| | May 11 - 6:00 AM ET | |
| | Well, I guess now is about as good a time as any to get on the ball and set up the site for this year. Headed up to get Neil and Mark and the rental vehicle in about 4 hours, this year it looks like we get a choice between a Chrysler Aspen or a Cadillac Escalade. I would be lying if I told you the thought of chasing in an Escalade didn't amuse me... | |
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| | May 11 - 9:15 PM ET | |
| | On the road now for about 7 hours, and we are somewhere between Charleston, WV and Lexington, KY. I wasn’t really paying attention so I’m not sure. We ended up with the Chrysler Aspen, after a short stint of thinking we were going to have to settle for a Dodge Caravan while the nice lady at Dollar rent-a-car tried to locate us an Aspen. It’s nice but definitely not what I would call luxury; then again maybe this is a tripped down version for rentals. Looks like about 10 hours of driving left to Kansas City. | |
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| | May 12 - 12:17 PM CT | |
| | Arrived at Chris’ place about 8:00 AM central time, and everyone promptly crashed out on couches / floors / inflatable air things. Quick clean up and we are going to head out and get some lunch, make sure we have everything set up before we go pick up Greg at the airport. So far about every 3 hours we think of something else we forgot, so a Wal-Mart is definitely on the agenda.
As for chasing today, any storms today would look to be elevated hail and rain producers. If we could make it about 6 hours up into the high plains we would be in prime chase position, but considering tomorrow we would need to be back down towards Oklahoma and Texas I don’t think we are going to waste the time driving all day just to turn around and drive all night. Instead we will get some rest, hang out, and hope maybe those cells will roll through here and pound the rental vehicle with some large hail. It needs some excitement. | |
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| | May 12 - 8:00 PM CT | |
| | The 2009 storm chase has officially begun! Picked up Greg at the airport, got everything organized, packed up, and on the road. Currently heading towards Wichita, KS, to get a good jump on tomorrow’s activities. Based on the current models we are most likely headed down into Oklahoma for tomorrow towards the dry line. Looks like a dry line bulge will cause a surface low with some nice southeasterly backing winds. SPC has their focus of activity in the high plains, but we aren’t convinced that it is worth being that far out of position for Thursday’s chasing to go into northern Illinois. Hopefully we can catch some action in the Oklahoma panhandle. And I promise I will take some pictures just to add some color here.
Here's everyone working on their forecasts for tomorrow: | |
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| | May 13 - 4:30 PM CT | |
| | Wait and watch update from Guthrie, Oklahoma. We stopped short of Oklahoma City so we could keep an eye on how things progressed to the north along the front and to the south along the dry line. So far the conditions to the south are pretty good, the CAPE and lapse rates are ideal we just need something to initiate out here. The RUC has things firing off around 7pm or later, so the waiting game we will play. Despite the continued chance of some strong tornadoes in the upper plains, we are content with our decision to stay south and bank on the instability to at least give us some nice supercell structures. | |
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| | May 14 - 1:00 AM CT | |
| | Today wasn’t exactly a success, but I wouldn’t call it a failure either. We ended up leaving the coffee house in Guthrie around 5:45 PM and headed northwest to try and intercept some storms that were beginning to fire up on the southern end of the front. We were right in our predictions that anything that could initiate there would intensify quickly, but things lined out pretty quickly as well which we were hoping against. Figuring our best bet was to try and get down to the southern-most storm in the line, we headed back south and west. The storms to our north produced a brief tornado, but the cell we focused on couldn’t quite pull itself together. It was producing upwards of 3” hail, but the LCL’s and erratic mid-level rotation kept it from putting out for us. On the upside we did get some hail damage to the car, which I’ve been waiting two years for.
After playing in the hail core for a bit we headed on down to Wichita Falls, TX, and got a hotel room for the night. Plan for tomorrow is to head towards Midland, TX and do some more dry-line chasing. | |
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| | May 15 - 11:00 AM CT | |
| | Late update for yesterday due to the lack of any sort of internet in Shamrock, TX. Nothing happened anyway, we drove all the way down towards Midland and camped out at a bookstore for a few hours. Convective activity was zero, save for a little action on the Texas – Mexico border. About 5:00 PM we called it a day and headed up towards the Texas panhandle where we are targeting for today. I am hoping we see something today, because all the models have a ridge building in over the Midwest for the next 4 to 5 days and that usually means a severe lack of severe weather.
Currently on the road towards Canadian, TX, to eat some lunch and camp out. Banking on the dryline – front intersection again for some discrete supercells. Frontal storms in Kansas will probably line out quickly and Missouri is just too far to drive for poor chasing terrain. | |
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| | May 16 - 1:30 AM CT | |
| | Sorry for the lack of updates; the AT&T aircard I am using decided to take a break for a while, I guess, which pretty much means I can’t get radar data or update the blog unless I have wifi access somewhere. I’m pushing out the last two days worth of updates right now from the La Quinta in Amarillo, TX.
So we camped out in Canadian for a while waiting to see if anything would initiate in the Texas panhandle. For a while we contemplated abandoning Texas and moving up to Kansas where we knew there would be some sort of storm activity, despite the chance of it lining out quickly. Thankfully we stuck with our gut target location and got to watch a supercell go from puffy little cumulus clouds to 52,000 ft towers in about 30 minutes. We raced down to Miami and then headed back north to intercept, then backtracked as the storm moved south towards us. At one point we saw a tight funnel but it never dropped all the way down.
Unfortunately this was another HP storm and all the features of interest quickly became rain wrapped and stayed that way for most of the time. At one point we got close enough to get a view of a tornado touching down, but we were already very close to the hail core and couldn’t stop to take proper pictures. We then tried to get through Pampa, TX, to escape south from the storm and ended up getting pelted with golf ball and baseball sized hail. We also think there was a decently large wedge tornado on the ground about a quarter mile north of us but it heavily obscured by the rain and hail and dust we were encountering. We did escape, however, and miraculously we didn’t lose any of the windows or the windshield. Along with the vicious hail we spent a decent amount of time battling 80 - 90 mph RFD winds that almost blew us off the road more than once. Chased this storm for a couple more hours, but it never lost its HP structure and we could never get a good view of what was going on behind the precip.
Eventually we just called it a day and drove back up into Pampa to do a little damage reconnaissance. Grabbed some dinner there in Pampa and then moved on to Amarillo for a hotel room for the night. Looks like we are calling tomorrow and Sunday “travel days” and working our way up towards northern South Dakota or southern North Dakota. Only thing worth chasing tomorrow would be down around the gulf coast anyway and that’s just out of the question.
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| | May 17 - 1:00 PM CT | |
| | Not much to talk about today. We drove on up to Hays, KS, yesterday to visit our favorite place in the Midwest: Liquid Bread Brewery. Celebrated our successful tornado day and Chris’ birthday (which is today), then came back and slept in. Today we are headed towards Rapid City, SD, since the only area that looks even half-way worthwhile to chase in will be eastern Montana on Monday. Also we will be finding a spot to do some laundry today.
We seem to be having quite a few technical problems so far; my wireless air-card has stopped working so I’ve got no radar or map data while chasing, and Neil’s camera lens broke and we can’t find a Ritz camera so he can replace it. Oh, and I got blown over by a gust of wind on Friday somehow. Blew my hat off and as I turned to grab it another gust literally knocked me off my feet. I took a chunk out of my hand when I landed so we had to stop at a convenience store for me to get some band-aids and Neosporin. Just bizarre. | |
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| | May 18 - 1:00 AM CT | |
| | We’re in for the night in Murdo, SD, with much less weirdness than the first time we ended up here. The Best Western is much nicer than we could hope for, and it looks like tomorrow will be a quiet day again. Gives us time to do some laundry and get Neil’s camera repaired before we chase again on Tuesday. Unfortunately the pattern shaping doesn’t look like we will get much action the rest of our trip. Thank goodness we got a tornado on Friday cause it might have been our only chance. Oh well, at least we get a fun road trip out of it. | |
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| | May 18 - 3:30 PM MT | |
| | Doing laundry in Rapid City, SD. Everyone is getting bored and frustrated at the weather; nothing to chase really for at least the next few days. Chris amused himself by stopping at the Wall Drug Store in Wall, SD, in an attempt to get an old fashioned fountain soda. Sadly, is can accurately be said that the Wall Drug is a bit over-hyped. Then we went and got Neil’s camera fixed (in a manner of speaking) at a Ritz Camera facility, and now we sit in Laundry World waiting for our clothes to be clean. Mark nearly got into an incident with some locals who continued to stare at us for quite a while. I think from here we are headed to Belle Fourche, SD, and see if we want to try chasing in Montana tomorrow. | |
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| | May 19 - 5:00 PM MT | |
| | We got up this morning and headed to Miles City, Montana, to sit and see if anything would fire up in southeastern Montana today. Not chasing for four days straight is starting to wear on everyone now; just seeing a storm, any storm, would provide a needed distraction from our current pattern of blue sky chasing and judging the cleanliness and happiness levels of small Midwestern towns. Miles City has a nice park, by the way. I think we are going to Spearfish, SD, tonight since tomorrow looks like the most likely setup for a supercell in forever.
I took some pictures of Miles City I will upload tonight... | |
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| | May 20 - 3:00 PM MT | |
| | Well, today is certainly looking up. Convection has started off strong and there are already some isolated decently strong storms in the eastern Colorado and Western Nebraska area. Right now we are sitting in Chadron, NE, waiting for something juicy to take shape so we can chase it. Nice to be back storm chasing and not wild goose chasing. | |
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| | May 20 - 10:00 PM MT | |
| | So much for looking up... We waited around in Chadron till some of the convection moved closer to us, and went out a little farther west to intercept it. We got there just in time to watch it completely implode on itself, and then got to drive back through some moderate rain that was the leftover of our “supercell”. On the upside there were some storms today, but on the downside none of them got anything together. Overall a disappointing day to follow up a depressing week of nothing to chase. I took some pictures today but I don’t even like any of them enough to upload them.
Right now we are sitting in Sidney, NE, trying to decide if it is even worth driving the 300 miles to southeast Colorado tomorrow. Might be sticking around here and finding something to occupy our time. Everyone is pretty bummed. | |
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| | May 22 - 10:00 AM MT | |
| | I want to apologize to anyone who is following this for the lack of anything interesting over the past week. Trust me, if something was happening anywhere we would be on it.
As for yesterday, we got up and drove to Cheyenne, WY, for some lunch and then headed down to Ft Collins, CO. We got to the hotel about 3:00 PM, which has to be some sort of new chasing record, and then camped out at Coopersmith’s Brewpub for the rest of the night. Our hotel is some sort of old renovated hotel, quite nice, called the Armstrong; I would recommend it to anyone coming to Ft Collins in the future. Pretty neat place overall, definitely has the college town vibe with all the little bars and cafes all over the place.
Today’s plan is to head back to Cheyenne and see if anything happens in southern Wyoming. More goose chasing, but we don’t really have anything else to do. | |
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| | May 22 - 2:00 PM MT | |
| | Shattered the earliest check-in record today by getting our room at the Days Inn in Cheyenne, WY at 1:39 PM... It is now 2:00 PM and Mark has gone to bed, Chris is pretty much there, and the rest of us are in pajamas watching TV. This trip has become a royal sham. | |
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| | May 23 - 10:00 AM MT | |
| | Ok, so we got bored yesterday and I decided to drive the car into a hail core just to see if I could cause some more damage. The storm was off to our west a little and up in the higher elevation (around 7000 ft) so there was no chance of any tornadoes or even great structure, but it was producing hail so I figured why not. The hail was from pea size to maybe quarter at most, and we just parked in the core and let it move over us slowly. Ended up dropping 2 ½ inches of hail on the ground, which is always kind of cool to see. I was driving so I couldn’t take pictures but I will get some of Neil’s up here soon.
Today we are headed to Julesburg, CO, to see if anything will fire off in southern Wyoming or Eastern Colorado. Not really that hopeful though. | |
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| | May 23 - 10:30 PM MT | |
| | Another day of driving out towards a strengthening cell just to watch it fall apart as we get there. We waited in Ogallala, NE, for some cells to develop and we went after the one closest to us that seemed to start pulling itself together. It just was not to be, though, and we end the week without a single solid supercell in about 6 days. There was some excitement today as we had to wade through some localized flooding in Ogallala as we came back for dinner, and then we managed to hit a deer on the way to Alliance, NE, for the night. I have to say this Aspen is built like a tank; baseball hail and birds and deer and driving over curbs and so far this thing keeps on chugging along.
Tomorrow is our last day and we are hoping it will produce for us. This tropic system that came in the Gulf really killed the past week, but tomorrow is looking like the most plausible day for a storm since last Friday. Still marginal, but it’s better than nothing. I got some of Neil’s pics up too. | |
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| | May 24 - 1:30 PM MT | |
| | Well, today is our last chance; if nothing forms today we have to start the long drive back to Kansas City and then on to the East Coast. We are camped out here in a coffee shop in Chadron, NE, waiting to see if anything develops. Today looked like it would be hopeful earlier in the week, but the instability doesn’t appear to be as strong as the earlier models showed. We finally get some decent shear and the instability vanishes. Opinions are still up in the air about today though, I think a lot of other chasers and forecasters are wishing something would happen just because the last week has been so inactive. Time will tell. Oh, and I uploaded all the pics I’ve taken the past couple days. | |
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| | May 28 - 6:30 PM ET | |
| | The chase for this year is over. We didn’t really stop anywhere with wifi for long enough to update the blog until I got home on Tuesday morning. And I’ve been asleep for the majority of the time since then. Sunday turned out to be a bust, nothing happened and we called the trip at about 5:00 pm in Chadron, NE. From Chadron we drove through the night to Kansas City, dropped off Chris and Greg and got a few hours sleep, then Neil, Mark and I drove all the way back to the DC area. Of course we arrived Tuesday morning into the thick of rush hour, which padded my time behind the wheel to about 11 hours straight. The rest of Tuesday I slept and then took the rental car back Wednesday morning. We put right at 7000 miles on this vehicle, and enough damage to leave the poor guy at the rental office balking. That rental insurance is really worth its weight in gold these past couple trips. I took a couple pics of the major dents and uploaded them to the gallery.
In retrospect it is hard for me to be too sad about this year, I mean we did make a great call staying in Texas and catching the only really well-formed tornadic supercell in the past few weeks; even the great minds at Vortex2 botched that call. This is definitely the longest dry spell we have ever had chasing, and it looks like it might continue for the next few weeks so thankfully we came out early and got our storm when we did. The reason behind this years horrible setup so far is that a very strong cold front moved through the entire Midwest right after we got out there. This front pushed all the way down through the area and wiped out all the moisture in the Midwest, which is crucial for strong storms to develop. After the front moved through, a tropical system moved into the gulf and prevented more moisture from moving back up into the middle of the country, which in turn created a dry state in tornado alley. The lack of moisture affects the dew points, the instability, the CAP, pretty much the majority of factors to producing strong supercells. Just a bad stroke of luck for us, and every other chase team out there.
All we can do now is wait till next year. | |
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