February 20: The “Everything” Storm System

February 20 2014 Davenport I find this screenshot of the Davenport, Iowa, radar fascinating for its variety. Captured at roughly quarter to five in the afternoon eastern time, it shows just about every conceivable kind of Midwestern weather in operation simultaneously. Tornadoes and funnel clouds. Squall line with embedded supercells. High winds. Hail. Flooding. Snow. Fog. Have I missed anything? If weather systems were baked goods, this one would be an Everything Bagel.*

As I write, the squall line stretches from eastern Indiana all the way down to south central Louisiana and out into the Gulf of Mexico, and it is progressing eastward, continuing to generate high winds, tornado warnings, and flash floods. All in all, quite an active day for this waning February, particularly considering how far north convective weather has occurred. In the face of this winter’s record-breaking snow and cold, today has been a potent harbinger of what this spring, when it finally arrives, may hold. Even here in Caledonia, we got a few rumbles of thunder, though nothing like what folks a few hundred miles south of us have experienced.

The irony of it is, after this, it’s back to winter again. Serious, snowy, cold winter, with no sign of a letup anytime soon. Eventually, of course, the arctic air will retreat, but not without a fight. Today was just a promissory note, a down-payment, on things to come. I’m in no hurry to collect. In fact, I’d just as soon get dumped on–seriously dumped on–just to see how much more snow we can squeeze out of this winter before a warmer pattern sets in. We’ve already experienced unreal; let’s shoot for insane. We’ve come this far, so what the heck, let’s do this thing right.

But then–let’s have spring. I’m lightning-starved and thunder-hungry.

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* That is one of the worst analogies I’ve ever come up with, but I don’t care. Well, I care enough to write this footnote, but that’s all.

February 20, 2014 by
Filed Under: Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather, Weather Radar Tagged With: , , , ,

The Day Before Groundhog Day: Yet Another Winter Storm–and More on the Way

Today is February 1, and let’s just say it: This winter is getting reeeaaaally old. Incursion after incursion of Arctic air. Snow, snow, snow. Cold, cold, cold–and I do mean cold. After Monday and Tuesday’s bitter, subzero bite, these mid-twenties temperatures that have moved in feel practically tropical.

Winter_Storm_02012014We’re presently under a winter weather advisory, with 3 to 5 inches of snow forecast through 10:00 p.m. around here and an inch more to the south and southeast along the I-94 corridor. And it’s wet snow–not as bad as initially expected, according to the latest KGRR forecast discussion, but still watery enough–and therefore heavy enough–to put added stress on flat roofs. Here’s a radar image from a few scans back. Look at all that gray! I hardly ever see returns that hit 40 dBZ with a winter storm, but a bit of interrogation revealed 49.5 dBZ over US-131 with this particular scan. And it appears to be all snow too, not a wintry mix. So yeah, I’d call that wet snow.

Snow Depth Feb 1 2014The thing is, this stuff just keeps coming. We all know that by now. I haven’t seen a winter this snowy since 2009, maybe even before that, since . . . since . . . well, I don’t know when. As you can see from today’s snow depth map, there’s a strip running through my area along the western side of Michigan where the snow depth reportedly exceeds 20 inches. We’re not talking about how much snow has actually fallen this winter, just how much of it is presently sitting on the ground. Twenty inches. I can testify that around here, it’s not hard to find places where it’s nearly up to my knees. Heck, just along the sidewalk outside my apartment, the snowblower has neatly carved a minor canyon along the edge of the featureless white expanse which, if my memory is accurate, used to be what is called a “lawn.”

Feb 1 GFS 132-hr fcstHow about one more image? Look and groan, because all this glorious wintry nastiness doesn’t look to be retreating anytime soon. You’re looking at the 132-hour forecast for the surface temperature. Doesn’t that look inviting, so full of hope and promise? Tomorrow is Groundhog Day, and I’m telling you right now, that little cretin had better not show his face anywhere in my vicinity or I will send him into permanent hibernation.

If there’s one good thing about this winter from a personal perspective, it’s that it has inspired me to learn about winter forecasting. There’s certainly every opportunity to do so, and plenty of incentive. So I’ve learned a few new terms. Try this one on for size: heterogeneous nucleation. I like that one. Or how about this: DGZ, which stands for dendritic growth zone, the temperature range between -12 and -18 degrees Celsius wherein a saturated layer produces snowflakes. Got that? I’m starting to, along with a deeper appreciation for my RAOB software program.

But I’d still be glad to see all this snow and cold go bye-bye, and I’ll bet I’m not the only one. Well, well . . . buck up, ladies and gentlemen: meteorological spring is on the way. I just have a hunch it won’t be here March 1. It’s arrival time may be delayed by snow.

What about you? Are you a winter lover or a winter Grinch–or has this winter turned you from one into the other? How do you think this crazy-cold, uber-snowy weather might affect the spring storm season? Drop a comment and share your thoughts.

February 1, 2014 by
Filed Under: Michigan, Uncategorized, Weather, Weather Maps, Weather Radar Tagged With: , , , , ,

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: , , , , , ,

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: , , , , ,

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: , ,

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: , , , , ,

Missing Out on Moore

I haven’t posted in this blog for several weeks. Behind my lack of motivation lies a depression over how this storm season has turned out for me, which reflects a broader sense of personal failure as a storm chaser. A melancholy lead-in such as this will probably lose some of you, and I understand. It’s not exactly sunshine and a bowl of Cheerios. But others may identify with this post and perhaps even find it helpful, and in any case, it’s my blog, and I’ll write what I please.

The May 20 Moore tornado exacerbated what has been a brooding issue for me since 2011. During that intensely active and historic year, I was sidelined from chasing due to family and financial constraints, and my final shot at a decent chase on June 20 in Nebraska failed by an hour due to a series of delays along the way. With last year’s notable exceptions of the March 2 Henryville, Indiana, tornado, and April 24 in Kansas, the trend has continued. And given how this year’s slow start finally exploded in the second half of May with storms that ranged from photogenic to disastrous, coming home empty-handed from my two brief excursions to the Great Plains during another historic year has been hard to take.

This post, then, is a continuation of my processing a deadly storm season that has robbed the storm chasing community of some of its best and brightest, exacted a steep toll on the residents of Oklahoma City, afforded a flood of spectacular videos, and caused me to search my soul as a storm chaser and wonder whether I even qualify as one.

The rest of what follows is a post I wrote earlier today in Stormtrack. It belongs in this blog too, even moreso than in the chaser forum.

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Missing the Moore tornado in particular touched something off in me. I’ve never felt more frustrated about missing an event I would never have wanted to witness.

El Reno didn’t have that same effect on me. I watched the whole scenario unfold on the radar and on KFOR live stream with horror, not with regret that I was missing out on anything, and my sense of it is that OKC got off very lightly. I’m probably better off for not having been there. It was too dangerous a storm.

But missing Moore was a bitter pill to swallow, and I think a lot of the reason has to do with my limited ability to chase. I just can’t afford to do it nearly as often or extensively as I’d like, so having to head back to Michigan empty-handed one day too soon after driving all those miles, knowing that the next day would be big in Oklahoma, was hard on me. I could have afforded the extra day and I badly wanted to stay, but one of the guys had to work the following morning, and there was no getting out of it. He had a responsibility to his employer and his family, and as the driver, I had a responsibility to him. Such responsibilities are honorable and will always come first with me.

But that didn’t make things any easier. Watching the debris ball roll across Moore on GR3 while I was driving east through Missouri created an ugly mix of feelings for me. My first thought was, Oh my God! When you see something like that, you just know something horrible is happening.

My second thought was, I’m missing it. After driving all those miles and busting (got just a fleeting glimpse of a rope tornado, not anything to even talk about), that radar image seemed like a slap in the face. I felt angry, like I’d been robbed, betrayed. Which is crazy, of course, but feelings are feelings, no more and no less, and I’m just being honest here about mine at the time.

My third thought, which is the one I’ve had to wrestle with since, was, Why? Why was I feeling so torn about missing something so terrible, an event that would have have broken my heart and caused me to lose sleep if I had been there? I don’t think there’s a simple answer; I think there are many components which add up. But the bottom line is, there’s an obsessive aspect to chasing for me that can either make or ruin my day and even my week. I don’t see that as healthy, and it didn’t use to be that way. I use to take my limitations in stride, and busts were just busts: not personal failures, just part of paying my dues as a chaser.

But chasing today is a whole different ballgame than it was when I first got started seventeen years ago. The mindset is more competitive, many more people are doing it and spending gobs of cash and time in the process, and overall I just can’t keep pace with it. So I’ve had to–and still have to–do some soul-searching. Who I am as a person goes far deeper than chasing storms. And more important to me than being in the mainstream of chasing is having peace of mind, and that requires accepting my limitations, working within them to simply enjoy something I love to do without letting it own me. I find that much easier to say than it is to do, but for me it is a necessity. If I can afford to chase a setup, I will; if I can’t, I’ll wish those of you who can success–and safety. I hope it will be many, many more years before anything like another Moore or El Reno occurs.

July 2, 2013 by
Filed Under: Historic Tornadoes, Life, Opinion & Editorial, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , ,
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