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)

Storm Chasing: Pre-departure

Its early on a thirsty-Thursday night, and I'm finishing my last minute packing and preparation that will go into tomorrows departure to the Great Plains of the United States of America, the home of farmland as far as the eye can see and most importantly Tornado Alley.

Right now, according to many models and analysis maps, our chances of finding anything highly organized or favorable to chase are minimal for a while. We have two ways to exit Indiana tomorrow, both of which are basically geographical opposites of one another. Behind door number one, we can take the northern route, and head towards the Dakotas and eastern Montana, but stopping for rest and sleep somewhere near Des Moines, Iowa. Behind door number two, we could be trekking in the direction of the Texas panhandle and east New Mexico, stopping for rest and shut eye in southern Missouri. There is one more option for lodging, which would be in Kansas City, MO, with the goal of basically splitting the distance between the two chase able regions, and in turn making more of an educated guess as to where to travel to over the weekend.

Either way, these are all new destinations for me and I cannot wait to visit and explore. Possibilities that await us, the chasers from both Ball State and Indiana University, if there is dry weather would include the Badlands Nat. Park and Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota, and the Alamo or even the Odessa Meteor Crater in Texas. We will have to take a vote or decide on what to do if this should happen. Usually, people ask for good weather on their travels, however, as storm chasers we would rather have our weather be a bit more on the wet side.

In other random side notes, the classroom portion for the most part is over. We had class on Thursday and Friday of last week and also the first two days of this week, closing out this Tuesday with an exam over what we had learned the past few days. I have been here in Muncie, IN since Monday morning, and it has had its ups and downs. The past couple of days have been rough, between finding ways of entertaining myself and living with some nice guys I have only known since late last week. But the pros have outweighed the cons, and departure is quickly arriving.

I will be taking a camera and video camcorder, which by the way, thanks to the telecommunications department here at Ball State for allowing me to do so. So in other words, you can expect to get daily photographs from sightseeing and hopefully some severe weather. The video might take a while to get online, as I don't know right now as it stands how to get it uploaded to my laptop from the camera. But there will be something on my facebook eventually.

It is looking better everyday for media coverage of our chase. Our professor leading the chase, Dr. Dave Call, notified us tonight that seven media sources had contacted him to get information on us and our adventures in the coming weeks. There might also be a possiblity that some local newspapers/television stations to myself will be doing a story on the trip. We will just have to wait and see. Sorry that this was such a long entry, and rather boring at that, but hopefully I will have some more exciting stories to tell, and pictures to share.

You can read up on the trip on this blog every night (hopefully), and view pictures and possibly videos on my facebook page. Thanks for reading.