An Interview with Tim Vasquez, Owner of Stormtrack: A Mesoscale Forecasting Expert Shares Reflections on the Past and Glimpses into the Future

Among the various weather-related forums extant today, Stormtrack has one of the longer—perhaps even the longest—track records. Not only so, but it also carries on a rich legacy begun in 1977 when pioneer storm chaser David Hoadley published the first Storm Track newsletter. The newsletter evolved into a magazine, the publishing torch passed on to veteran chaser Tim Marshall, and the print edition ultimately morphed into an online forum for chasers worldwide under the ownership of Tim Vasquez.

Like Stormtrack, Tim has a rich and varied background replete with experiences that range across the weather spectrum, from storm chasing to operational forecasting to education and more. From 1989 to 1998, Tim served as an Air Force meteorologist. As early as 1985, he developed weather analysis software tools, which eventually culminated in WeatherGraphix and Digital Atmosphere. He has also published a series of weather forecasting books, including Severe Storm Forecasting and the Weather Analysis and Forecasting Handbook. Tim’s resources and services—which include nowcasting and forecasting training for storm chasers—are available through his WeatherGraphics website.

Tim is obviously one very busy guy, not to mention one of the most recognized names in storm chasing circles. In this interview, he shares some fascinating, personal perspectives on storm chasing and mesoscale forecasting back in the day as well as today. Amid the cornucopia of forecasting tools and resources that are now available to chasers, it’s eye-opening to learn not only what existed over two decades ago, but also how determined and knowledgeable a person had to be in order to tap into it. And it’s exciting to consider some of the possibilities that the future has in store.

Enough of this introduction. I hope you’ll enjoy what follows.

Interview with Tim Vasquez

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Question: Owner of Stormtrack.org, the renowned, longstanding forum for storm chasers worldwide. Forecasting software developer, meteorological consultant, severe weather educator, author of a series of outstanding books on storm chasing and forecasting, professional nowcaster … you’ve covered pretty much every base there is, Tim, except for storm chasing tour guide. I don’t think anyone who’s been seriously involved in chasing for even a brief amount of time doesn’t recognize you as one of the gurus of operational forecasting.

In the midst of all that, one of the sides of you with which I think people are least familiar these days is who you are as a storm chaser. Yet unquestionably you’re an extremely seasoned chaser, one of the true veterans. So let’s talk about that part of you, beginning with how it all started. What first got you enamored with severe weather and tornadoes? Was there a defining moment, or moments, back in your formative years?

Tim: I would say the defining moment came in May 1985 when I was at the National Weather Service in Fort Worth. There were never any good forecasting books at the libraries and no Internet, and AMS publications were expensive. The NWS office there had a little reading room, so I used to go over there to sift through their technical library and page through their saved weather maps. One day while I was there, all hell broke loose in the Panhandle. The office didn’t have forecast responsibility in that area, but everyone was watching things closely with things like the Kavouras dial-up radars and phone calls.

That’s when I met Al Moller, whose enthusiasm was infectious. I was able to ask questions and follow what was going on without getting in the way. Another forecaster there gave me a regional surface map and invited me to analyze it.  After I was done, we all worked through my results. By the time I left that evening, Al had told me about Stormtrack and given me Tim Marshall’s phone number and also a small stack of NOAA tech memos, which he dug out of one of the offices.

That’s not to say I hadn’t had a similar experience, as I used to visit the weather station at Clark Air Base in the Philippines and learned the art of the skew-T there. But this particular NWS visit put me on the road to severe weather, chasing, and the art of mesoanalysis.

Q: How old were you when you went on your first storm chase? What were the circumstances and what was it like?

T: I was eighteen. I had spent an entire winter building up a severe weather library and wanted to get my feet wet on the very first slight-risk area of the year.

Unfortunately I was trying a bit too hard to build up credibility, so I did my chase under the guise of a small research project (me and a few friends, but mostly me). I even had a crude, instrumented TOTO box to place in front of an approaching tornado.

As you might suspect, this first chase was very early: mid-February. It was dark by 5:00 p.m., and a few hours later I was in a squall line south of Dallas. The only thing memorable that happened on that chase is that one of the spark plugs somehow came loose on an engine cylinder in my vehicle. I was out in the middle of nowhere, in the dark and the rain, and I puttered into an abandoned gas station. Fortunately, I had prepared for something like this thanks to Tim Marshall’s Texas Tech chase manual. In ten minutes, I fixed the problem and was heading home. That experience reinforced to me the value of carrying tools.

Sometime that year I also dropped the pretense of a chase team and just chased for the enjoyment and education. Many of my chases during the early years were with Glenn Robinson and Gene Rhoden.

Q: Today’s chasers have an incredible wealth of resources at their disposal. But you came up in a time when there was no Internet, no iPhones or laptops or GR3, no GPS, no HRRR or SREF, no computer-generated indices, none of the stuff that people today take for granted. Talk about how you went about forecasting and fining in a chase-day target back then.

T: Interestingly, back in the “old days,” the data was there if you knew how to be resourceful. A few of the dyed-in-the-wool hobbyists of the late 1970s, for example, took advantage of the era before telephone deregulation and were able to get the NOAA Weather Wire and even the same DIFAX feed that the NWS used.  Some of this was available for free on HF radio well into the 1980s, so with that and a one-hundred-pound fax machine which I managed to acquire for free, I was able to get basic model forecasts.

With computer modems, we did have a sort of pre-Internet experience. Hourly observations were not cheap, but I was able to get them from CompuServe or from a number of long-distance dialup sources. I have a huge binder of 1980s hand-plotted maps, but the drudgery of actually drawing the station plots was the main problem. And I saw what AFOS could do. This led me to develop several analysis programs for the Commodore 128 and later the PC (Digital Atmosphere by 1996) so that I could focus on the analysis.

The items we chronically lacked were raw upper air data, which could only be obtained from an expensive provider like Accu-Data; and satellite imagery, due to the sheer expense of adequate display technology. So I wasn’t able to practice the full range of mesoscale analysis techniques until 1989, when I started working in an actual weather station.

Q: When it comes to field experience, what were some of the things you learned early on about reading the sky, interpreting changing conditions, and, as Shane Adams has put it, “working a storm”?

T: Having a solid diagnosis of the atmosphere before you leave the house (or the motel room) is the key thing, because the atmosphere never plays out like you expect. By 11:00 a.m., you have to be completely grounded in what’s happening at the surface and aloft, not just at the target area but also throughout the entire region. There’s rarely any time or opportunity to figure it out all over again once you’re out there.

Also I learned that I can be the one to fill in the gaps in the diagnosis by stopping regularly to take a measurement—not to write in a logbook, but rather to make sure that the winds and moisture are in the ballpark of what I expect them to be.  There have been several times when I thought I was at a good spot along the dryline, but once I dragged out the sling psychrometer, I found the dewpoint to be something like 57 or 58 and wound up repositioning back to the east. Today’s mobile weather stations are excellent for this kind of thing, but visually reading the character of the sky and matching that up to your expectations from the morning diagnosis is still an essential skill.

Once near a storm, I found map-reading and positional awareness to be critical skills. Certainly anyone who’s chased along the Canadian or Red Rivers can attest to this. You not only need to be in the right location, but you also have to make sure you have a way out in case your navigation plan doesn’t work out. Having a good GPS display or a good map reader in the passenger seat is essential.

Q: Describe one or two of your most outstanding chase experiences.

T: Most of the 2000s put me at the desk running the Chase Hotline or helping to take care of my son, who was born in 2003, so a lot of my actual field experiences draw from the 1990s. The historical May 3, 1999, outbreak is definitely near the top. I chased with Gene Rhoden that day. I still have a memorable impression of watching the birth and growth of the storm that would later devastate parts of Oklahoma City. It soon produced tornadoes, but we lost it due to the road network. Then we joined with the Anadarko storm and saw a highly visible, eerie nighttime tornado near Dover.

Another outstanding chase experience that comes to mind is memorable in a different way. This was also in May 1999, I think May 16. I had targeted Crowell, Texas, and I drove the five hours there from Oklahoma City, arriving just in time to adjust westward and catch a tornado coming off the Caprock before it shrank and roped out. It was an average chase success, but in the passenger seat was my soon-to-be-wife, Shannon, on her fifth chase; and in the back was her lifelong best friend, Kathryn, who had just flown up from Houston hoping to see what a storm chase was like. It ended up being the first time either of them had seen a tornado. So this was a fantastic experience for us all, and the nighttime lightning display heading back home was just phenomenal.

Q: Nowadays, major chase days are characterized by a blizzard of live streams and a glut of Spotter Network icons on the radar screen. But you’re nowhere to be found in that mix. That seems to be the case with quite a few veteran chasers. My sense of it is, you want to chase in peace without having a bunch of tag-alongs intrude on your experience. How often do you actually make it out into the field to chase these days? When you head out, what do you seek in terms of the quality of your chase? How would you say your values and approach differ from those of younger chasers?

T: For a fortunate few, storm chasing will be a constant, lifelong activity. But work, school, and family are there too. All of us at one time or another have to deal with things like tightened budgets, a new baby, a new job away from the Plains, medical problems, family problems, car problems, new meteorological passions, new interests, and so on. They’ve caused many veterans to fade from sight, and I’ve dealt with some of those things myself.

But even if I’m not in the field, I’m following the chase day. I have an insatiable passion for forecasting. Who needs Sudoku and crosswords? A meteorological diagnosis is a tremendously awesome and dynamic puzzle, and I feel like I have a brain that not only specializes in unraveling these puzzles but has a kind of dopaminergic reaction to solving them. And there’s so much remote sensing data coming online, in terms of surface data, MADIS, profilers, satellite imagery, WSR-88D data, and now the new dual-polarization radars. I really feel like a kid in a candy store on a storm day, and I have to say I’d feel kind of disconnected being out in the field. It’s not really the end result that I want to see, but the underlying machinery.

So I think that the mesoscale aspect of the chase day, rather than the chase itself, is my calling. That’s not to say that I’m done with chasing. Our needy baby has grown up into a bright and independent kid, the Chase Hotline demands have abated, we’re back in Norman, and I’m always looking at the sky and taking weather photographs. Plus, I’m responsible for Stormtrack. So I probably will be out there again as early as this month. I have an iPad, so maybe I’ll get linked up with one of the networks, too.

Q: What excites you, and what concerns you, about the state of storm chasing today? How do you see it evolving in the next five or ten years?

T: The Internet is making an enormous impact. Ten years ago it simply gave us a way to share pictures and messages and helped to pipe data to our forecast desk. Today it’s providing a two-way street from the world to the storm base. It’s reaching out to more and more mobile devices and extending further into remote regions of the Great Plains. As a result, we’re already seeing a sort of fusion of spotting and chasing and another real-time channel in the warning process.

Furthermore, the Internet is global, so someone in Mongolia or Madagascar can share in the thrill of a tornado developing over empty rangeland near Dalhart as it happens. That’s mind-blowing.

Another development I’m expecting is growth in international chasing. Very few people have any idea of the significance of east India and Bangladesh’s supercells; I think they’re easily comparable to some of the storms we have on the Great Plains. The largest CAPE values I’ve ever seen have always been on the Calcutta soundings. That region is gradually improving its road network and mobile Internet, and real-time data options are just now coming into existence there.  The only limits, of course, are chase budgets and haze.

Back here in the United States, we’re certain to see new advances in forecasting with the new dual-polarization radar upgrades, and as we get experience with these radars and the body of scientific literature grows, I expect that warnings will become even better and that chasers will increasingly find themselves on the “right” storm. Those last fifty miles of the chase are still as critical as they were in 1980.

Q: If you could share three tips or words of advice with contemporary chasers, what would they be?

T: As follows:

  • Chasing: Hydroplaning and nighttime obstacles are the things that have put me in danger more than anything else. I’ve had a lot of close calls with cows basking on the road and downed power lines stretching across lanes. At 60 mph, there’s only a few seconds to react before your destiny either brings you home or into an obituary on Stormtrack.

    • .

  • Forecasting: Diagnose the atmosphere—not necessarily hand-analyze, but sift through all of the observational charts and products before even looking at models. As humans, we tend to develop a bias in the first bits of evidence we see, so if we start with observed data, we bias our forecasts according to what’s actually happening in the atmosphere. My books and classes go into a lot of this.

    • .

  • Community: Support Stormtrack and help our beginners. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a fragmentation of the entire chaser community across the social media spheres—Twitter, Facebook, and so forth—which is not an ideal situation. The Stormtrack forum has always been the singular resource for promoting smart, safe, and cooperative chasing. Chasers are welcome to get their start elsewhere, if they wish, but if that happens, I worry there’ll be more anonymity out in the field and more unsafe behavior.

Q: When can we look for Mr. T’s next forecasting workshop in Stormtrack?

T: He’s down in Altus trying to get all the kids to stay in school. I’ll drag him out of there and maybe we’ll get one out this spring.

April 5, 2012 by
Filed Under: Guest Posts and Interviews, Software & Technology, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Field, Final Chapter: Tornado Heart

This is the last installment of my account of the drama that unfolded for a number of storm chasers, including my group of four, on May 22, 2010, in northeast South Dakota. I’ve waited to share this part because it’s personal–not a deep, dark secret, but something which until now I’ve kept to myself and a few friends. It is, however, an incident I’ve wanted to write about, and with seven months passed and Christmas just a few days away, now seems like an appropriate time to do so.

If you were one of those who were out there in the field that day, you’ll agree that we were fortunate to have escaped without injury when the outcome could easily have been quite different. Perhaps the greatest gift we have this Christmas is the fact that we’re all here to talk about our experience. You were there; you know how it was. It was a hell of a ride that has made for a story we’ll probably tell and retell the rest of our lives, but at the time there was reason to wonder just how much longer our lives would last.

For the rest of my readers, you can read my detailed account including photos here. I’ll summarize by saying that a routine move to reposition east of a violently tornadic supercell near Roscoe turned into a trap when the road–which showed as a through-road on our mapping software–dead-ended where a farmer had recently plowed it over. As tornadoes began to spin up just west of our contingent and head directly toward us, all seven or eight vehicles drove madly south along a fenceline in a desperate attempt to outmaneuver the worst part of the storm. A quarter-mile down, blocked by ponding, we turned into the field and drove another hundred yards or so until we could drive no farther. Then we parked, braced ourselves, and hoped for the best. And those who believed in a loving, watchful God, prayed. I was one of them.

I’m writing this post to thank my heavenly Father for not only responding to those prayers, but also, as I have intimated above, for letting me know in a personal and moving way that He was there with us in that field, present and protecting us all.

Spiritual topics trigger different things in different people. So let me make something plain. I write as a disciple of Jesus; I do NOT write as an emissary of contemporary Churchianity. Jesus I love, but I don’t care for much of religious culture, any more than I care for boxes of any kind. So whether you’re a Christian or a non-Christian, kindly resist the urge to stick me into a nice, tidy category that would likely say more about you than about me. I know the questions that arise surrounding answered–and unanwered–prayer. I also know the conclusions people easily arrive at, both pro and con. My purpose isn’t to address any of that in this post; rather, I am here to tell you a story and let you make of it what you will.

As Mike’s Subaru Outback bounced along the fenceline behind the vehicle in front of us, grinding its way into and out of muddy potholes, I had a good view to the west from the passenger’s seat. Rain bands spiraled and braided, hinting at unseen vortices. At one point, to my considerable consternation, I saw twin funnels wrapping around each other like a pair of dancing snakes, moving straight at us. They reminded me–I kid you not, so please don’t shoot me for saying this–of the “sisters” in the movie “Twister.” I’d estimate that their distance from us was around 150 yards. My buddy Bill Oosterbaan saw them too.

That was the moment when I realized we were not going to outmaneuver the storm, and the words “seriously screwed” took on a whole new dimension. It dawned on me that now would be an excellent time to pray, and I did, earnestly. I don’t remember my exact words, but the gist of them was that I asked God to protect us, all of us. The scenario was bathed in a strange sense of unreality, and it seemed incredible to think that I was praying for my life. But that was in fact what I was doing.

Whatever happened to those serpentine vortices I don’t know. Evidently they dissipated before they reached the fenceline. But their image lodged in my mind, and it got called back the following day in an unusual way, as you will see.

At length our caravan’s flight for safety ended in the manner I’ve already described above, and the storm descended on us in full fury. On Stormtrack, a chaser recently shared some radar images of that phase of the storm, and in one of them, you can plainly make out not just one, but two eye-like features passing directly over and just north of our location. Suffice it to say that the rotation above us was complex and broad. I remember a fierce wind that seemed to constantly switch direction, and mist driving along the ground at high velocities along with the rain. A tornado spun up briefly about a hundred feet from one of the vehicles; I didn’t see it, but Adam Lucio captured it on video* and my eyes just about popped out of my skull when I saw the clip. Daaaaamn! Any closer and…well, who knows, but it probably wouldn’t have been a pretty picture.

Fast forward past the rest of the storm and the miserable drama that ensued. It was the following day and I was sitting in a hotel room in Aberdeen. I fired up my laptop, logged into my email, and…hey, what was this? A message from my friend Brad Doll. Hmmm, cool! Brad and I rarely email each other. Curious, I opened his note.

I wish I had saved it–I thought I did, but I can’t locate it. Otherwise, I’d quote it exactly. But it’s easy enough to recreate the essence of it: “Hey, brother, just thinking of you and your love for tornadoes and thought I’d share this picture with you.–Brad”

I opened the attached file. It contained the obviously Photoshopped picture you see here of two mirror-image, snaky-looking tornadoes with a funnel dividing the clouds between them, forming a heart. You can find the image without much trouble on the Internet, but I had never seen it before. As I looked at it, the snaky double-funnels I had seen yesterday popped into my mind. The similarity was weird–not that the previous day’s very real tornado resembled a heart; the only thing it looked like was scary as hell. No, it was the overall shape of its twin vortices and the way they had appeared in relation to each other that struck me.

Then it hit me. Brad didn’t have a clue where I was. He had no idea what I’d just been through. And he had never emailed me an image file before. Not only was the communication in itself unusual, but the timing of it was…well, it was incredible.

I could feel the tears coming to my eyes as the realization sank in. This email wasn’t from Brad. Not really. Brad was just a humble and available scribe; the message was from my Father, my wonderful heavenly Father. It was His way of saying, in a simple but powerful way, “Bob, I love you!”

What I’ve just written is something I believe with all my heart. God knows us through and through. He knows what makes you, you, and me, me; and He knows how to speak to each of us intimately, in ways that touch us in deep places if we have ears to hear. Here is what I believe He was saying to me:

“Bob, when you, Tom, Bill, Mike, and the rest of the guys were fleeing along that fenceline like scared rabbits, I saw you. I heard your prayer and the prayers of all who called on Me. And I was with you. My hand covered you and my presence protected you all–because I love you all, every last man of you who was there. Today, Bob, I’m letting you know that I truly was there–that yes, it was Me–and that I carry you in my heart.”

I am not one who calls every unusual thing that happens a miracle. I believe that genuine miracles are rare, and I dislike devaluing their reality by sloppily misapplying the word. But I also believe in grace, and from time to time I have witnessed extraordinary examples of what it can do. After receiving the email from Brad, I am convinced that what happened in the field on May 22 was one of those occasions. Things could easily have turned out far worse for those of us who were there. Instead of a joyous Christmas, this year could have been one of great sadness for our loved ones, and of an empty chair at the dinner table–a chair that once was ours. But this Christmas will not be that way. We will sit down once again with our families, and we will eat, and we will exchange gifts. We will get on with the rest of winter after the holidays. And we will return to the Great Plains this coming spring to enjoy another season of chasing the storms that we love.

Just about anything can be written off as coincidence, just as almost anything unusual can be written in as a direct act of God when it wasn’t necessarily so. It’s a matter of one’s worldview. If, having read my account, you’re inclined to consider my experience just a peculiar fluke, perhaps not even all that strange, then so be it. I can’t prove differently to you and I don’t feel that I need to try. But I most definitely believe otherwise, as does my friend Brad, and Tom, and Bill, and, I am sure, at least a few others who were there in the field.

It takes faith to see God’s kingdom, and faith is perhaps best described as an extra faculty, a sixth sense that augments the first five senses. It perceives and understands differently, and sees a different and higher reality behind the stuff of our lives. It is believing, but it is also a kind of knowing that I’ve never been able to describe satisfactorily. Like the color blue, once you’ve seen it, you know what it is; but whether you’ve experienced it or not, blue is blue, and so it is with the kingdom of heaven. However accurately or inaccurately, faith is the eye that sees it.

To my wonderful Lord, Brother, and Forever Friend, Jesus, whose birth I gratefully celebrate this season: Thank you–for so much more than I can begin to tell. And to my friends and fellow storm chasers, brothers and sisters of the skies, saints, sinners, seekers, wherever your worldview stands: May your Christmas be marked by grace. And may there be great steak and good beer in store for all of us this coming year.

Merry Christmas,

Bob

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* You can see Adam’s clip along with more footage from the field, plus a whole lot more, on the DVD “Bullseye Bowdle,” produced by the lads at Convective Addiction. If you enjoy storm chasing videos, this one’s the real deal–and no, the guys haven’t paid me a solitary cent to plug it here.

December 20, 2010 by
Filed Under: Christian Spirituality & Inspiration, Life, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

MetEd: A Fantastic Self-Educational Approach for Learning Weather Forecasting

When I first began turning my lifelong fascination with tornadoes into an active passion for storm chasing over 14 years ago, I started with the essentials of storm structure. Then I began learning such arcane terms as CAPE, shear, dewpoints, helicity, and so forth, over time piecing together how the different ingredients interact. Bit by bit, the alchemy of the atmosphere–depicted by surface maps, forecast models, skew-T/log-P diagrams, hodographs, station obs, satellite, radar, and other mystifying tools of the trade–began to make sense to me. Tremblingly, nervously, with a deep sense of my woeful lack of knowledge, I began to try my hand at forecasting–and darned if I didn’t start to make some good calls.

Slowly I learned, and I’m still learning. There’s so much to know, and I want to know as much as I can in order to more accurately determine whether there will be tornadoes, and where, and at what time, and whether a weather scenario will be significant enough to warrant the long drive from Michigan to wherever the storms will be firing.

I wish I’d had a mentor to help me learn this stuff. Thank goodness for the community on Stormtrack–for the many experienced chasers and meteorologists who have generously answered my questions and shared their knowledge over the years! Fortunately for new chasers, a wealth of educational resources exists today that can make the learning curve quicker and less frustrating.

And that brings me to MetEd

I just completed a MetEd satellite interpretation module on vorticity maximas and comma clouds. The material has both enlightened me and kicked my butt. I’ve learned enough to know that I’ve got a lot to learn, but also enough to make better use of water vapor imagery. Now I’m moving on to vorticity minimas, but after finishing the first module I had to just back away for the evening and take a breather. This stuff may seem simple to some, but it makes me want to find a nice hard surface and bonk my head against it. I get the concepts, but working them out in real-life case studies is something else. What gives me incentive is the payoff of becoming a better forecaster. MetEd offers some fantastic tools for pursuing that goal.

Short of a formal education in meteorology, MetEd online courses are probably the best thing going for those who want to acquire basic forecasting skills or expand the skills they’ve already got. I recommend them highly. A program of UCAR (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research), MetEd is no lightweight survey. It’s a constantly growing and evolving suite of vanguard educational products covering a broad sweep of meteorological topics, and it is used by scores of operational forecasters to help them sharpen their blades. Predictably, some of what it offers is well beyond the grasp of most lay persons. Yet a fair amount is accessible to the motivated self-educator, and well worth the time it takes to absorb the material.

The course I’m working on, Dynamic Feature Identification: The Satellite Palette, is a good example. Its interactive format lets you get your hands dirty with actual application as you learn about vort maxes, vort minimas, comma clouds, deformation zones, blocking patterns, and more. Once I’ve completed the full course, while I’ll assuredly be no expert at interpreting water vapor imagery, I’ll nevertheless have gained some knowledge that will serve me well–stuff I’ll be able to use next spring when Big Weather returns to the Great Plains.

If you want to bone up on weather forecasting of any kind, from severe thunderstorms to winter weather and more, you owe it to yourself to check out MetEd. Do it now and you can thank me later for sending you. MetEd is a great way to hone your skills during the long stretch between now and Storm Season 2011.

November 5, 2010 by
Filed Under: Software & Technology, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Multiple Vortices: How Deep Do They Go?

In a recent thread on Stormtrack, storm chaser Shane Adams speculated that all tornadoes exhibit some degree of multi-vorticity. He opened up a topic that has intrigued me for a while.

Just how deep does multiple vorticity extend into a tornado? It may go deeper than most of us chasers imagine. We all understand that many tornadoes display multiple vortices, and a lot of us have witnessed the phenomenon firsthand. It’s possible, though, that the process we call a tornado is a actually an entire complex of vorticity consisting of rotations within rotations. It’s no secret that circulation ranges downward from synoptic scale to mesoscale to microscale; why shouldn’t it continue to do so on increasingly smaller scales? Maybe this concept is nothing new to tornado researchers, but I haven’t heard it discussed to any degree in the general storm chasing community.

While I used to associate multiple vortices with larger tornadoes, it’s the smaller ones that in recent years have intrigued me as I’ve taken a closer look. Some of the more transparent tornadoes have revealed fascinating inner structures, including a sheath-like outer wall cloaking a vigorous center, and a sort of braided appearance that has made me think of the strands that weave together to compose a rope. The 2007 Elie, Manitoba, F5 drillpress is a good example. Check out this video and I think you’ll see at least some of what I’m talking about, particularly around 4:17 into the clip.

Another video of this same tornado, shot at a closer location, offers an excellent front-row view of the tornado as it dissipates. Unfortunately, I can no longer locate that video on YouTube, and I really wish I could, because as I recall, the close-up of the tornado in its last couple of seconds amazed me. The funnel appeared to unravel; for a brief moment, you could see it separate into what I’m going to call vortex strands as its energy abruptly gave out, following which it simply vanished. As striking as how quickly the tornado transformed from a town-wrecker into nothingness was the manner in which it did so.

fourth-tornado_mv-zoomed
More recently, I finally got a good firsthand look at extensive, small-scale vortices on May 22 this year in South Dakota. The much smaller, highly photogenic tornado that followed the massive and violent Bowdle wedge was a shape-shifter that went through some fascinating transitions. Parking itself in a field a mile northwest of our vantage point, unobscured by rain, it was beautifully visible and offered a study in multiple vorticity throughout its life. For me, the high point was when the funnel assumed the form of a truncated tube, with delicate tendrils of condensation circulating underneath it one after the other like horses on a merry-go-round. (My thinking is that a pocket of drier low-level air stripped out condensation except in the places where the vortex strands rendered the pressure low enough to make themselves visible.)

In the photo (click on the image to enlarge it), some of the vortices are apparent, but if you look closely, you’ll notice that some of the larger vortices actually appear to be made up of more than one vortex strand. You’ll also see a tendril or two appear to branch off. In all, I’m able to make out eleven strands, ranging from the obvious to the nearly undetectable. Granted, I may be pushing things; my point is that the circulations in this tornado were numerous, varied in scale, and complex. I suspect that there were even more vortices present than meets the eye, but I’m not going to force the issue because I’m no scientist, just a thoughtful observer with an aversion to crackpotism.

If there’s any recent weather-related post on this blog that I hope will draw some solid, informed comments, it’s this one. I’d love to get the opinions of others in the storm chasing community; and while I don’t expect that it will happen, I’d be extremely interested in hearing from those who are actually involved in tornado research.

October 20, 2010 by
Filed Under: Nature, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

We Will Miss You, Eric Flescher

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

–John Donne

Yesterday, March 2, 2010, the bell tolled for Dr. Eric Flescher, and in tolling for him, it tolled for us all. We in the storm chasing community are diminished by the loss of a good, decent man whose passion for life was matched with a gentle, friendly spirit.

I never met Eric in person, but, like many on Stormtrack, I swapped plenty of messages with him, enough that I considered him a long-distance friend whom I looked forward to meeting. Last year he had let me know that his door was open if I needed a place to overnight while out chasing, and I was struck by his generosity and hospitality.

I never made it out to Kansas City in 2009, but I had hoped to finally connect with Eric face to face this spring. I regret that now I will not get the opportunity to sit down with him and talk about storm chasing, and about carnivorous plants, another passion of Eric’s that he and I shared. He was so proud of that Nepenthes ampullaria! And he was able to successfully grow a cobra lily–no small accomplishment.

To say that Eric was a storm chaser captures just one facet of him. He was a Renaissance man with a broad variety of interests ranging from severe weather, to astronomy, to carnivorous plants, to cooking, and more. Those who knew him better than I can no doubt add plenty of other items to the list. But in the storm chasing community, he was known foremost as a fellow chaser, and judging from the responses to ongoing news of his condition since early last December, and now of his death, he clearly was a very well-liked and respected chaser whom many counted as their friend.

In my five years on Stormtrack, I never once saw Eric enter into the sniping and flame wars that have lit up the forums, or demean another member, or utter a bad word about anyone. Not ever. And I never saw a bad word written about Eric. Those who wrote to him or of him expressed only appreciation and respect. In a community of diverse, colorful, and opinionated personalities, to be able to say such things about Eric is a tribute to his character and his stature.

Today I am saddened by Eric’s death. His wife, Sue Ellen, will deeply miss her beloved husband; many of us will miss our friend; and all of us will miss a gentle, decent, passionate man whose presence made both the chaser community and the world in general a better place.

March 3, 2010 by
Filed Under: Life, Storm Chasing Tagged With: , , ,

As I Greet the Next Decade: Reminiscences on Thirteen Years of Storm Chasing

Happy New Year, everyone! Welcome to a brand new decade.

With multiple possibilities for my first blog post in the year 2010, I find myself contemplating a recent thread on Stormtrack, and, in the light of it, reminiscing about my own development as a storm chaser.

The thread started with a newbie chaser asking forum members’ opinions about what constitutes a “veteran chaser.” The guy took a bit of a bashing initially, but to me his question seemed innocent, reflecting honest curiosity rather than a preoccupation with labels or a need to earn some sort of merit badge, and it made for an interesting discussion.

And, as I’ve said, it got me to reflecting on my personal path. One by one, the chase seasons have connected to each other like boxcars on a train. It seems incredible to think that 2010 will mark my fourteenth year chasing storms. If years alone were what it took to make a person a veteran chaser, then I might qualify.

But years alone do not a veteran make–at least, not in my opinion. A veteran road warrior, yes; a veteran storm chaser, no. There are plenty of people who have been chasing a shorter time than me, but who have acquired far more skill and experience. As for me, I’m just a slow but happy learner who’s too low-key to mess with light bars.

However, the span of time I’ve been chasing has allowed me some formative experiences I probably wouldn’t have had if I had started more recently. Today, it seems like the average neophyte steps into the field equipped, if not with knowledge, at least with a laptop, GR3, GPS, and an aircard. He or she has a technological edge that didn’t exist, or that barely existed, back when I was getting started.

I now realize that the simplicity and constraints of those first, low-tech years have left me with a gift of memories. I treasure those thousands of miles I traveled–sometimes by myself, sometimes with Bill and/or Tom Oosterbaan–equipped with nothing more than a weather radio, a portable black-and-white TV set, high hopes, and an eye on the sky.

Radar? I stopped at local libraries and airports and got my fix. I had no idea how long a radar image would be good for, how much difference four-and-a-half minutes and a single scan could make. Today I just shake my head and think, no wonder I never saw any tornadoes. It’s a wonder I managed to see a stinkin’ cloud.

As for forecasting, that consisted of looking at SPC outlooks and then steering for the middle of a moderate or high risk area. At some point, though, I discovered my first link to a site for forecasting models, and an interesting–and daunting–new window opened up. Suddenly, here was a bewildering suite of data–surface dewpoints, BRN shear, CAPE, lifted indices, helicity, 300 mb winds…alchemy, pure alchemy, and in a variety of flavors at that. GFS. ETA. RUC. Hoo boy, talk about dumping a load on my head!

Around that same time, I attended my first severe weather conference at College of DuPage. As I recall, Chuck Doswell conducted a workshop on hand analysis and Eric Rasmussen shared some findings from the first Project Vortex. By then, I knew just enough acronyms and concepts to make sense out of some of what was getting thrown at me. Much of the value lay simply in being exposed to the actual stuff of operational forecasting and severe weather research. There’s something to be said for sheer exposure; even if a body grasps just a fraction of the concepts he encounters, what matters is, it’s a start. I left that conference, and the one that followed it a year or two later, equipped with a little more awareness and a little less ignorance than I had coming in.

My first successful tornado intercept occurred in my first season as a chaser, in 1996, in my home state of Michigan. A wall cloud formed directly south of my workplace, and I left work early to chase it sixty miles to where it put down a beautiful tube out in the open countryside near St. Johns. The storm was a classic supercell, as nice as anything I’ve seen out on the Great Plains, though at the time I had no ground for comparison and knew nothing about storm modes or morphology.

It would be another ten years before I witnessed my next tornado in 2006, as Bill and I tracked the historic Six State Supercell from west of Columbia, Missouri, all the way back to Michigan. Prior to that, I had roamed my state and neighboring Indiana, and pounded the flatlands of Illinois, with just a handful of wall clouds and a growing awareness of storm structure to show for it. The year 2005 was my first excursion across the Mississippi and my first experience watching storms explode along the dryline in central Kansas.

But 2006 was the year when things finally started coming together for me, and I think that Bill–my consistent chase partner for all these years–would say the same, since our personal learning curves have been closely tied together. By then we were using Bill’s business laptop and had access to NOAA radar. I had just discovered the significance of velocity couplets, although, not yet understanding the benefit of using storm relative velocity over base level velocity, I was using the latter. Again, it was a start, and the base level gave us enough data to keep us from very likely getting blown off the road by the Springfield, Illinois, tornado as Bill and I chased the Six State Supercell.

A month later, we intercepted tornadoes in Iowa, including another large, night-time tornado that did F2 damage in Iowa City.

That same year, I acquired my own laptop, and the following spring I added GR3, and from there on, my learning and experience curve began to snowball. Today, as I look at where I started and where I’m now at, I realize that I’ve learned a few things. I’ve gained another great chasing partner in my buddy Kurt Hulst. I’m making my own forecasts with increasing knowledge and accuracy. I haven’t seen a lot of tornadoes, but I’ve seen my share, and I trust that, by God’s grace, I’ll see more, as well as endure more busts and make more idiotic choices that cost me storms I could have had.

So, getting back to the question of what makes a veteran chaser, I’m firsthand proof that there’s more to it than just the number of years a person has been chasing storms. In my opinion, there are actually three components to being a veteran storm chaser:

1. Really, really knowing what the heck you’re doing,

2. Many years of doing it, and

3. Lots of successes and lots of failures to show for it.

I probably fulfill the second criterion. As for the other two, well…I’ve got a ways to go, but I’m working on them. Give me another ten years and maybe the hat will fit. It really doesn’t matter, though. As a general rule, chasers who are worth their salt don’t give a flip about labels. They’re driven by storms, not status. Certain names are indeed revered–icons such as Tim Marshal, David Hoadley, Roger Edwards, and Gene Moore. As for the rest of us mortals, I think that those who’ve been at it a for a while respect others who have paid their dues. We know the names, if not the actual faces, and recognize the shared passion and personal investment behind those names. The countless miles traveled. The commitment to learning and growth.

Above all, the love for the storms that keeps us dreaming all through the winter, and that, in the spring, calls us once again toward the open skies, the tumbled clouds, and the hope and promise of the Plains.

[XUB6K3AQNFKD]

January 1, 2010 by
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

COD Severe Weather Symposium: Are You Going?

It’s drawing closer, and I’m getting excited. I’m talking about the College of DuPage’s upcoming Severe Weather Symposium, which will be held November 5-7. With a lineup of presenters that features some of the foremost luminaries in severe thunderstorm research, the event promises to be stellar.

I’m surprised I haven’t seen more talk about it on Stormtrack, but maybe that’s because the symposium is being held in Chicago rather than out in the Great Plains. Or perhaps it’s because the midweek timing puts a crimp on people who have to work.

But while proximity may be an issue for some and scheduling for others, the content is compelling enough that if you’re anywhere within a couple hundred miles, it will truly be your loss if you don’t make time for this event. Looking over the agenda, here’s what I see:

* All of Thursday afternoon is devoted to various aspects of convective initiation. If you want to improve your targeting skills with the latest information, this day alone ought to be worth its weight in gold.

* Day two focuses largely on tornadogenesis, but includes other topics such as a photogrammetric analysis of the Elie, Manitoba, F5 tornado, and issues in severe weather warnings. The latter presentation will no doubt address the hotly contended use of the enhanced “tornado emergency” wording.

* Day three will…well, look, here’s the complete agenda. You can read it for yourself, and conclude, as I did, that this is going to be a standout event for storm chasers.

I’ve been waiting for a long time for another severe weather conference courtesy of Paul Sirvatka and the College of DuPage. I attended two of their symposiums some years ago, back when my storm chasing skills were still very formative, and each one was time well spent. This one looks to be the best yet. Poised between the end of a stormless autumn and the long, desperate, SDS-riddled winter months, it will provide a welcome immersion into the world of tornado research and operational forecasting that ought to bear dividends when the Gulf reopens for business again next spring.

October 22, 2009 by
Filed Under: Event, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Some Reflections on the Icons of Jazz and Storm Chasing

I just finished looking through a couple forum threads on Stormtrack.org, one of them about what makes a person a “true” storm chaser, and the other about storm chasing legends, about the forerunners who have risen to icon status. In reading the latter thread, I was struck by a similarity between jazz and storm chasing that I had never seen before: each is a distinctively American art form.

While today both jazz musicians and storm chasers hail from all over the world, yet we owe our respective crafts to a handful of American pioneers who, guided by passion and a quest to learn and excel, first set forth into uncharted territory and showed the rest of us the way.

Both pursuits are young. Jazz has been with us for only a century. Storm chasing has existed half that time, a little over fifty years. In the history of both, the progression of discoveries and advancements has been rapid, even dizzying. One obvious difference is that the patriarchs of jazz have passed on, whereas most of the veterans of storm chasing are still with us. Louis Armstrong is long gone, but David Hoadley remains a present inspiration, and while I’ve never met him, I assume from his occasional input on Stormtrack–the online descendant of Hoadley’s trade magazine for chasers–that he’s still fairly active.

I suspect that Hoadley wouldn’t see himself in the same light as Louis Armstrong. From all accounts of David, he’s a humble man who likely would feel surprised to be compared with the likes of Louis. Yet both men are innovators. Both followed their instincts to accomplish something that had never been done before. In Armstrong’s case, the result was the birth of a brand new musical language of feeling, inflection, and improvisation. With Hoadley, it was the acquisition of knowledge and insights that could only come from actively pursuing tornadic storms rather than passively waiting for the storms to come to him.

Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane.

David Hoadley, Tim Marshall, Jim Leonard, Chuck Doswell, Al Moller, Howard Bluestein.

The lists are only partial, and over time they will grow. Storm chasing probably has more potential for true innovators to rise within its ranks than does jazz, for similarities aside, jazz is driven primarily by creative explorations that have for the most part already been made, whereas storm chasing deals with a subject about which much still remains unknown, and is influenced to a much greater degree by advances in meteorology and technology. Regardless, the icons of each field occupy a special, venerable position that can never be duplicated. The rest of us–whether we’re small-town musicians or world-renowned artists, or whether we’re neophyte chasers or OKU grad students with plenty of chase seasons under our belts–can only do the best we know how to carry the torches lit by our predecessors.

From our ranks, too, new knowledge will come and new beauty will be birthed, and from time to time, someone truly remarkable will rise to the surface. Let’s hope that person’s generosity of spirit will be in keeping with his or her abilities.

As was Louis’ Armstrong’s. As is David Hoadley’s.

August 23, 2009 by
Filed Under: Life, Saxophone, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

The 2009 Storm Season: A Good One or a Bad One?

Reading a thread in Stormtrack, I came upon a comment in which the poster briefly griped about how the 2009 storm chasing season had been a lousy one for him. In the post that followed, another member mentioned that it wasn’t fair to blame the weather for one’s personal lack of scalps when the season itself had been pretty solid. The context was lighthearted, though I read enough pointedness to the second comment that it made me stop and think.

The first commenter never said there weren’t plenty of tornadoes; he just said that he’d had a lousy season. My own season hasn’t been that hot either. For the thousands of miles I’ve driven, I’ve only got one tornado to show for it–at least, one that I’m certain of. Sure, I’ve witnessed some beautiful structure and gotten beaned by some big hail in northwest Missouri, but this year has been nothing like 2008.

Am I blaming the weather? No. Those who were in a position to chase all the slight risk day in the Great Plains, from the southern plains to the Canadian border, had plenty of opportunities and did great. But me, I live in Michigan. Much as I’d like to be out there chasing slight risk days in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and the Dakotas, logistically it’s just not feasible for me to do so. I’ve got a livelihood to earn, and gas and lodging cost money.

Add to that the fact that I made at least one poor judgment call that took me and my buddy south when we should have gone north, and I’ve had what amounts to a mediocre to poor storm chasing season. If I lived in the heart of Tornado Alley, I think I’d have enjoyed a much better one. But where I live, I have things to factor into my chase/don’t chase decisions that wouldn’t be as much of a concern if I lived in, say, Oklahoma City or Topeka, Kansas.

That’s not the weather’s fault. It’s just a matter of geography and personal circumstances. If I were to blame the weather for anything, it would be for putting in a substandard performance so far in the central Great Lakes, an area that never fares as well as the plains states to begin with. But of course, it’s pointless to blame the weather for anything, period. Weather isn’t an ethical entity–it just does what it does, and those of us who chase after it have to make our judgment calls the best we know how.

Living in Michigan, I’d be a fool to go after synoptic setups that I’d be an equal fool to pass up if I lived in Kansas instead. That’s the reality, at least for me, though I think I’m by no means alone.

So no, this hasn’t been a bad season for chase weather, not at all. But if you’re me, it hasn’t been a very good season for getting to much of the action.

Maybe the secondary season this fall will create a few more opportunities. I hope so. Give me another setup like October 18, 2007, and I’ll be a happy man.

August 15, 2009 by
Filed Under: Life, Storm Chasing, Uncategorized, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Waking Up in Dallas

Morning. I’m still in bed, and from the next room, sounds of family are drifting through the door. I’m in Dallas with my sister Diane, visiting with my brother Brian, sister-in-law Cheryl, and little nephew Samuel. Since the last time I saw him, Sam has transitioned from babyhood to little-boyhood. He has acquired a vocabulary, a white baseball cap that it’s very important to wear (backwards or sideways, as is the custome), and a very cool train set that we played with last night.

My lady Lisa is holding down the fort back in Grand Rapids, where the weather is providing a much cooler contrast to the upper-90s heat that’s on the menu for this week here in north Texas. Chasing storms is of course out of the question. I’ve family to visit, a bit of work to do, and in any case, there are no storms. Summer has hit and the atmosphere is capped as tightly as an oil drum. On Stormtrack, chasers are bidding the 2009 chase season adieu. I note that the SPC has outlooked days 5-6, but they’re not using the kind of language that gets me very excited.

I’m keeping this short. I can hear the sound of forks clicking on breakfast plates. It’s time to shower up and get myself going.

June 29, 2009 by
Filed Under: Band, Jazz, Life, Music, Nature, Photography, Recording, Relationships, Storm Chasing, Tornadoes, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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