math skills are not a liability, but an asset? Or possibly provide a vision of how their life might unfold?
As I’ve alluded to in my bio, I didn’t have a single childhood hero or role model that I tried to emulate. I had lots of good candidates, though, mainly ones that I saw on television. I’m privileged to now call all many of these people my colleagues (in no particular order): Lou Wicker, Chuck Doswell, Howie Bluestein, Tim Marshall, Don Burgess, and several others.
My high school art class painted a multipanel mural depicting Roseville's history, and naturally, I was charged with painting the panel about the tornado that struck the town in 1981. Bonus weather nerd points if you can figure out what image I used as the source.As much as I admired these individuals, they were still primarily images on a screen to me. Most of them lived and worked in the Southern Great Plains, and seldom had cause to make public appearances in Minnesota, where I was growing up. In 1995 or 1996, my high school held a series of career brown bag lunches. You can probably imagine what they consisted of – the school invited in professionals (engineers, scientists, writers, etc.) to give advice to students seeking to follow in their footsteps, and dispense any pearls of wisdom they had accumulated along the way. Of course, I jumped when I saw a meteorologist on the schedule. I think I was one of two people who signed up to talk to him (the weather gene always has been recessive), and because of my class schedule, I got him all to myself for an hour.
The speaker was a meteorologist from the NWS office in Chanhassen, MN (closest to the Twin Cities). I’m sorry to say I don’t remember his full name or job title, but I think his first name was Mark (or possibly Mike). My recollection is that Mark and I had a very pleasant, casual conversation. He told me about the career path that had brought him to the NWS, and he advised me to continue what I was doing – accelerated math and physics courses.
Naturally, I steered the conversation towards tornadoes, and he recommended that I order a copy of Tornado Video Classics. He even sent me a follow-up letter after we met, containing the address for the Tornado Project, and saying what a pleasure it had been to meet with me. I followed Mark’s advice and got my tornado video fix for the next several years through TVC and its two sequels. I also learned more about the research going on in Norman, and the people who were doing it… information that, as it turned out, foreshadowed my future.
My course toward meteorology was pretty much charted by the time I got to high school, but if my meeting with Mark hadn’t been nearly as pleasant, I wonder if things would have turned out differently. I’d like to think that I would have shrugged off any misgivings and continued on my way, but who knows? Maybe my career trajectory would have led me elsewhere.
Sadly, I lost Mark’s follow-up letter somewhere among several interstate moves, and I have forgotten his surname. As a result, I haven’t been able to satisfy my urge to send him a proper thank-you note and update him on my whereabouts since we spoke 15 years ago. (I tried making an inquiry with the Chanhassen office a few years ago when a classmate-turned-forecaster transferred there, but no one seemed to be able to say with certainty who it was I might have met with.) Perhaps he moved on to another office, or moved into the private sector. Perhaps he doesn’t even remember meeting one dark-haired, flannel clad tornado geek back in the mid-90s. But I certainly remember the kindness that Mark showed me, and have tried to pay it forward in the form of role modeling and patience toward young, would-be meteorologists, like the bright-eyed one I met yesterday.
Mark, if you’re out there, and you’re reading this, thank you!
As we’ve all heard on the news, summer 2011 has been hot, hot, hot. Some places in Oklahoma have had high temperatures above 100 oF for over a month, overlapping with areas of exceptional drought.
Needless to say, chase season has been pretty dead down south. The jet stream has shifted north toward Canada, and we’re ridged out. I’ve had to content myself with watching storm videos shot by my northern bretheren. So far, my favorite has been this one from Roger Hill (especially around 2:30 in – wow!).
My husband surveys a potential dust devil breeding groundI still hunger for vorticity, however. Fortunately, my husband, in addition to his many other endearing qualities, is a dust devil geek. He studied dust devils as an undergrad at Purdue. The last two weekends, we’ve gone dust devil chasing, and I’m learning that there’s actually a fair amount of skill that goes into it.
Here’s the recipe for dust devils:
Sunshine. The Oklahoma sun has certainly not been in short supply of late! A few clouds are okay, but you want to be in sunshine a majority of the time. Peak daytime heating (which occurs at local noon) is best.
Light winds, < 10 mph. If the winds are too strong, the dust devils will be sheared over and weak. We check the Oklahoma Mesonet wind maps before heading out.
A dry, open field, preferably freshly plowed, and with fine soil particles that are more easily lofted.
Patience. We sit in place for up to an hour at a time in the blistering sun, with very little breeze to offer us relief. With the punishing heat we’ve been experiencing, we also pack ample beverages and sunscreen.
Dust devil crossing OK-37 near Tuttle, OKWe still observe the same rules we do when we storm chase – i.e., we park our car completely off the right-of-way, and never trespass on private property. We are accustomed to being approached by people who wonder if we’re having car trouble, including cops. Usually, they are bemused when we explain what we’re up to, and often offer us suggestions for good dust devil viewing spots.
On our last chase, we saw dust devils every 5-10 minutes, usually on the leading edge of microscale gust fronts. As the dust devils passed by us, the breeze would usually kick up, and often, we were passed by dust devils on both sides. Most were short, weak, and transient, but a few (like the one pictured) lasted several minutes, and sent a tower of red dirt over 50 m in the air. Not bad!
Dust devil chasing is relatively easy and safe compared to storm chasing. Dust devils may not be a tornadoes, but they rotate, they’re convective, and unlike a tornado, you can drive or run through one safely (literal “chasing”!). I could easily see dust devil chasing being an educational parent-child activity, particularly if the child has any inkling that they want to chase storms when they get older. They would have to interrogate the surface observations, make a forecast, and navigate to a good viewing spot. They would learn that the best things come to those who wait. And, there would be a much greater likelihood of (repeated) success!
This past week, I was privileged to participate in the third annual Atmospheric Science Collaborations and Enriching Networks (ASCENT) workshop in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.* This workshop brings together female atmospheric scientists at different stages of their respective academic careers, about half of them recent Ph.D. recipients (junior scientists). Throughout the three-day workshop, the senior scientists shared their career stories and life lessons, while the junior scientists discussed their work via poster session and sought out collaborators. There was even a film crew – a media budget was written into the ASCENT grant – who documented the workshop, interviewed us, and shot tons of images and video that will soon be on the web for the world to see.
ASCENT junior scientist poster sessionA room full of candid and intelligent women is a sight to behold. Everyone was so open, frank, and honest with one another. The vast majority of the attendees were atmospheric chemists. Their work on aerosols and pollution has implications that can potentially benefit millions of people, many generations into the future. I learned a great deal from them, and I hope they learned somewhat from me, the resident tornado geek, as well. I couldn’t help feeling like an odd woman out in the room sometimes. But I found a kindred spirit in Elissa E., a researcher from Los Alamos, who fires wired rockets into thunderstorms to trigger lightning flashes. People say that putting a radar in front of a tornado takes guts, but what she does is even more hardcore, in my opinion! Very modestly, she assures me that she launches the rockets from the safety of an underground bunker, and only after having been given the “go” by several assistants.
Storm Peak Laboratory, on top of Mt. Werner, near Steamboat Springs, CO.We also got to visit Storm Peak Laboratory, headed by Dr. Gannet Hallar (lead PI on ASCENT). After passing a sign that read “four wheel drive required,” and a tooth-chipping, 20-minute drive up a gravel road, we arrived on top of Mt. Werner to find the lab nestled among the ski lifts. The lab is about the size of a 3-bedroom house and accessible only by Snowcat for several months of the year. The link above goes to a great picture of the lab encrusted in snow and ice. They receive 500″ of snow annually, and researchers sometimes choose to spend weeks at a time at the lab in the dead of winter babysitting their instruments.
Dr. Gannet Hallar describes an aerosol disdrometer to ASCENT participantsWhile the mountain vistas from the lab rooftop are breathtaking, and the lab has a full kitchen and numerous bunk beds, the researchers who work there are not vacationers. They are actively conducting experiments, installing and de-installing instruments, taking measurements and samples, and maintaining equipment year-round. They have documented the changing chemistry and aerosol content of the local atmospheric environment, giving the rest of us much-needed information about CCN concentrations and characteristics. I’m accustomed to dealing with cloud processes in terms of bulk microphysical parameterizations in NWP models; Storm Peak Lab actually gathers data that informs those parameterizations.
Doubtless there has never been a better time to be a female atmospheric scientist. Most of the overt barriers to women in science have been removed, thanks to laws (such as the Civil Rights Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act) that have been informed by science. I am happy to report that I have never experienced overt discrimination or harassment in my career – at least, not that I have been aware of.
However, when I walked across the stage at the OU School of Meteorology graduation ceremony this spring to receive my doctoral hood, I was the only female Ph.D. recipient out of 10. Why was I there, while my other female classmates chose to stop at the B.S. and M.S. levels? I’ve chatted with some of them informally; the familiar refrain is that they worry that they will not be able to sustain the energy level and workload required of an academic researcher. We see our professors come in late at night to slave away on grant proposals and papers. I must admit that the “lifestyle” doesn’t look all that appealing. Literature with titles like Where are All the Women Geoscience Professors?, Why So Slow?, and Why So Few? abound. I was saddened to learn that meteorology suffers from the lowest rate of female professorship among all the geosciences – In 2010, just a scant 12% of meteorology professors were women.
During the workshop, we shared strategies for coping with workplace issues that disproportionately affect women. There were plenty of horror stories from women who had suffered active discrimination, who were denied credit for work they did, who were rejected for positions on account of motherhood, and who had suffered resentment, harassment, or even assault by colleagues. But that was then; don’t we live in more enlightened times now? Not according to the statistics. It appears that many of the barriers left for us now are actually unconscious ones, either in our own minds or the minds of others. While many of us will swear to rejecting stereotypes of female scientists, our actions betray our unconscious biases. There’s the “bitch” dilemma – How does a woman assert herself without coming off as a bitch? (Consensus answer: “Be persistently pleasant.”) There are studies showing that women are held to higher standards of competence than men, women are less likely to negotiate for fear of appearing pushy, are pressed to do more service than men (“token woman syndrome”), and are more likely to have their credentials overlooked or questioned. We learned strategies for saying “no,” for compartmentalizing our time, for leveraging our institutions’ policies during demanding family times, for supporting other women (which is actually a major problem), and for gently reminding others of our need for space and respect.
Not all the strategies were abstract or hypothetical. For example, those of us who had not yet written grant proposals were invited by a participant from NSF to submit our names as potential proposal reviewers (thereby learning by reviewing what works and what doesn’t). I did not know that opportunity existed, because I assumed I had to submit a proposal before I would be asked to review, as in academic journals. (Major lesson: What you assume can hurt you! Always ask!) We were asked to participate in real-world research projects, select mentors, and continue correspondence after the end of the workshop. And of course, being a good science project, ASCENT included lengthy evaluation metrics and assurances that we will be checked up on periodically in the future to assess the impacts of the workshop.
As much as I enjoyed ASCENT, and as much as I can see the merits of gathering women in an all-female setting to share their strategies, I cannot help feeling that the very concept of “women’s issues” is still a major impediment. These are men’s issues, too. Men work and live with women. What good does it do women to gather and discuss ways to deal with the male-centric framework of scientific research, when it’s the framework itself that needs changing, and will require the involvement of men to change it? It’s not enough for a male scientist to simply say, “I’m not sexist, so I’m not part of the problem.” I once pointed out to my doctoral adviser that he now has a vested interest in ensuring a level playing field for me after graduation, because he has invested a great deal of time and money in my professional development. (To his credit, he has always let me have first authorship on papers I have written myself, and allowed me to present my own work whenever possible. I am shocked to hear that, even today, this is not always the case!)
My male colleagues should recognize that support for their female colleagues is not an accommodation that dilutes science, but a strategy for synergy and increased productivity throughout the whole of science. When the potential of half the scientist population is not being fully realized, that dilutes science. Happier, healthier, more productive colleagues (both male and female) will benefit everyone in the long run, and ultimately make our nation’s science stronger.
I’ve added a skill to my scientific skill tree recently. A skill that, in hindsight, seems intuitively obvious, but really wasn’t until I put it into practice.
A common quip in academia is, “Publish or perish.” Successful scientists publish. Prominent scientists publish a lot. Refereed journal articles narrate the maturation of our field, and prolific writers can exert a powerful influence on its direction, as well as keep the bean counters happy.
As a postdoc, I’m expected to publish a minimum of two refereed journal articles per year. At 7500 words apiece, that works out to an average of 58 words per work day. Of course, that’s not how we generally write. We tend to write in thousand-word spurts, just before a major deadline. The weeks leading up to a major conference, when we produce extended abstracts, abound with bloodshot eyes in front of LCD screens late at night.
(c) American Psychological AssociationOn the recommendation of someone on the ESWN listserv, I recently acquired a slender, 150-page book with the intriguing title How to Write A Lot by Dr. Paul Silvia. He rails against what he refers to as “binge writing” (which I describe above). He approaches the problem of writing from the standpoint of a psychologist, and deconstructs some of the “specious barriers” that academics often cite as their justification for not writing more.
Dr. Silvia’s main message is this: Make a writing schedule, and stick to it. Think of the writing schedule like an exercise regimen, or a class to learn a new skill. Set aside a block of time each day, close your door, and focus only on writing. Be defensive; don’t schedule other appointments during that block of time. The writing schedule will become an ingrained habit, and soon you will never have to “find” the time to write.
My gut response to this message was, “Well, duh, that makes perfect sense!” Repetition and practice are crucial, because, much like a muscle, unused writing skills diminish over time. I honestly think the only reason that this approach never occurred to me was that no one ever told it to me explicitly. Or perhaps all my mentors are themselves binge writers. (That would be easy to change!)
I resolved to test Dr. Silvia’s approach. For the past three weeks, I’ve set aside a two-hour block each morning to write, keeping my office door closed and my e-mail logged out. I stick a “Writing time: Do not disturb” sign to my white board (mostly so that my bosses know I am actually in the office), and it has attracted some comments. But the proof is in the pudding: During those three weeks, I’ve generated about two-thirds of a manuscript, and I’m feeling pretty good about it!
The size of a book is no indication of the utility of its contents. This slender volume has had an immediate impact on my approach to writing, hopefully for the better. I may not write exactly 58 words each day, but I’d like to think I’m getting closer to a more even, temperate pace.
My video montage of the 14 June 2011 Norman, Oklahoma downburst* now has over 4,800 views, and is, by far, my most viewed video. I’ve received a number of questions (mostly in the form of comments on the YouTube page) regarding the NWS classification of this event as a downburst or “straight-line wind” event. With such extensive damage to roofs, trees, fences, and power lines, it’s not surprising that some have questioned whether a tornado was responsible. Oklahoma is, after all, famously located in the bullseye of Tornado Alley! RaXPol deployed just as the rainfoot surged out toward us. The 14 June 2011 Norman high wind event was a downburst. Hands down. End of story.
1) The damage pattern was divergent and widespread.
Downbursts create different damage patterns than tornadoes. Downbursts form when raindrops evaporate as they fall through a layer of dry air. The evaporation process cools the air, which becomes denser and sinks toward the ground. Upon reaching the ground, it has to spread out laterally, creating a divergent damage pattern, as this diagram from Encyclopedia Britannica illustrates:
In contrast, because of the winds spiraling in toward the low-pressure center of a tornado, the damage patterns tend to be convergent, i.e., inward-pointing, and localized along narrow corridors. Britannica again:
However, owing to Newton’s first law, tornadoes can and do eject (centrifuge) debris, so the tornado-damaged area may contain a mixture of convergent and divergent damage. But, downburst damage patterns never exhibit widespread convergence! By all accounts, the 14 June damage was divergent, spreading away from the damaging storm as it passed over the north and east sides of Norman. In addition, the greatest concentration of damage indicators were spread across an area about 7 km wide – far wider than the widest tornado on record (the 4 km-wide Hallam, NE tornado of 22 May 2004):
2) Doppler radar velocity patterns showed divergence, not tornado vortex signatures.
The Norman downburst, which occurred right on top of the National Weather Radar Testbed, was observed by no fewer than six Doppler radars (KTLX, KOUN, TOKC, MPAR, OU-PRIME, and RaXPol, several of which appear in my video).** Without exception, the Doppler velocity data from these radars showed the near-surface divergence signature characteristic of a downburst, not a tornado vortex signature. This animation from KOUN, one of the radars on north base, courtesy of NWS, shows a “wave” of strong outbound (bright red) winds radiating out and away from the radar site:
3) Of the 500+ tornado-savvy meteorologists living and working in Norman, none reported a tornado.
In addition to mechanized observers, there were human observers galore. Of course, not all of them were looking at the storm – some were working, some were home, some were out with their families. But a considerable number, myself included, were out shooting photos or video, and were attentive to the storm’s behavior the entire time. I’d like to think that if there had been a tornado, I would have noticed it. I saw a high-based wall cloud from the north base (visible near the left edge of this photo) several minutes before the downburst struck, but no funnels and no tornadoes. Could hundreds of us have missed a tornado? I don’t think it likely.
Downbursts may not be as photogenic as tornadoes (at least to some people), but they can be just as deadly. Downburst-instigated airplane crashes have killed hundreds of people worldwide. The late Dr. Ted Fujita, who is world-famous for his tornado research, may have saved an equal number of lives via his downburst studies. Thanks in part to his research, specialized, downburst-detecting TDWRs are now installed at major airports. Last summer, I was sitting on a plane at Denver International Airport, when it failed for several minutes to pull back from the gate. Looking out the window, I saw a wall of dust racing toward the airport from the west. My husband speculated aloud that there might have been a microburst, and indeed, his smart phone displayed the divergence signature in data from the Front Range WSR-88D, collected just a few minutes before. We knew what had happened even before the pilot came on the intercom to announce the reason for our delay. And prior to the Norman downburst, no planes took off from or landed at Max Westheimer Airport, which we parked next to. Downbursts are nothing to mess with, particularly when aircraft are involved!
Thanks to Rick Smith and Kiel Ortega for contributing information to this posting.
*Correction: I originally used the word “microburst” in the video title. It emerged later that the damaged area was considerably larger than 4 km in diameter (the characteristic used to distinguish a microburst from a macroburst). I probably should have used the generic term “downburst” (which can include both microbursts and macrobursts) from the beginning. Mea culpa!
**Note: Archived data from the WSR-88Ds and TDWRs is freely available for distribution via NCDC and can be viewed with the Weather and Climate Toolkit. For examples of simulated divergence and vortex signatures, look at Figs. 4.5.1 and 4.5.2 in this online guide.
Dan and I were a bit late out of the gate on Monday morning, not departing Topeka until almost 11:30 a.m. We had gone to sleep the night before thinking that the primary action area would be along the Nebraska-Iowa border. However, a shortwave trough ejected out of NM early in the morning, interacting with the cutoff low over W NE.
By the time we got on I-70 and began heading west, we were already hearing reports of an explosive storm close to Hill City, KS. Our friend and colleague Mike Umscheid was chasing it, and as we watched, he began leaving a trail of tornado reports in his wake as he zigzagged north across the Nebraska border. Curses!
We eventually straggled into Smith Center, KS, just as the “children” of Mike’s storm began to race north at 40-45 mph. We crossed the KS/NE border, and proceeded north through Minden to I-80, then west. Crisp updraft towers now ringed us to the north, and low clouds obscured the bases. A tornado-warned supercell near Elm Creek was our target, but as we turned north at the Odessa, NE exit, one of the updraft towers to its east filled in the reflectivity notch on our target storm. We predicted that the storm collision would be detrimental to the western storm and beneficial to the eastern one.
Our first tornado of the day, a white cone near Pleasanton, NE at 4:43 p.m.We risked the treacherous gravel/mud roads east out of Amherst, NE. Abruptly, a white cone tornado appeared out of the side of an updraft about 8 miles to our NE. We watched it occlude and then erode back into the updraft over the course of about three minutes.
I am a bit confused about which tornado this one corresponds to in the event chronology from the NWS office in Hastings. My camcorder time stamp (which I had just set that morning) reads 4:43 – 4:46 p.m. CDT during the white tornado that appeared to be near Pleasanton, NE, but according to the NWS chronology, the Pleasanton EF-0 tornado ended around 4:40 p.m.
We believe this was a remnant from the Amherst, NE tornado that dissipated 25 minutes before.I finally reached NE-10 and turned north, thanking my lucky stars that I hadn’t put my Corolla in another Nebraska back country ditch. As we passed Prairie Center, at 4:55 p.m., we observed a spaghetti-thin remnant funnel to our west. The NWS chronology indicates that the Rockville, NE EF-2 tornado dissipated around this time, but Rockville was to our NE, not to our W. I can only guess that this rope funnel was the last gasp of the much earlier Amherst, NE EF-3 tornado, which NWS indicates dissipated at 4:30 p.m., a full 25 minutes before!
This funnel formed on two colliding outflow boundaries near Greeley, NE around 6 p.m.Owing to the terrain influence of the North Loup River, we zigzagged NW and E through Rockville, Loup City, Elba, and Scotia, NE, flirting with heavy precipitation cores and strong crosswinds before sighting another tornado along two colliding outflow boundaries north of St. Paul, NE. Although we couldn’t discern ground contact from our vantage point, the funnel, which appeared to be near Wolbach, NE extended more than 50% of the cloud base-to-horizon depth. It was quickly pushed east on the stronger outflow from the western storm, and dissipated about 2 minutes later.
We elected not to pursue the storms any farther north, as we both had to return to work in Norman the following day. We enjoyed a quick steak dinner at Whiskey Creek in Grand Island, before the long haul back south.
Three tornadoes in one day is certainly nothing to complain about; I only wish we could have seen at least one of them while stationary, and been able to film from tripods. Instead, we were on the move, in true chase mode, the entire time. I got zero stills, so the images in this blog post are all frame grabs. Dan ended up shooting most of the handheld video while I drove, some on his camcorder and some on mine, so I’ve split the credit with him for this video summary:
We left Norman early in the morning, thinking we might have to make it all the way to E CO to see a supercell. By the time we reached Salina, KS around noon, however, we were waffling between the E CO target, where the shear was better and the cap was weaker, and a more conditional secondary target in NE KS that would probably remain capped until later in the day, but had better moisture. Knowing that the target for the next day might be as far east as Iowa, we decided to opt for the eastern target. We met up with Jeff S., Jana H., and Nick B. in Belleville, KS, where we watched TCU bubble for a couple of hours before some began to take root around 6 p.m. A supercell took shape far to our southeast, then split. We drove to a corn field just east of Manhattan, Kansas, where the left split died over our heads.
A new supercell near Latimer, KS attracted our attention. At this point we made a strategic mistake – thinking that storm would turn right as it intensified, we headed east on KS-18, south on KS-99, then back west on KS-4, trying to skirt around the core to the east. The supercell, however, didn’t turn right. We could have just as easily headed back into Manhattan and south on KS-177, and intercepted it in about the same place. We ended up adding about half an hour of drive time, and while in transit, we heard reports of a tornado near Latimer. We finally stopped near Alta Vista, KS, and may have seen a dissipating funnel in the diminishing daylight. This view would have to be our reward: Panorama of a weakening supercell near Alta Vista, KS.
A few more wall clouds developed and dissipated underneath the storm, but the show was over. After taking a few more structure and lightning shots, we called it a night.
Phased array with rain shaft. Looks innocuous enough.Dan and I noticed a high-based updraft producing a slender precipitation shaft as we left the NWC yesterday around 6:30 p.m. We decided, on the spur of the moment, to grab our camera gear from the house and head over to North Base to shoot some time lapse near the radar forest.
RaXPol deployed just as the rainfoot surged out toward us.As we were taking video and photos, RaXPol pulled up nearby, so we went over to them. As they began to collect volume scans, the precipitation shaft swelled out a the base and rushed out toward us. We witnessed rotor clouds and ascending rain curtains just ahead of it, before becoming engulfed.
This hangar door blew over 200' from its track to rest in this field. Most of the corrugated metal covering blew away.For about seven minutes, we experienced bursts of heavy rain, quarter-to-golf ball-sized hail, car-rocking winds, and near-zero visibility. We also saw pieces of metal debris fly across the field from the direction of Max Westheimer Airport. (Later, we figured out that they were from a hangar door that blew off.) We had to shout to be heard over the din of the hail battering the outside of my car. Jackrabbits and a skunk went dashing downwind past us. Nearby ditches and culverts quickly filled with water, and leaves and branches tumbled across the fields.
Social media updates told us of fences blown down, power outages, chimneys partially collapsed, roof shingles peeled away, and lawn furniture either vanishing or appearing where it shouldn’t be. We noted that the damage sounded much worse on the east side, and, having looked at some photos and video from friends of mine who live over there, I believe it!
Norman meteogram from 6/14/11. Note the wind spike and other changes at 7:30 p.m. CDT.The Norman Mesonet meteogram tells most of the story; we were parked just across the field from the station. This event was not entirely a surprise – We were in an SPC slight risk area for convective weather, primarily owing to the threat of strong winds and hail. I may have jumped the gun by labeling this a “microburst” when I uploaded my video; evidently NWS is avoiding that terminology until they do a damage survey. The velocity presentation from the Will Rogers TDWR, however, showed a semi-circular gust front surging toward Norman from the storm in question.
Update: NWS is now characterizing this event as a downburst. You can read their write-up here. They even link to a couple of my photos and video! Update: My video was also used in an episode of SUNUP TV, an OK State production with a segment provided by the Oklahoma Mesonet, that airs on our local PBS affiliate OETA. Funny thing is, when they requested permission to use the video, I sent them raw clips without the watermark, but what ended up on the air was taken straight off YouTube and still has the watermark. Oh, well!
This video also made YouTube Trends as one of the most viewed in Oklahoma. The two clips on that site are from other people (the first is Mike Coniglio’s, the second from Tornado Titans), but there’s also a link to mine in the end text.
The southern Great Plains chase season is rapidly dwindling as the ridge builds in. But, we managed to squeak in at least one more chase in the Texas panhandle this past weekend. We brought along Michael H., who just recently joined CAPS. He had never photographed a supercell before, and we thought it likely that we could help him achieve this modest goal for the day.
Pileus cloud on top of a pulsing storm near Buffalo, OKWe were initially attracted to extreme SE CO because of high-resolution model solutions indicating the potential for supercells there. However, we also noticed that those same model solutions indicated that the supercells would grow upscale into an MCS within a few hours. We departed Norman around 11 a.m., reaching the panhandle just after 2 p.m. A cluster of “junk-vection” had developed in the area just south of Woodward, while supercells had indeed begun to pop up in eastern CO – more than three hours away, and very out of play. We gritted our teeth and held up near Logans Corner, OK, where we watched a multi-cell cluster pulse and produce photogenic precipitation shafts, but never quite got its act together. We followed it as far as Buffalo, OK before giving up.
We were a bit disheartened, but took some hope from the fact that it was only 4 p.m. and we had more than five hours of storm environment evolution with which to work. The OK Mesonet indicated that the richer surface moisture hadn’t quite arrived in the Oklahoma panhandle yet. We returned to Logans Corner, OK, where we met up with fellow NWCers Michael C. and Jim C. By then, convection was firing up in discrete, widely-spaced cells stretching from E CO all the way back to central OK. A cell near Spearman, TX caught our attention when it began showing signs of rotation, so we dropped south to Darrouzett, TX. Along with other NWCers (Kiel O. and his entourage), a nicely sculpted LP supercell was there to greet us: Darrouzett, TX supercell panorama
Brief funnel cloud near Darrouzett, TX. We watched the supercell spin and creep closer for about an hour. I hadn’t been privileged to witness a southern Plains LP in a while, so I just sat back, enjoyed it, and shot some time lapse. Around 7:13 p.m. CDT, a clear slot began to appear, and the supercell produced a sharply-pointed, photogenic funnel cloud, of which I managed to capture a few seconds of video. (I was trying to tripod, and by the time I got the funnel framed, it had eroded back up into the cloud base and was gone.) Our storm continued to move east, its base increasingly turbulent, producing more and more precipitation as it went. Evidently, the deeper 60+F dewpoints had finally arrived!
Elongated wall cloud near Follett, TX that produced a brief tornado around 7:43 p.m. CDT.We headed east from Darrouzett on TX-15, trying to get ahead of the hook. A wall cloud took shape, but was terribly deformed by strong, precip-driven outflow that wrung it out like a washrag. We stopped about 1 mi. W of Follett, TX, just as the tornado sirens blew. I kept waiting for it to fall apart as the storm became outflow-dominant, but somehow, it clung on. A couple of gustnadoes spun out from under it, as well as a brief, near-surface condensation funnel that I’m convinced was part of a brief tornado. (An off-duty NWS employee, Doug S., was parked very close to us and called in a tornado report to the Amarillo WFO.)
After the wall cloud passed by to our north, it quickly filled in with rain. At the same time, a new cell came up to our south, and the two quickly merged as we tried to follow the hook east. We soon found ourselves deep in the murk, blasted by horizontal rain directed variously out of the northwest, north, and northeast. Suspecting a circulation might be forming right in front of us, and lacking radar data, we decided to pull our vehicles over, put the hazards on, and wait until better structure presented itself.
Sunset-lit wall cloud S of Follett, TXAfter several minutes, we dropped south out of Follett, initially intending to follow the original target storm (by then near Catesby, OK) along a more southern route. However, in the meantime, a new, classic supercell to our west presented a photography opportunity. We decided to pull over on a dirt road about 12 mi. S of Follett, and shoot this storm at sunset. It produced a beautiful wall cloud with double-tiered structure. We chose, once again, to sit back and enjoy, shooting plenty of video and stills as it passed by us to the north.
We called the chase off at dusk. On the way back, at a Seiling gas station, we happened to encounter Mr. Michael Fish (British TV superstar weatherman) leading a group of chase tourists back to I-35. (I had met Mr. Fish before, taking a previous group on a tour of the NWC.) They were on their last day of a two-week chase trip, and happily reported that they had witnessed a tornado near Beaver, OK earlier in the evening. What a nice way to cap off a tour! I congratulated them, and wished them a safe flight back to the U.K.
