False Alarm

We woke up yesterday in the panhandle of the Sooner State, bright and early. Our goal was to head for western Kansas and head into eastern Colorado at the furthest. We figured that with the highest chance of our trip yet for tornadoes, at 10%, that there would be many other chase groups, and of course yahoos. Yahoos, not the website, rather inexperienced and dangerous locals who roach, or follow experienced chasers towards storms, can be hazardous to not only us, but they can give us, the experienced or student chasers a bad rep.
As we left Oklahoma, we passed into Kansas and after eating lunch in Colby, near the northwestern corner, we stopped at a local motel and borrowed their wireless internet services. We sat there, hoping for storms to form to our west and come in our direction. The "cap" prevented this from happening. Unfortunately for us, storms did fire in Wyoming, and Vortex 2 spotted a decent tornado that lasted 24 minutes. The same cell was tracking east, and with little choices to make in Kansas, we decided to head north, after wasting a vast amount of precious time sitting in that motel parking lot. To intercept, we would have to travel over three hours and flirt with the time zone that separates the mountain and central zones. Coming up on 5 o'clock, we hadn’t seen a rain shaft, few clouds with little or no vertical development, and basically, nothing in favor of us chasing. The day looked like it was going to be a waste of gas, miles, and a huge bust. But, defying all odds against us, we tracked north to the supercells that had a history of producing tornadoes in hopes they might give us, as well as Vortex 2, a chance to see a tornado.
After crossing through 3 states and across the time zone boundary several times, we finally ended up near the southwestern Nebraska border, in Julesburg, CO. The cells were north and west of our position in Bridgeport, NE, moving slow to the east south east. For a day that looked to be the best day possibly of our trip, things were looking bleak. It was nearing 6 and we were just beginning the chase on a storm, for all that we knew could fizzle out and die as we approached from the south.

We decided that our best plan of action was to head for Oshkosh and wait for the storm to come to us, because the road network would limit us to just a few areas to intercept. WE headed down a hilly, and winding country road with the storm, also carrying with it a tornado warning, above and in front of us. The mammatus clouds were crazy compared to what we had seen earlier in the week, and the contrast on the horizon with the low level clouds was phenomenal. Just then, as we headed over some hills, both vans caught sight of an ominous wall cloud in the distance, against an orange sky. VIEW VIDEO:

Within seconds, the cloud appeared to drop a funnel, and the energy level in the van skyrocketed. It was hard to judge the ground level with the hills we were going through, but a cone shaped cloud dropped towards the ground only 15 miles to our north. I had been recording on the video camera the telecommunications department had loaned me, but I also quickly grabbed a hold of my other camera which had video capability and caught the reaction of the van I was in when the cloud appeared to stir up dust on the ground below it. I will take some of the blame for calling it a tornado, but the vast majority of us believed the same thing. There were also 2 other funnel shaped clouds nearby that were dropping out of the low cloud base. Could there be a tornado dropping, or even more than one? We rounded a corner and spotted another girl sitting in a gravel lot near a communications tower, and we parked near her, being it held a great viewpoint over Oshkosh and to where our funnel had just began to vanish, along with all of our hopes. After asking her if she had seen a tornado, she said, “No, but it definitely looked like a funnel perhaps.” It was slightly disheartening, but it was one step closer to our ultimate goal.

We snapped great photos and videos from our vantage point, and also caught a great lightning show. The Vortex group also drove by as well as numerous other chasing groups and individuals. When we finally left our storm, late last night, we passed it seemed, 100 other cars parked along the same road as us, just watching and hoping that the storm would produce, but it did not. We ate dinner at Subway, for the God knows what time this trip at a gas station off of I-80 at 11 last night. The Vortex team, a chase group from Texas Tech, and another DOW from NBC stopped to refuel and wind down at the same station. After dinner, we waited out for the remnants of our storm to move east and away from the highway, because at that time it was dropping softball sized hail. If we wouldn’t have waited, our trip would have been quickly ended with the destruction of our vans. We did not pull into our hotel until half past one this morning, and didn’t get to sleep until somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.

This morning we woke up a bit late, for obvious reasons, and headed out to Lincoln for lunch and now we are camped out at a Phillips 66 gas station waiting for storms to pop up in the area. Vincennes University and the National Severe Storms Laboratory are also here, as well as many other groups here in Nebraska City, just south and east of Lincoln near the border of Missouri and Iowa. I’m going to try to add more videos to this page and other earlier posts. I forgot that you could do this, so now you can enjoy some real storm chasing action. Comments are always appreciated, and you can contact me at btmaushart@bsu.edu. Thanks for reading.

The Disappointment That Comes With Success

Today started out a bit early, considering that I didn’t get done writing and adding photographs to my blog until 2 this morning. Basically, I ended up getting somewhere around 5 or 6 hours of sleep, which isn’t horrible, but chasing storms on the plains can take a lot out of you. Large amounts of mental and physical stress, fast food meals and multchuous amounts of frustration take up almost every bit of up to 15 hours of your day when you’re chasing on the plains. Days seem to bleed into one another, hours seem to sometimes pass quickly, while others drag on it seems, sometimes, endlessly. You swear you have just been through a town, because most smaller towns out here have usually just two, noticeable landmarks, a water tower and a large grain elevator. The scenery sometimes gets old very quickly, especially the last few days down here in the rural “stove pipe” region of Texas, which by the way to give you an idea on how big it really is down here, you can fit the entire state of Indiana in the stove pipe itself, honestly, just look at a map.

I woke up this morning, sometime a short bit before 8am, and struggled to roll off the stiff bed at our Best Western in Wichita Falls. Although my alarm was set for quarter till, I didn’t manage to begin showering until nearly quarter after 8, but that is alright, because we didn’t have or daily briefing until 9. The weather was looking bad from the get go. The main culprit inhibiting any kind of storm development today was a source of moisture. The dew points, or the point at which the moisture in air condenses and forms clouds and eventually, rain, were extremely low. The air temperature on the other hand was rather toasty for the majority of the Lone Star State. The closer the two numbers are to each other, the better your chances for clouds and possibly even storms, depending on a lot of other factors as well. For example, temperatures in the mid 80’s and a dew point in the mid 60’s would bring a good chance of thunderstorms. However, temperature in the mid 80’s with a dew point in the 40’s or even 50’s would not bring a great chance for organized or severe storm development. Today was appearing to be a bust at around noon when we rolled into the town of Plainview, or another town near there, I’m not positive. The dew points were in the 50’s and even into the 40’s I remember, and the temperature outside was very warm, in the mid to high 80’s, which as I have explained prior to be terrible conditions for storm chasing. Our decision, with limited options, was to just head to our original target location of Amarillo and make the call from there whether to continue or to end the chase early and head to our target are for tomorrow.

Right before we got to Amarillo, unfortunately not named armadillo, we monitored our radar and visible satellite on board Van 2, and spotted a small cell beginning to erupt a bit to the north and west of town. We entered chase mode at that point, because within a matter of just minutes, the storm was given a severe thunderstorm warning by the National Weather Service. We were making out way due north out of town, when we realized that we had not one route to the west to intercept the storm unless we would backtrack to Amarillo and catch one of the roads that headed west from there. That is indeed what we decided to do.

With the storm building into a large black mass in our rearview mirror, we got back to Amarillo and quickly began heading west towards New Mexico. The storm was producing 3 inch hail, as detected by Doppler radar, and even some shear. It had many characteristics of a high precipitation supercell, especially with the intense amounts of precipitation that were falling near the core. There were no other noticeable chasers in the area as we sped west down an old county road with the cell coming at us from the right, and or the north. We stopped in a field to monitor a lot of dust that was getting kicked up under a mesocyclone and our first wall cloud we spotted. The rain surprised us and hit us almost out of nowhere. The dust, we figured, was just caused by the gust front headed our way with intense straight line winds and heavy rain from the cell’s downdraft. We quickly sped west to avoid getting slammed by the core of the storm, which at the time was still capable of producing egg sized hail that could have easily destroyed our windshields. Unfortunately for us, we had no good southern routes to keep up with the storm for another 10 or 15 miles down the road. We took that route and witnessed our first clear view of a rear flank downdraft, which is an intense band of rain and hail forced downward one the back end of a severe thunderstorm. This is also common when you have a tornado nearby, but we didn’t have any visual of one.

The storm kept on course heading south, and we stopped on a country road to talk over plans. We did not have a good area to get back to the front of the storm to continue the chase, so after about twenty minutes or so, we decided we would head north for dinner and towards our destination for tomorrow. After stopping to eat in Canyon, Texas, we shot north into the skinny panhandle of Oklahoma, Guymon to be specific, and that is where I am writing this tonight. We have also had a bit of interesting news come our way tonight, via the Storm Prediction Center. Apparently, around 6:30 or so, a tornado touched down a mere 10 miles or so to our east, and we had no idea. We were picking up good radar signatures, but there was no safe way to approach, chase or view that part of the storm. When we learned that we had been just a stones throw away from our dreams of witnessing one of the most awe inspiring displays of mother nature’s fury, we were extremely disappointed. The mood went from success to extreme depression, but there was honestly nothing we could have done better.

In better news, however, we stopped in a gas station in Dumas, Texas and some of us got our attentions grabbed by the television that was on the Weather Channel inside. With a 10% chance of tornadoes bull’s-eye over western Kansas and eastern Colorado, the risk level could be the highest we have seen since leaving Muncie. Apparently, a big named man in the meteorology business, Greg Forbes, stated that we would be having a great chance for witnessing a tornado tomorrow in the plains, finally after weeks of no hope, and then progress, finally, we might be able to see the king of all land based weather events out here on the Great Plains. As for now, I will get a good night’s rest, because tomorrow is shaping up to be a very long and hopefully exciting day. As always, thank you for reading, comments are appreciated and can be sent to my email. (btmaushart@bsu.edu)

Murphy's Law

This week has been nothing short of a weather slump. Each day has had its own individual problems as to why the weather just didn't cooperate, but we have been making the best of the situation, as you may have seen by reading the previous entries.

Today we woke up at a brutal 5am this morning in Denver, in an attempt to intercept possible severe weather that could have possibly popped up in central Nebraska. Of course, that is where the title of this comes into play. After driving 400 some odd miles and stopping for lunch at Arby's in Grand Island, Nebraska, we could just not see anything developing and that the factors that go into forming a thunderstorm were diminishing rapidly. Low dew points in the 50's and temperatures rocketing into the mid to high 80s didn't help things to shape up. We headed south to a developing field of small cumulus clouds, in the hopes that some would eventually grow into towers and possibly become thunderstorms, preferably severe. Well, long story short, a sufficient lack of moisture and low dew points made any chance of storms forming totally disappear, along with any hopes we had at seeing it happen.

This goes along perfectly with the definition of Murphy's Law, which states "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." just in case you didn't know. Every chasing opportunity or event we have participated in has just not worked out how we would have liked it to, even though we have found ourselves in textbook position. There is just honestly, nothing we can do but hope that Mother Nature decides to throw us a gift, in the form of an outbreak, supercells, or even just some photogenic natural phenomena. Any of these would be nice, as we have had little success so far due to the disaster of a weather pattern.

But we have made the best of this class, and again tried to do so when the weather fizzled out today. Basically, after we realized that the skies would disappoint us again, we decided to make a one mile detour just outside of Lebanon, Kansas. If you know your geography trivia, you would know that this is the official Geographical Center of the Contiguous 48 States. Yes, we go to all the crazy places. There was not much here really, besides the official marker, a sign that read "WELCOME TO THE CENTER OF THE USA," and a random roaming rooster. There was also a chapel on site that we left our name and where we were from, for whomever was interested to see in a future visit. The large white rooster was the most popular among the chasers. This was the highlight of the day really, because the weather never panned out.

We found a great deal in a hotel again tonight here in Abilene, Kansas, which makes this my 6th new state that I have visited on this amazing trip. I find the terrain around here to be much like my own fine state of Indiana. That is where I write tonight, on the second floor of a hotel here in sleepy Kansas. I apologize for the blog being pretty short and rather uninteresting, but that is just how the day has been. We drove over five hundred an fifty miles today, traveled in two different time zones and drove through three different states. Maybe the weather will improve here soon for us and fellow storm chasers across the plains who are facing the same disappointing conditions we have been seeing the past week or so. That is what we are all hoping for at this point. Again, I thank you for reading and comments are appriciated. Thank you.

Two Days in Denver

The past two days, we have been sleeping well in a suburb just north of the Mile High City. We started out this part of our trip in Cheyenne, Wyoming, home of, well honestly, not a whole lot. We woke up from our hotel and headed downtown to the capital building, where we toured the state museum, and then immediately after took a bit of a break by playing a pick up game of football on the Wyoming Supreme Court side lawn. I’m sure they were thrilled to look out their windows and see that, but we didn’t get yelled at, so that’s all that matters. We then packed up and headed south to Colorado, and more specifically,
Denver.

We had it planned out so that upon arriving in downtown, we would purchase tickets and watch the Colorado Rockies take on the Los Angeles Dodgers. It was a great day for baseball, clear skies and a light breeze. Most of us took part in trying some of the beautiful parks food and drinks, including foot long bratwurst with all the fixings, strawberry smoothies, and for the 21 and over crowd, ice cold beer. It was a great game, but in the end, the Dodgers came out on top, 8-6. Our next course of action was to find out where we would be lodging for the night, which we were expecting to pay much over our budget to stay anywhere reasonably close, but boy were we wrong.

One of the students on the trip called into a La Quinta Hotel in a nearby northern suburb here in Denver, just 15-20 minutes out. We couldn’t believe the price, an amazing $55 a night, or about $15 under our nightly budget. Enough of the boring stuff… After we dropped off our luggage, we headed back downtown for dinner at a local pub like restaurant. It was some of the best food I have eaten yet. The place was called, well I honestly don’t remember, but it was delicious to say the least. We ate there not only for the great food and atmosphere, but we also wanted to watch the Denver Nuggets take on the Lakers with many other Denver faithful. Even though they also ended up losing that night, it was still a great time. We hung around for a bit and played some pool and shuffleboard, and then we headed out to explore downtown. The rest is not important so I’ll skip ahead to the part where we called it a night and headed back to the hotel.

We woke up this morning and our first item of business was to tour the NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) Building in Boulder, just 25 minutes away from Denver. The building itself is situated up high in the hills, right below the mountain line in Boulder. The county itself has a ban on any development in the mountains, but NCAR got an exception and the world famous I.M. Pei designed and built this artistic masterpiece of a research facility. We went on a one hour tour of the building and met some more people that were visiting from Indiana, again very close to me, as I had gone to school with the guy at one point, and he now goes to Purdue. Anyway, other that random run in, number two thus far, we then roamed freely for a while, seeing their tornado machine in the lobby, and going out back on their nature trail. It was a very enjoyable experience.

After we left NCAR, we headed back down the mountain to downtown Boulder. We passed by Colorado University, which had many unique looking buildings, compared to what we are used to in Indiana. The campus itself also appears to be quite large compared to Ball State standards. When we finally found a spot to park, we followed the lead of Dr. Call and Reuben as they led us to an eatery that I would never have tried if I were in Colorado alone. They led us down a set of stairs from the street and into the Himalayas Restaurant. It specialized in Nepali, Indian and Tibetan cuisine. I can’t say that I remember eating any of these in my recent memory. The buffet was all that was available and at first glance, I will honestly say that the food did not look appeasing to me. After taking a few bites of some chicken and rice, and following that with potatoes and fresh vegetables, I was pleased. No, its not my cup of tea for food choices, but I’m always willing to try new things, and this trip makes these opportunities possible. Unfortunately the food came back to bite me this evening, and that is all I will say.

We left Boulder and headed to Golden, about another 15 minutes away, which if you are the expert on Colorado, you would now that the Coors Brewery makes its home in the Golden Colorado Valley. At first we were just going to drive through town and past the brewery itself, but what is the fun in that? We hopped on a Coors bus and took a self-audio tour of one of the largest breweries in the world. It was very interesting and educating in the hour or so that we spent inside the Rocky Mountain brewery. At the end, all of the students that are 21 and up got to taste and drink 3 choices of beer, while I on the other hand had my fair share of root beer. We left Golden and headed back in the direction of our hotel for dinner, which ended up being either Wendy’s or Boston Market, students and professors choice. After dinner, we headed back to our hotel and played a quick game of football in a neighboring parking lot. In a quick recap, team awesome possum went up 20-6 before the sun started to set, and then who know what happened, but team sea bass came back with a miracle win, 21-20, in a game we played to twenty one. It was a disappointing defeat, but it was good to bond with the other guys, girls and even the professors.

Then, the ever popular “SEE TEXT” marker popped up on the Storm Prediction Center’s website this evening. There were different factors that were all pointing to some possibly chase able weather. We had an emergency meeting to discuss what our plan of action will be for tomorrow. The vote was unanimous that we will leave here at 6am and head as quickly as is safe to central Nebraska, in an attempt to intercept and chase anything that may pop up. Just recently, we checked the SPC website again, and they now have the area over a slight risk, which is very good and some of the best chances we have seen out here yet for chase conditions. As the details they have say, we could be in for our first supercells, and low-precipitation at that, making them all the more photogenic. We are feeling really good about our chances with the conditions tomorrow, especially since we have been sightseers the past three days. This is where I will leave you for tonight, from the third floor of the La Quinta, north of Denver. Tomorrow is looking to be a long, but exciting day. Hopefully I will have some great stuff to talk about and awesome pictures to share with you. Any comments or suggestions are always great, and as always, thank you for reading!