Bust, by definition, means simply "a woman's breasts. " In meteorological terms however, a bust is something that we, as chasers, never wish to experience. A bust for us, by definition, is basically the equivalent of a build up of excitement shortly followed by mass amounts of stress and disappointment. More on that later, as for now, lets start the story from this morning.
I woke up at 7:30 CDT, or one hour behind Indiana (EDT), so in essence, we all got an extra hour of sleep. After showering and doing my regular morning business, I headed to the lobby for my complimentary breakfast. Unfortunately that consisted of only cereal and bagels, but something is better than nothing in my eyes. The daily morning briefing followed breakfast, and we made the decision to move further west yet towards our initial goal of Rapid City, SD. If I will learn anything from this trip, it will be that plans never go as they were initially planned.
From Waverly, Iowa, our home for the prior evening, we headed south to hit I-20 in Waterloo that would eventually take us to Sioux City, IA on our way to Rapid City. I feel now is a good time to throw in some weather information, which has been lacking I know. Basically, there is a complex answer as to why chasing right now is basically "garbage." In complex theory, there is a "Hudson-Low" centered over, you guessed it, Hudson Bay in Canada. You might ask yourself what this has to do with the Great Plains eh? Well, I will do my best to explain. This interrupts the flow of the jet stream, reducing winds and jet streaks on the plains. In addition this helps to create what is known as a "Death-Ridge" that lies right over the central plains, bringing great birthday party weather, but that isn't what we are here for obviously. In other words, less wind, less lift, less moisture and less divergence equals less chance of favorable storm chasing opportunities. If I have put you to sleep I apologize.
Other rumors that have been circulating include the "VORTEX Curse." This first VORTEX program took place in the mid 90's, and when they first went out to study the storms that usually flourished on the plains, the storms suddenly vanished in their first year of the study. They recall 1994 as being a complete "bust" year. This is ironic because this year, the second VORTEX program, cleverly named "VORTEX 2," started their new round of studies on May 10th, and will be in the field until somewhere around the 13th of June. Much like the 90's, this year is proving to be a slow year to say the least. Basically, they say that when a VORTEX study takes place, the severe weather diminishes, and chasing becomes sightseeing. This is much the case right now, well for the most part.
Back to the less scientific, and possibly more entertaining storyline. On our way to Sioux City, be passed through a wide array of scenery, from flat plains like one would expect, farms, and even a few gentle rolling hills. But most of the excitement in the vans came when we drove
through the small towns. We made our first bathroom and snack stop in the small town of Rockwell City, Iowa, "The Golden Belt Buckle of the Corn Belt." We enjoy making humor out of anything possible, and today the gas station was our first source of jokes. Whomever named the station must not have thought it over for very long. The "Kum & Go" was not only great for a bathroom stop, but a great photo op. and souvenir shop. I will admit I personally splurged on a Kum & Go t-shirt, as did 3 other students that I know of off hand. After taking pictures, mingling with the locals, and getting in a few bits of laughter, we continued our trek west.
The few towns west of Rockwell City is yet another sexual innuendo, none other than Sac City, Iowa. It turned out to be another good round of walkie-talkie jokes and photo opportunities. But laughter soon turned to awe over a new sight to many of us. A few miles more to the west on I-20 was something we were not accustomed to seeing in Indiana, wind turbines. I had heard of their hige size before, but you really don't understand until you see them first on the far horizon, and then drive less than 100 yards from them. They really are a modern marvel and they are almost an artistic feature on the otherwise featureless plains. But we soon passed by and left them spinning in our rear view mirrors.
Finally after another hour or so of quality time in our vans, we made it to Siuox City, Iowa. We decided that 2p.m. was a good time for lunch and we couldn't have picked a better location to eat. Today we chose Famous Dave's BBQ, which is quite possibly some of the best BBQ one can consume at such an affordable price. The service was great, especially since we had 12 guests and it happened to be the server's first day. I'm no food critic so I will move on and leave you with a last remark, it was awesome. We held a special mid-day briefing in the back room of Famous Dave's because we had noticed while driving that a few storms were surprisingly gaining enough energy to intensify over south west Nebraska. So, we talked over possible options that changed in the morning from just strictly heading north to Rapid City, which now would include heading south to as close to Texas as we could get by nightfall, or staying in Kansas to be located in a more centralized location.
We were pretty set on just heading for the northernmost option when a pop-up window appeared on Dr. Call's lapto
p, which delivered a warning issued by one of the programs we use to track and predict storms while out here on the Great Plains. We were all shocked by the tornado-warning that was issued by a law enforcement officer outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. Our plans now took a drastic turn, as we went from sightseeing, and mostly relaxed mode to full blown chase-mode in a matter of minutes. It reminded me of the scene in
Twister where they are just relaxing in the field near someones farm and then a warning is issued over the weather radio and they all rush out of the field in their convoy led by Rusty's mini bus sound system that is blaring the solo-section of Deep Purple's,
Child in Time. I kid you not, it felt and seemed very similar to that.
So, as we drove out of SiouxCity, we decided a possible intercept point would be northeastern Nebraska, somewhere near Pierce or Norfolk. Remember how I said plans never go according to plans? Well here is another great example of this as we watched the storms flourish over southern Nebraska, with one possible tornado report and also radar indicated hail of anywhere between half an inch to golfball sized stones. Things were looking great until the storms continued north. They proved to be especially difficult to track, because directions continued to change and the three or so cells we tracked were moving in different directions and at one point, two of the cells merged with one another. We ended up forgetting to take into context the air in northern cornhusker country that had recently been cooled dramatically by a cold front from earlier in the day which met with the storms we were en-route to and basically killed them off. I'll leave off other factors and scientific reasoning that led to their demise to save you from any more feelings of drowsiness, but in lamemans terms, it turned out to be a bust. Are you seeing a trend to all of this? So we soon after made the descision to keep on trucking north, towards Rapid City.
This is where I type this entry tonight, well not quite Rapid City, rather Murdo, South Dakota, home to our Best Weatern Hotel, the Rusty Spur Bar and Grill, and the Pioneer Auto Museum. Tomorrow, I would make an assumption on where we are headed, but if there is a second life lesson I will take from this trip, it will be to not make assumptions, just because. Possibly the Mt. Rushmore National Monument, or the Badlands National Park, both of which are an hour or so from our stay tonight, but there are other odd choices in South Dakota which include a Minuteman-II missle silo, recently declassified and turned into a tour stop, and or Mitchell's Corn Palace, aka a giant castle shindig made out of corn which reopens tomorrow. Like I said, something could come up and for all I know we might end up in Denver, or Vegas... well not Vegas, but that would be crazy. I'm going to try to get some quality sleep here in Murdo, and have some more great experiences out here on the Plains tomorrow as we continue to chase the dream. Yea, that was cheesy, but it works. Thank you again, as always for reading.
outside of Rapid City, and our plans took a turn south and we again found ourselves crossing into the northern Nebraska border in an attempt to intercept some unorganized cells. Of course, with our luck two things went terribly wrong. While driving south, our magnet for van 2, my van thus far, got blown off the side by either a strong gust of wind, or from the gust off of a semi. Either way, we lost it, possibly for good. The second problem was that we failed to take in to account the colder air to the north which was pressing down. Although storms were firing strong in the warm sector, the moment the came into contact with the colder air, they then fizzled and died. This of course makes for terrible chasing, and in other words, basically a 4 hour detour.
t of rain, just in time to run into our restaurant, which was full so we then ran to another one a couple of blocks away and had an all you can eat pizza bar, which wasn't so hot, but food is food. We ended up leaving quite late and decided to book the same hotel in Murdo, about two and a half to three hours from where we were. After arrival, we were very tired for the most part, and we wanted to be well rested for the next day, which would be looking like the best day possibly all trip for chasing storms on the Great Plains.
