Rob Dale on Free Learning Resources for the Prerequisites of Meteorology

I owe the following content to meteorologist and Ingham County, Michigan, emergency manager Rob Dale. With his permission, I’m duplicating it here from Rob’s Facebook post, as I think some of my weatherhead readers may find it relevant and useful. That has been my experience; thanks to Rob, I’ve actually begun to look into tackling high school algebra–a subject I did horribly at back in my teen years–with an eye on laying the groundwork for calculus, and thence, meteorology. One is never too old to learn, right?

Perhaps the free resources Rob has listed below will inspire you too to expand your learning horizons. In any case, the legwork Rob has done is too valuable to be buried beneath the Facebook landslide.

Here’s Rob.

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Let’s say you’re interested in REALLY learning about meteorology? You have NO idea how many resources are available today compared to just 5-10 years ago! You can take most of the core courses that currently cost thousands of dollars at a university for free at your own pace… For example, a met degree requires Calculus, Physics, and Chemisty off the top. Once you have that background, you can start reading intermediate (and maybe advanced) textbooks and actually learn how to forecast. You still won’t be a full fledged met, but I guarantee you will make better forecasts than now and you will feel better knowing your knowledge is the reason why. You can find them elsewhere, but many of these from MIT have full video lectures which makes the process easier.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/ 18.01, 18.02, 18.03
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/ 8.01, 8.02
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/chemistry/ 5.04, 5.60

Now you’ve got the basics! You can get meteorology books, will understand what you’re reading, and actually start to make sense of the “why” behind the process.

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Dynamic-Meteorology-Fifth-Edition/dp/0123848660/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_z
https://www.amazon.com/Mesoscale-Meteorology-Midlatitudes-Advancing-Weather/dp/0470742135
https://secure.ametsoc.org/amsbookstore/viewProductInfo.cfm?productID=81
https://www.amazon.com/Synoptic-Dynamic-Meteorology-Midlatitudes-Principles-Kinematics/dp/0195062671
https://www.amazon.com/Synoptic-Dynamic-Meteorology-Midlatitudes-Observations-Weather/dp/019506268X/ref=pd_sim_b_1
https://secure.ametsoc.org/amsbookstore/viewProductInfo.cfm?productID=5
https://secure.ametsoc.org/amsbookstore/viewProductInfo.cfm?productID=6

Some of those books can be expensive, but buy one at a time and you’ll be able to sell them for about 80% of what you paid (if not more.)

Does this sound hard? Yup. Necessary if you want to really know meteorology? Yup. Impossible? Nope. Just think how much time you are wasting drawing lines on Microsoft Paint and how those hours could actually help you learn! If you really wanted to be a guitar player would you be better off spending time on Guitar Hero or learning chords on a real guitar? One of them is fun in the short term but offers no advantage towards your goal. Same story here.

So there you go. If this is REALLY your passion, make it something valuable. If you end up going to college, think of how much easier those classes will be since you’ve already invested ahead of time! If you don’t go to school, imagine how much more interactive your conversations can be with meteorologists and how much of a service your posts will be to followers.

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Now, if you, like me, totally sucked at any form of math back in your high school daze (daze being a fully appropriate word for a child of the 1970s), Rob has also provided a link to KhanAcademy, which provides a blizzard of tutorials on the prerequisites for college-level courses. And yes, they too are free, free, free.

Considering the education you can get online today without paying a dime, the only thing that can cost a person is to remain ignorant. Learn at your own pace for your own enrichment and satisfaction. What’s to stop you?

Hey, Rob–thanks! You rock, Pilgrim.

 

January 15, 2014 by
Filed Under: Tutorials, Uncategorized, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Maps Coming to RAOB Sounding Software

Welcome to 2014! I’m going to refrain from writing the typical New Year’s Day stuff here, having already shared my greeting and reflections on Facebook. Instead, I want to share  one of the cool new things this New Year has brought in.

For some time now, deep in a hollow tree, John Shewchuk has been hard at work, and now, at last, he has rolled out something that is sure to make your mouth water: worldwide data maps for his RAOB software.

Okay, so it’s not a new cookie and John is not a Keebler elf. What he is, is the creator of the world’s most powerful and versatile atmospheric sounding software, which, thanks to John’s ongoing quest for excellence, keeps getting better all the time.

I am an unabashed RAOB fan, and I’m far from alone. John’s clients, both government and private sector, are legion and worldwide and firm believers in the phenomenal firepower of John’s brainchild. I am probably the humblest and least sophisticated of the bunch, not being a weather researcher or an operational forecaster but merely a layman with an avid interest in storm chasing. I purchased the core software several years ago along with a number of the modules, and I quickly realized that the capabilities of RAOB far outstripped my knowledge of the atmosphere, to say nothing of my technical expertise. I will add that I’ve learned a bit since then, particularly in the first area, thanks in part to RAOB, whose commonsense design has made the meteorological insights that soundings have to reveal easier to access for even a non-tech such as me.

And that underscores what is, in my book, one of RAOB’s most glowing attributes: its ease of use. I don’t have to be a geek in order to make it go. It’s much easier and faster to use than Bufkit, which, though feature-rich and free, I never could figure out. And now, with the addition of worldwide data maps, the RAOB user interface becomes even more intuitive and convenient.

RAOB Map USHere is an example of one of the maps. As you can see from the pulldown menu, there are other options which, altogether, cover the entire globe, including the polar regions. They are the latest improvement to the version 6.5 beta test and apply only to WMO soundings, not forecast soundings such as GFS or NAM. The latest update to the maps completes phase 1 of the mapping project. A recent newsletter stated that “phase 2 will enable creation of cross-sections by just drawing a line across the data maps. ” That will be an immensely useful feature for setting up spatial (versus temporal) cross-sections.

Bottom line: Big kudos and thanks to John–who, by the way, works out of his home in Matamoras, Pennsylvania, not in a hollow tree. Sorry to disillusion you. But if you’re a storm chaser or a weather buff, what he turns out goes far beyond anything the Keebler elves ever dreamed of.

I should add, this is neither a paid nor solicited review. I have written it strictly as a service to fellow storm chasers and because I love John’s work.

January 1, 2014 by
Filed Under: Reviews, Software & Technology, Storm Chasing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Playing the Sax Again after a Forced Hiatus

Back in April 2012, I wrote about how it felt to pick up my sax again after weathering the worst case of bronchitis I have ever experienced. In short, after three miserable weeks away from my horn, it felt wonderful to pick it up again. I was rusty and had a little ground to reclaim, but that was okay; where my technique had suffered a bit, my creativity seemed to move to the forefront, and my playing felt fresh.

A year-and-a-half later, I’m here to share a similar experience. And I’ll begin by saying that I’m truly fortunate–graced, blessed by God–to be able to write about it, because I could be dead. It was no nasty cold that took me down this time but a bad car crash in Indiana last November. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured, but, sitting in the front passenger seat of the car I was traveling in–which was mine but with a friend driving–I took the brunt of the collision. Upon emerging from the car, I could tell that something was wrong with my chest. I felt no pain at the moment, just discomfort, but I had a hunch that would change pretty quickly, and it did.

For the next several days, my chest hurt pretty badly. I figured I had bruised my sternum, perhaps even cracked it, and probably sustained several levels of injury involving my muscles and ribcage. Four or five days later, the pain gradually began to subside, but it took yet another week or so before I was able to cough freely or sneeze without ruining myself for the next hour.

Finally, last week, I picked up my sax for the first time and blew. I’d like to tell you how great that felt, but “great” isn’t the right word. It just felt…normal. Kind of flat, really–like pretty much any practice session in which I haven’t felt particularly inspired but practiced anyway because I needed to. As best I could, I simply picked up where I had left off before the accident, playing through the Bird tunes “Confirmation” and “Ornithology,” including some transcriptions of those solos, and reacquainting myself with a couple of dominant seventh patterns I’d been working on.

But wait a minute. Both of those tunes are pretty complex bebop tunes, and a year ago, I couldn’t even play “Confirmation.” To be able to just jump back in the saddle with it after five weeks of not even touching my horn–that tells me this last year in the woodshed has been a profitable one. I’ve raised my baseline of ability on my instrument; music that once seemed formidable has been internalized.

I’ve had two practice sessions since, and last night’s felt great. Time to work on some new ideas as well as brush up on the stuff I’d been working on prior to the crash.

But here’s the take-away: Developing musical proficiency isn’t about emotion or instant gratification. It’s about discipline. Your practice sessions don’t have to feel creatively inspired; they just have to be consistent. You just have to stick with it. If you do, and if you practice the right stuff, then you’ll grow.

A farmer’s job is to plant his seeds, water them, and nurture them. If he does, then the seed will germinate and grow, and in due time, the farmer will reap a harvest. That’s how it works. It’s not about inspiration; it’s about hard work and dedication, and the same holds true for learning to play jazz or any kind of music. Get your priorities in place and the moments of inspiration will come.

December 29, 2013 by
Filed Under: Band, Jazz, Jazz Improvisation and Technique, Life, Music, Saxophone Tagged With: , , , ,

Henryville Tornado: Some Video Captures from the Storm’s Early Stages

This year, 2013, has once again been lousy for me from a storm chasing perspective. My two forays out to Oklahoma and Kansas yielded nothing in terms of tornadoes. Some cool gustnadoes, but that’s it, unless you count a glimpse of a decaying tube so fleeting that it’s barely worth mentioning. My best chase of the year was right here in Michigan. And my worst was unquestionably on November 17 down in Indiana, when a road accident claimed my beloved Toyota Camry.

So since I have nothing to show for this season, I thought I would grab a few stills from my video of the March 2, 2012, Henryville, Indiana, tornado, just to remind myself that I’ve actually had some decent chases. The shots, arranged sequentially, show the tornado from where Bill and I first glimpsed it shortly after touchdown as we were approaching Palmyra from the south, to its intensifying and mature stages north of town, where it tore across SR 135, ripping up a 12′ x 12′ chunk of asphalt in the process, and then raged northeastward toward New Pekin and then its deadly visitation on Henryville.

These are just video grabs, and our vehicle was moving at a good clip as I shot the footage, so the images are by no means tack-sharp. But they still give a pretty good feel of a memorable chase. They’re arranged in proper sequence, so you can see the variations the tornado went through on its way to becoming a raging EF-4 monster.

I intend to add a few more images, but the eleven I’ve included here are most of the show and plenty enough to tell the story. (I don’t know why the one showing the power flash turned out so small; I plan to replace it with a larger image.)

[Show as slideshow]

December 22, 2013 by
Filed Under: Photography, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes Tagged With: , ,

Winter Solstice 2013: Tornadoes (or Not) in Dixie Alley and Ice Storms North and West

It has finally arrived: Winter. Astronomical winter, that is. Meteorological winter has already been with us for three weeks, beginning December 1, and in my book, that is the more climatologically accurate date. Particularly this year. For the first time since 2009, we in Michigan have been experiencing a good, old-fashioned Great Lakes winter. Here in Caledonia, the snowfall has exceeded a foot, and Lisa, who arrived here from Missouri five years ago hating winter and now loves it, dotes on it, rejoices in it, has been having a high good time during her two daily walks, equipped with brand-new winter hiking boots and a warm, warm, waaarm and dry, dry, dry waterproof down coat.

I am not so enthusiastic about all this white stuff as Lis is. My interaction with winter consists largely of sitting indoors at my work station, gazing out through the sliding door, watching the finches argue at the feeders and the woodpeckers whack away at the suet, and watching snowflakes pirouette gracefully out of the sky, and thinking, “Can we get this over with?”

Yes we can, in a few more months. Because today at last we tip the scale, and from here on, daylight will be on the upswing.

Two weeks ago, on December 8, the sun set in my town at 5:08 p.m. EST, just as it had been doing for the preceding four days, hovering within the eight-minutes-past-the-hour range but setting just a few seconds earlier each day. The 8th was the earliest sunset date of the year. From then on, sunset time would arrive incrementally later. For the next five days, through December 13, it would remain at 5:08, but instead of losing seconds, now it would begin to add them back until, on December 9, the sun would set at 5:09.

The converse does not, however, hold true for the day’s first light. The sun will continue to rise later and later until January 3 of the new year. By then, the sun will have been rising at 8:14 a.m. for five days until finally, on that date, the sunrise will, like the sunset, hit its own tipping point. From thenceforth, losing a few seconds each day, it will begin its slow march toward an earlier and earlier hour. On January 8, it will rise at 8:13 a.m.; on January 12, at 8:12; on the 14th, at 8:11; and so it will go, until on the 31st, it will rise at 7:59. By then, the sun will be rising approximately a minute earlier each day, and we will have gained fifteen minutes of sunrise time.

Why, then,  is today, winter solstice, so special? Because today marks our shortest period of overall daylight, the narrowest space between sunrise and sunset. From tomorrow on, even though the sun will continue to rise later and later for a while, the sunset time will begin to outpace it and the gap between sunrise and sunset will broaden–slowly at first, then with increasing swiftness. By the end of December, we Grand Rapidians will have gained 41 seconds of daylight for a total of 9 hours, 14 minutes, and 16 seconds on December 31. By March 18, we’ll be adding daylight at 2 minutes and 15 second per day, at which point we’ll have maxed out and the gains, while still continuing up to the summer solstice, will become gradually less.

You now know more about the winter solstice than you probably ever cared to. What makes this particular solstice even more interesting is the weather that’s shaping up for it, which shows promise of making it a headliner with tornadoes in the deep South and ice storms to the north and west.

Day 1 Winter Solstice 1630 Mod Risk 2013Here is the 1630Z convective outlook for today, depicting a moderate risk stretching from western Kentucky and Tennessee southwestward into Louisiana, with a 15 percent hatched area for tornadoes.

Given the brevity of daylight, I find this situation interesting but not particularly appealing.  A look at forecast soundings suggests a crapload of rain, low CAPE, and high helicity, all driven by massive shear and Jackson MS 19Z RAP_Skew-Trocketing along through formidable terrain. A lot of chasers are out there, and I’m sure that if I lived in that area, I’d be among them, but looking at the Shreveport radar, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on something. I got my fill of chasing fast-moving, rain-wrapped storms last November in optimal territory, and considering how that chase turned out, I think I’ll be a lot more selective about such scenarios in the future. That said, I wish those who are out there good success.

And safety. Drive carefully, mates and matesses. No storm is worth jeopardizing your safety over.

As for me, I’m sitting well on the other side of the cold front, and freezing rain is in the forecast, though my local WFO has backed off on it in their forecast discussion. Lots of areas in the Midwest are getting hit with icy conditions, making for hazardous driving, power outages, downed tree limbs, and the like.

The day grows later, and so far, glancing at the radar down south, I just don’t see anything very exciting–just a messy-looking MCS with one cell south of Memphis showing a hint of rotation. Only wind reports so far, and I suspect that’s how this thing will continue to play out. Tough for anyone who drove down there hoping for more; good for denizens of the region.

And so enters the winter of 2013–14. Time to wrap up this post and get on with the rest of this afternoon.

December 21, 2013 by
Filed Under: Michigan, Uncategorized, Weather Tagged With: , , , , ,

September Gilds the Fenlands

Upton Road Fen in northern Barry County, Michigan.

Upton Road Fen in northern Barry County, Michigan.

Three miles south of Middleville, Michigan, lies Upton Road Fen. That is the name I have given the place for convenience to provide some sense of location. In reality, the fen is nameless. Rarely do wetlands in Michigan have an actual place name, and in the case of this wetland, that is just as well, because the name “Upton Road” hardly does justice to either the magnificent sweep and diversity of the fen or the loveliness of the sandy forest trail that winds through archways of hardwood past the fen’s northern border.

A feather tamarack stands sentinel at the fen's northern border.

A feather tamarack stands sentinel at the fen’s northern border.

Prairie fens are a rare and unusual kind of alkaline wetland, rich in plant life, and Barry County is a bastion for these beautiful and fascinating ecosystems. Upton Road Fen may well be the largest of its kind in this part of the state. If not, it is certainly one of the larger ones, stretching three-quarters of a mile from corner to corner and encompassing a wide palette of fen habitats, from drier cinquefoil fields, to sedge meadows, to a wet, reedy seep, to a floating mat on the lowest, southeast end.  Pitcher plants grow here, and wild orchids, and blazing star, and deep blue fringed and bottle gentians. Tamaracks rub shoulders with red cedars, and here at the end of September, poison sumac shrubs dot the periphery of the fen, glowing incandescently like fiery rubies strung across a vast necklace where the wetland meets the woods.

Unidentified seed pod. Any guesses?

Unidentified seed pod. Any guesses?

I have come here on this bright, late afternoon in search of gentians, and I am not disappointed. They are here, fully open, batting their fetching blue lashes at the slanting September sun. Little coquettes! Gentle, sweet wildflowers, flirty yet shy, like teenage girls just discovering their charms. I have intended to get photographs, but my camera’s battery is lower than I realized, and it dies on me after just a few landscape shots plus some odds-and-ends closeups. The latter include this old seed pod with one tufted seed still clinging gallantly to it. I don’t know what the plant is–it’s actually a shrub of some kind, and far be it from me to venture a guess as to its identity. I’m just not much of a shrub man.

I walk cautiously, keeping an eye out for massasaugas. In the many times I have visited this fen, I have never seen one, but I am told they are here and actually plentiful. I would love to see one, but not today–I left my heavy boots at home, and I wouldn’t care to have my first encounter with Michigan’s only rattlesnake result from my stepping on one with these old, threadbare athletic shoes I’m wearing.

Looking south across the long reaches of the fen.

Looking south across the long reaches of the fen.

Fortunately, my snakeless record remains pristine as I head back to the car. It has been an all-too-short visit on this radiant afternoon, but I have things to do and it is time to go. I am grateful, though, for these few minutes here, beyond the grasp of the frenzied world, where time slows down and invites me to do likewise long enough to see the smile of my Father. He is a loving Creator who has much reason to look upon these works of his hands–these golden fields, this sun-gilded fen stretching luminously beneath the September sky–and call all of it good. Yes, very good indeed.

September 29, 2013 by
Filed Under: Life, Michigan, Nature, Outdoors, Photography, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Waterspout Season Opens Today on Lake Michigan

When I saw the clouds this afternoon, I couldn’t help but wonder. Lisa and I were catching a late lunch–or an early dinner, take your pick–at the Fire Rock Grille, and I was staring out the window over the golf course at low-topped convective towers to my northwest. The sky had that look about it that spoke of stripped-out moisture and cold mid-level temperatures, as you begin to expect around this time of year, and I thought, “If those towers were over Lake Michigan, there’d be a waterspout hanging from one of them.”

My first successful waterspout chase last year led me to believe that when conditions are right for spouts–when cold air moving over warm lake waters creates steep low-level lapse rates and enough vorticity is present to get stretched by an updraft–then the main thing to do is get one’s butt down to the lakeshore and look for convective bands. Maybe I’m being overly simplistic; regardless, September 22, 2012, made me a believer in the feasibility of viewing Lake Michigan waterspouts. I even managed to get some shaky but very cool video that day of a spout making landfall about one hundred yards north of me.

My instincts today proved right, but the action occurred on the other side of the pond, where some spectacular photos and video came from lucky beachcombers in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I normally avoid embedding YouTube videos in my posts because I never know how long one will remain viable, but I’m displaying this one by Jeff Magno because I find it particularly intriguing.

Not only is the distant spout massive at this point, but look at how the mist rising off of the sidewalk in the foreground forms a tracer for the surface winds. The mist rushes southward, consistent with today’s northerly flow, but where it rises, you can see it begin to move lakeward. It dissipates far too quickly to tell much of a story, but it leads me to speculate about the low-level vertical vorticity that may have been available to produce the spouts.

But then, what do I know about these things? I’m just a happy observer when I get the chance to be one–which, as it turns out, may be tomorrow morning. Got a hot tip on that, so I’m setting my clock and planning to wake up early, and tonight I will dream of near-shore convection.

September 12, 2013 by
Filed Under: Michigan, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , ,

Jazz Jams in Grand Rapids

Something is happening with jazz in Grand Rapids. Overnight, it seems, the art form which hitherto has garnered lots of respect but little support is coming into its own in this area. People are turning out to hear live jazz. It has been a long time coming, and it’s good to see.

Last night I went to a jam session at the Winchester, located at 648 Wealthy Street SE. Running from 9:30 to 12:30, the session is hosted by trumpeter Chris Lawrence, with John Shea on keyboards and a rotating lineup of bass players and drummers. Besides being an incendiary improviser, Chris does a splendid job fronting the session, and he has an enthusiastic audience. A number of great area jazz musicians showed up to share their talents, among them veteran drummer Scott Veenstra, vocalist Kathy LaMar (she’s a marvel!), and keyboard wizard Steve Talaga.

Steve arrived after wrapping up his own earlier jam session down the street at Billy’s in Eastown. I haven’t made it to that session yet, but it’s on my list. Like the one at the Winchester, it’s new, and it amazes me in the pleasantest way that, suddenly, not just one but two Tuesday night jazz jam sessions have emerged right down the road from each other. Steve’s runs from 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. at 1437 Wealthy. A guest musician could close out that session and then, if so inclined, head over to the Winchester and still have plenty more time to play.

Both of the Tuesday sessions are recent and very welcome developments, and the Winchester and Billy’s are to be saluted for supporting them.

But that’s not the end of it. Across town on Sunday nights is where the session with a history to it takes place. At SpeakEZ Lounge, 600 Monroe NW, well-known drummer and harmonica man Randy Marsh hosts this town’s longest ongoing jam session. The session began a couple years ago at HopCat, where it ran for quite a while before moving to SpeakEZ. The second location is an excellent venue for Randy, who rotates a consistently topnotch cast of section players and provides a welcoming setting for visiting musicians to air out their chops.

Blowing sessions are a part of the jazz tradition, and to see them emerge and succeed here in Grand Rapids seems to me a litmus test of the state of the art. West Michigan has got some world-class musicians as well as a heap of upcoming talent, and I’m delighted to see room being made for all.

I have an idea that there’s a link between the explosion of craft beer in this town and the ascendance of live jazz. Beer–good beer–is art, and artists recognize and support other artists. In a town that has been named Beer City for two years running in the Beer City USA national poll, and which in recent years has also garnered national attention for its three-week-long, citywide ArtPrize contest, a new and positive mindset toward things aesthetic has become apparent, and it is sweeping up jazz into the mix. Bravo for those restaurant owners who see value in live jazz and are choosing to support it by giving it a venue in their establishments.

 

 

September 11, 2013 by
Filed Under: Band, Entertainment, Jazz, Michigan, Music, Saxophone Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

May 28, 2013, Tornadic Supercell by Grand Ledge, Michigan

Tornado season is now long past, and the sting of missing great storms either through bad targeting or having to head home one and two days before two major events has eased. Maybe next year will be better. Besides, the show’s not over till the snows fly.

Meanwhile, I’m looking back to my most interesting chase of the year, documented by the video at the bottom of this post. Ironically, I logged around 6,000 miles to and from Oklahoma and Kansas with little to show for it, while my humble backyard of Michigan gave me an enjoyable and productive bit of action.

On May 28, a warm front lifted up through lower Michigan, ushering in decent moisture and instability along with a good boundary for them to work their mojo with. The thing that seemed to be missing was adequate shear for storm organization–but I ignored conditions farther east of me. I just didn’t take the setup seriously enough, and when Kyle Underwood, the WOOD TV8 meteorologist, inquired which of the TV8 chasers planned to head out, I said that I didn’t see much potential. If something came my way, I would grab it, but otherwise, I didn’t want to waste gas. That was understandable: money was tight, and I planned to chase in Kansas the next day. Still, geeze, what an idiot (me, not Kyle).

Let us pause momentarily while I give myself a retroactive dope slap. I have come to a conclusion: in Michigan, when a warm front shows up with good CAPE present and any kind of bulk shear to speak of, even anemic bulk shear, chase the front. Never mind what the models have to say about storm-relative helicity; helicity will take care of itself if a storm manages to organize in the vicinity of the frontal boundary. Just get out there and chase the stupid front. Particularly farther to the east. Storms in Michigan often have a way of intensifying and organizing near and east of I-69 and, north of Lansing, US-127.

That was the case on this day. My first clue was when I glanced at the radar later and noticed that Kurt Hulst was on a storm off to the southeast. Kurt knows what he’s doing, and the storm looked decent–in fact, it was tornado-warned. Okay, I thought, I missed that one. Probably it’ll be the only one. So I sat tight and watched the radar as other storms formed. They looked like a convective mess to my west, but they clearly were moving into a better environment as they progressed east. Finally, I’d had enough. I grabbed my laptop and cameras and headed out.

I locked onto the most intense-looking cell in my vicinity and tracked with it toward Portland. But another was following on its heels, and given the way that the storms were behaving, I thought I’d be better off dropping the one I was on and letting the new one come to me. Presumably, it would get its crap together on the way, and that is what happened.

As it approached Grand Ledge just west of Lansing, this storm developed a most amazing streamer of scud sucking into its updraft base from the east. It appeared to originate near ground level–hard to tell with trees constantly interrupting the view–and rocketed toward the storm, leaving no doubt that this storm had impressive inflow.

Driving into Grand Ledge, I found myself under the area of rotation, with crazy, low cloud motions. Turning around, I headed back north and parked by the airport, then watched and filmed as the storm headed east into Lansing. It looked very close to spinning up a tornado; in the video, you can see it trying hard, and eventually it succeeded.

But I had to drop the chase. My friend Steve Barclift and I planned to chase the next day in Kansas, and I had to meet him so we could hit the road for the long drive west. As it turned out, the storm I was on provided a better show than anything we saw along the dryline. My buddy Rob Forry managed to catch this storm at its tornadic phase and got some nice video.

My original hi-def shows the motion of the inflow streamer nicely as I enter Grand Ledge. Regrettable, this YouTube clip doesn’t render the details as well, but you’ll at least get a feel for the motion. The storm was an interesting one and fun to chase. It would be nice to get another one like it. It’s only August, so the door is far from closed.

August 14, 2013 by
Filed Under: Michigan, Nature, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Uncategorized, Video, Weather Tagged With: , , ,

Remember When . . . ?

Remember when tornado photos were all black-and-white, and you only saw them in the newspapers?

Remember how rare it was  to see them?

Remember newspapers?

Remember watching The Wizard of Oz every time it played on TV, and never missing a showing, just so you could watch the tornado scene? (“It’s a twister! It’s a twister!”)

Remember how fascinated and delighted you were when they showed those grainy old movies of tornadoes in school, or sometimes on TV, and how you wished they’d replay them and then replay them again so you could watch them over and over and over?

Remember when you first saw that incredible photo of twin funnels south of Elkhart, Indiana, taken by photographer Paul Huffman during the 1965 Palm Sunday Outbreak? And that dramatic image of the Xenia, Ohio, tornado shot at just a quarter-mile away from Greene Memorial Hospital during the 1974 Super Outbreak?

Remember your first successful chase? (As if you could ever forget.)

I remember mine. It was in August 1996 across central Michigan, roughly along the M-21 corridor. North of Saint Johns, Michigan, I watched as a beautiful tube dropped from a classic supercell that was as sweetly structured as anything I’ve seen on the Plains. Both the tornado and its parent storm were gorgeous–and I was elated.

Remember when there were no laptops, no Android phones, no mobile data, no GR3–just your car, your weather radio, maybe a tiny portable TV, and a ton of hopefulness and excitement as you drove happily down the highway toward a sky full of rising towers?

Remember when seeing a tornado was rare and busting was something you simply expected and took in stride as part of paying your dues?

Remember before the movie Twister came out?

Remember before the Stormchasers series?

Remember when storm chasing wasn’t “extreme”?

Remember when storm chasing barely was at all?

Remember when Storm Track was a print newsletter published by pioneer chaser David Hoadley? I regret that I never subscribed, because I could have learned much from it.

Remember when the online version was a resource everyone welcomed and loved, not a point of contention among some chasers? I’m so glad the worst of that scuffle is a few years behind us now.

Remember when there was no live stream to fuss with, no competing with a league of other chasers all getting similar footage of the same storm, and no rush to process your video and get it to the networks first? (Not that I would know about that last point personally. I’ve never gotten the hang of it and don’t particularly care.)

Remember when there was nothing to prove, no reputation to make or uphold, and no stripes to earn?

Remember when it was just about the storms, period?

Don’t you wish it still could be?

Why can’t it?

Remember how excited you were when you first got hooked up with a laptop, GR3, and mobile data?

Remember how, before then, you used to stop at airports and small-town libraries just to get a glimpse of the radar?

Remember when there was no TwisterData, no HRRR, no SPC mesoanalysis graphics, no easy way to obtain forecast soundings, no abundance of forecasting resources available at just the click of a mouse button?

Remember when you weren’t even aware that there were forecasting resources available to you?

Remember your first exposure to the SPC forecast discussions, reading through all that arcane gobbledegook and thinking, “These people speak Martian”?

And then thinking, “Maybe if I just head for the center of where it says ‘Moderate Risk’ . . .”?

Remember discovering COD and looking over their forecast maps and not having a clue what they meant or how to use them? You pulled up the 500 mb heights/wind map and admired the pretty colors and thought, “This looks like it could mean something.”

Remember not knowing the difference between GFS and ETA and RUC?

Remember ETA and RUC?

Remember knowing absolutely nothing about forecasting, and how you struggled to learn, and how thrilled you felt when you finally pieced things together and successfully picked a target, or at least had your forecast verify?

Remember all that?

Never forget.

Many of you are too young to have experienced some of the things I’ve mentioned. You missed out on something good. It doesn’t all sound good, I’ll grant you–no in-car radar, no access to a bazillion free online weather resources–but it had its virtues. Not that I’d care to go back to caveman days, but I’d love to reclaim their spirit.

The beat goes on, and those of you who boarded the bus farther down the road are building your own list of remember-whens. But we who are in our mid-forties and older can recall simpler times. They were far less technically advanced, but they were also infinitely less frantic and driven overall. I guess you have to reach at least fifty years of age before you get to say stuff like that. It’s the province and privilege of duffers. I qualify, and I’m okay with that.

I wish I could claim something akin to the number and quality of tornadic encounters, and the knowledge gained thereby, and the photos to show and the stories to tell, possessed by some of the luminaries who are my age or not all that terribly much older. Those guys have got a lot to remember! But what’s mine is mine, and it’s enough to reminisce upon. If you got your start when storm chasing was of a different character than it is today, you know that you were privileged to come up in a special time, a time that can never be reclaimed. And memories of those days are well worth treasuring and reflecting on and feeling grateful for the experiences that created them.

 

 

 

July 16, 2013 by
Filed Under: Opinion & Editorial, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Uncategorized, Weather Tagged With: , , , , ,
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