Hello everyone...
I apologize it's been a little while since I updated my status from Wednesday. The past couple of days have obviously been a little busy on the chase-front. No pun intended, of course...
I'll work on getting chase logs updated on here over the next couple of days. I still need to write up a more detailed summary from my chase on Monday (the 7th) and will have logs up from Thursday and Friday up, as well, this weekend.
In all, it's been an active week and now that I have a couple of days of down-time and no work, I should be able to get these things completed.
Stay tuned for the logs and photos!
Showing posts with label summary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label summary. Show all posts
The storm coverage surprised me a bit today... and wasn't anticipating a chase really. When I saw the storm to the south of town earlier this afternoon, I took off after it. Unfortunately, the storm weakened a bit and dove southeast.
I decided to stay on it, hoping it would recycle some, ignoring TOR warned stuff to my north. That activity looked more linear and didn't look like it was in as good of an environment. Lo and behold, the southern storm back-built to the west and went SVR warned again. I got far enough south to position myself in front of it. It wasn't a whole lot to look it, but it was still pretty.
I retreated back north after letting this storm pass to my north and east, in attempt to catch up with the newly TOR'ed stuff to the north but they really crapped out.
So, I'm sitting here in Crookston to get a little data and to watch the archived radar stuff. Boy, that stuff to the north really petered out! I probably wouldn't have caught up with it anyway...
Anyhow, I'll have a more detailed log up later tonight. I'm continuing on home...
After a couple of days of forecasting and looking at models, I decided to head out chasing last evening.
A few co-workers and I met up at the office yesterday afternoon, looked at some last-minute data and after setting up the GPS, laptop, and topping off, we heading off for far Northwestern Minnesota.
A surface trough was progressing eastward across the state while a cold front was dropping southeast out of Canada setting up a decent shot at storms across the area. We didn't feel we needed to go far and initially targeted between Hallock and Roseau, MN. We didn't even end up that far north.
We shot east through town and jumped on MN-220 and progressed northward to MN-4 near Big Woods. Here, we jogged over to US-75 to head further north. We remained on US-75 through Donaldson, but pulled over on a county road a couple of miles north of town. We sat here for about an hour, watching towers attempting to develop to our north, but they consistently were being knocked over by mid and upper-level flow. Storms were developing to our north on the way up US-75, but the main cell had progressed well to our East and by the time we had stopped it had taken on a multi-cell look. Although, it did have some amazing structure to it. Updrafts kept back-building to the west, making for some dramatic scenes. We had a very nice perspective on it, but would have had to really bust east to catch up with it. It was increasingly moving into bad chasing terrain, as it was... Later, it had some especially nice structure with a very nice back-sheared anvil, updraft and overshooting top. Hopefully, the pictures will do it justice!
Anyhow, the towers along and behind the frontal boundary continued to get sheared apart and nothing ever really got going. We decided to reposition southward to remain ahead of the boundary and while doing so, noticed a minor cell trying to develop to our West. Mike and Jason decided to stop to take pictures of this, while Brad, Darren and I continued on south, then west, in attempt to get a better perspective. We stopped for a short photo op, then shot back down US-75 to Warren, then headed west on MN-1. We progressed westward only to watch our cell rain itself out and literally evaporate. Within a half-hour's time, the base on this thing was nearly gone. I hadn't seen anything like that in some time... It was pretty amazing.
We decided to continue west to I-29 to make our way back towards home. We stopped at the Manvel exit to get another look at additional updrafts trying to organize, but they, too, were getting sheared apart.
We quickly went into bag mode and returned back into Grand Forks at 7:44 PM. We met back up with Jason and Mike at Blue Moose for a drink and dinner, then parted our separate ways.
While the chase wasn't a complete bust, it certainly didn't pan out the way I was expecting. Models certainly didn't forecast the mid and upper-level flow last night very well. It had, at most 50-60 knot flow at 700 millibars and while there was decent speed shear in the upper 2-3 KM's, it shouldn't have sheared things apart the way it did out there in the field. It made it look as if we had a 80 knot jetlet over us, or something. Either way, the mid-level shear was just too great to allow updrafts to get organized further west, along the boundary. Storms to the east seemed to do better in possibly somewhat weaker flow and higher instabilities.
Another limiting factor for us last evening was my mobile data accessibility. For some reason or another I wasn't able to connect to the Internet via the Verizon Data Pack I signed up for and I was having issues with signal, to begin with. For the record, Northwestern Minnesota doesn't have great digital coverage through Verizon. I'll have to remember that! ;) The GPS worked quite well and for the first time, I strictly went off the Delorme Street Atlas and the GPS to navigate. It seemed to work very well and I'm continuing to think the GPS and SA upgrade was WELL worth the investment.
Now, I just need to figure out how to maintain my Internet connectivity. The GPS Real-Time Position Tracking through my web-site (yes, it is available now!) wasn't working either, because of the lack of an Internet connection, so that was another disappointment. Hopefully, in the near future, I'll have more chances to chase and test out the mobile setup.
I'll work on getting photos up tonight and tomorrow...
Stay tuned!
Total mileage: 130.4 miles
Time elapsed: 3 hours 38 minutes
Average moving speed:: 55.7 mph
Photo Gallery: http://photos.mhartman-wx.com/
The first real chase of 2008 up here in the Northern Plains is now in the books...
Our initial target area west of Bismarck turned out to be a good one. We departed Grand Forks around 11:30am and arrived in Bismarck near 3:00pm - exactly the 3.5 hour drive we expected. We spent a half-hour, maybe 45-minutes to top off the gas tank and grabbed a bite to eat at a local Schlotsky's Deli, then continued west to Glen Ullin. We turned north on SR-49 and sat off here about 2 miles north of I-94. We found a great vantage point to view west on top of a hill and observed two separate cells slowly move eastward toward us. The storms had already initiated over far southwestern ND and seemed to be maturing when we arrived at this location.
We had one cell to our west-southwest with the other west-northwest of us - probably between 30 to 40 miles. Both storms were exhibiting subtle lowerings in them and had a lot of scud underneath them. Each cell cycled through a couple of attempts at wall clouds before finally organizing into two very nice looking walls. Another cell to our north-northeast had also begun to develop by this time and, on radar, was also indicating weak rotation in the SRM product on GRLevel3.
The radar imagery was quite impressive as we had three distinct areas of rotation on radar all within a 30 mile radius of us. Granted the storms were far enough west of the radar that the rotation wasn't all that close to the cloud-bases. And that was likely the reason we hadn't heard any tornado warnings out for them. Visually, these things were quite beautiful to look at.
It was a general consensus today that these storms very likely didn't produce because of the lack of low-level flow. When we stopped north of Glen Ullin, we did not have any surface winds. It wasn't completely calm, but it may as well as been. Additionally, they were out of the south and not the southeast; what I had been hoping for.
Either way, after sitting in this location for about an hour and a half, we decided to get back on I-94, to head back East to get back out ahead of the storms and to possibly get in better position to intercept the storm to our northeast. This storm took off and was looking pretty meaty on GRLevel3. We made it East to near Sterling, then went north on SR-14 about a mile to pull off into a field entrance. We sat here to observe things for a while. Additional storms started developing along the pre-frontal trough, pretty much overhead and began to outrun us to the east-northeast. We tried to catch back up with this stuff by continuing north on 14 to Wing to meet up with SR-36. On our East turn here and progressing, we pretty much decided to bag the rest of the evening to head back to the "Forks." Our storms had merged with on-going convection to the north and seemed to be entering that MCS-o-genesis phase. We followed SR-36 east to US-281 near Pingree, then took this north to SR-57, where we cut across to Devils Lake. Here, we met up with US-2 to continue eastward to Grand Forks.
Lawson and Ahsenmacher played Super Mario Bros. on Nintendo-DS while Shaw and I chatted away and laughed how serious they were getting into their game. ;)
We arrived back in town around 11:55pm and after dropping Ahsenmacher, Lawson, and Shaw off at their cars at the office, I made my way back home.
Even with all the driving, I think it was well worth chasing that far west yesterday afternoon. It isn't often we can get a group of us together for chasing, so we took advantage of it. On top of that, it turned out to be a quite successful day for us. I feel we pretty much saw the best we could have today, without driving any further south. We had two very nice storms with nice wall clouds and did see hail in the form of "hail-shafts." Luckily, we were able to avoid being any part of one.
The GPS setup got a pretty good test run, as well today. It seems the Position Tracking turned out fairly well. It seems there are a couple of fixes to make but I've done these already, so hopefully in future chases, it will work better for everyone. The GRLevel3 application seems to have been a wise investment, as well. It turned invaluable when we were on the road and when observing storms near Glen Ullin.
I have a feeling I'm going to get spoiled with this data and GPS setup...
I'll have photos up at some point this weekend...
Total Mileage: 642.9 miles
Time elapsed: 11 hours 28 minutes
Photo Gallery: http://photos.mhartman-wx.com/
As you can see, yesterday saw one of the largest severe weather outbreaks we have seen in some time. Over 50 reported tornadoes traversed through the Lower and Mid-Mississippi Valley yesterday and into last evening. And while this number will likely dwindle some as analysis may indicate redundant tornado tracks, I am sure it will still rank very high as one of the largest outbreaks ever for this early in the year. It, unfortunately, will rank as one of the deadliest 24-hour outbreaks this country has experienced in history. With over 50 fatalities confirmed thus far (26 alone, in Tennessee), it now exceeds the outbreak in Oklahoma of May 3rd, 1999.
The time of year and the late hour that many of these tornadoes hit are both contributing factors to the number of fatalities. But, also because these tornadoes hit largely populated areas. Tornadoes affected many large cities, including areas around Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee, as well as Fairview, Arkansas. Jackson, TN also was hit particularly hard, especially around Union University on the northwest side of the city. It is amazing no lives were lost here, as there were numerous students in dormitories at the time.
For more news coverage on the outbreak and updates on the situation at Union University, follow the links below:
http://www.wmctv.com/
http://www.jacksonsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
Also, Red Cross Chapters across West-Tennessee can be found here:
http://www.redcross.org/where/chapts.asp#TN
My thoughts and prayers go out to all of those that have been affected by this terrible outbreak.
I'm no father, but it was still great to receive a present yesterday! Justin Turcotte, Lu Zhang (a friend of mine), and I departed the city yesterday around 3:30 pm with an initial target around Finley, ND. On our way south on I-29 we found a building tower to our southeast and kept watching this thing literally explode out of nothing in about 15 minutes to a very nice thunderhead. It was very appealing to the eye, so we took the Thompson exit to pull off and take pictures when Justin's wife called to tell us that a Tornado Warning had been issued for Central Polk County (Minnesota). It caught us by surprise, since the storm went up so fast and that, to us, appeared to have developed north of the warm front.*
We drifted south a bit to County Road 7, where we turned east to approach the storm from the west. We drove a few miles down County Road 9 (in Minnesota now) before stopping to view the tightening mesocyclone. It was still rather small and was looking a little ragged. Further down the road another 3 miles or so, we pulled off after seeing what we thought was a needle funnel. It developed into a nice rope and stretched laterally, then curved downward and finally touched down. We were approximately 3-4 miles from where it came down, so we couldn't confirm if it was actually on the ground or not, but reports told us otherwise. I was fiddling around with the HT trying to get into the Grand Forks Skywarn-Net to report and by the time Turcotte got his camera out and fired up, the tornado had dissipated. So, unfortunately, neither of us were able to get any photos of the actual funnel or tornado. The whole event (from the first funnel sighting to touchdown and dissipation lasted about 40 seconds to maybe a minute). It was very quick... Luckily, however there was a chaser that was able to grab several pictures. The photo below is credited to him (Beau Gjerdingen). His other pictures can be found in his Picasa web gallery.
Within 10-15 minutes after the dissipation of the tornado, our meso had all but fallen apart and the parent storm, itself looked very glaciated... The updraft didn't look impressive at all anymore. So, after reaching Highway 75, we decided to drive south to Nielsville to cross back over into ND and head towards our original target. We arrived in Mayville on Hwy 200 around 5:15 and futzed around the area for about a half-hour. Justin wanted to check out the old ghost town (settlement maybe?) of Roseville (south-southwest of Mayville) and since we were far from initiation time, we drove on down through Clifford and Galesburg to check them out, as well. Nice small towns with hardly anything! ;)
We were finding some higher terrain since we were practically on the edge of the valley, so we drove west out of Galesburg and parked at the top of a hill. We had a very nice vantage to our south and west. We sat here for a couple of hours, but nothing wanted to cooperate. The capping inversion held up and even though we finally saw some moisture convergence and subsequent clouds, nothing had any vertical extent to it. Not until we began our trek back northward on Hwy 38, and later on Hwy 32 did we begin to see towers developing to our northwest. I had decided to download the AccuWeather Premium demo on my Verizon phone and it was sufficient for getting radar/satellite updates - and we had noticed storms developing up in the Devils Lake basin. We heading in that direction. We traversed the warm front once again, north of Hope, ND on 32 and at that point, we ran into a lot of low-level moisture and fog (with visibilities down to 3/4 of a mile for a short stretch). This limited our visibilities of the storms to our northwest. Once we reached Petersburg on US-2, we gave the radar another look, but decided to call it an evening and headed back to Grand Forks. We got back to the office at 10:10 pm, where I took Lu back home and retreated to my apartment.
Photos will be forthcoming and, possibly a more complete log will be, as well.
Overall, it was an exciting chase, especially seeing my first tornado since April 20, 2004. It was frustrating not getting any video or photos of it, but either way, I know what I saw and that's enough.
* Upon analysis this afternoon, it appears that either the warm front surged north or some pre-existing boundary surged north and kicked off initiation. I'll have a radar loop posted later for all to see what I'm referring to.
Didn't end up seeing much this afternoon and evening, but here's a short summary of my brief Memorial Day chase:
Was on the road around 4:30 PM, and arrived at my initial target of Larimore around 5:25... Sat at this location for about a half-hour watching things. Large updraft to my north blew up, so I took off after it, but wasn't gaining any ground. It raced off to my northeast and became the Pembina County (ND) / Kittson County (MN) beast... Bases were fairly elevated on the CU field above me and nothing was happening to my west, but did finally get a visual on building towers to my west-northwest a little after 6:00 PM as I continue northward on Highway 18. Gave my buddy, Jared Guyer, a call and he stated that a location around Pisek would be good, so continued north on Highway 18 and sat at a location about 1 mile east of the 18 / CR-15 junction. An updraft had developed into a decent cell to my west-southwest and to get into better position and after another short consultation with Guyer, decided to head towards Park River. The storm dissipated and I let it pretty much rain itself out as it passed over my location 2 miles north of Park River around 7:10 PM. Afterward, I continued north on CR-12 to CR-9 East, then proceeded back to 18. Here, I turned south in attempt to stay east of the frontal boundary... Stopped at the junction of 18 and CR-19 to again monitor the boundary to my west. A few towers attempted to go up, but were really struggling to stay together. Bases were still fairly elevated at this point, so I pretty much called it a night and began the trek back towards Grand Forks. A few scattered showers had developed in eastern Nelson and western Grand Forks counties by the time I had made it back to Highway 2, but with my daylight diminishing fast, I followed my initial plans to head back home.
All in all, not bad of a chase, since I did see a couple storms. The cell to my north was pretty much the storm of the day and I had to ditch it since it took off so fast to the northeast. I'm not sure why the thing took off like it did, with the remaining convection this evening remaining right along the boundary and not budging their way eastward very fast at all... Boundary layer conditions today were fairly critical and I had noticed just before leaving work that dewpoints in both Fargo and here in Grand Forks had actually dropped 2-4 degrees between 3:00 and 4:00 pm. And with the clearer skies over the valley and the extensive CU-field to the west, it was pretty clear that the surface low was wrapping in dryer air from the southwest. So, I'm sure that had some sort of effect on our BL conditions today. I think on top of that, our capping inversion held up a little bit stronger than what the models had been indicating earlier in the day. I guess if I had to have done anything different, I would have drove straight north out of town on departure. I dismissed the greater effective shear to the north since very little instability was up there. The area where the Pembina storm initiated in was under cloud-cover almost all day... Either it destabilized pretty quickly once those clouds started decreasing, or some other sort of trigger came along and sparked those updrafts up there. Either way, it was much easier for the updrafts to get rooted in the BL in that area...
One of these days, I'll make one of these chases worth the time spent!
A more complete log and a few select photos will be posted tomorrow, when I get more time...
A big thanks goes out to Jared Guyer and Bryan McQuade for providing some nowcasting support for me today... It was a big help!
Hello folks,
I'm not sure who out there has been monitoring today - my progress on "the chase." But, to send out a very much abridged version:
Departed Grand Forks at 3:05pm... Stopped in Devils Lake for a data stop... Proceeded to the target area (Leeds, ND). Ended up pulling over off of Highway 30 south of ND-2 around 5:50pm (was located about 3 miles southeast of York, ND). Found a very nice vantage point here and spent close to an hour observing and making calls back to Meridian for updates. Went after the Sheridan/Wells County storms to my south, hopping back on Hwy 30 south. Sprinkles fell on the car briefly as I drove under the anvil and low-level inflow... Ended up stopping just east of the Hwy 30/15 junction, watching the storm slowly push off to the north-northeast. After which, decidedly began my trek back eastward to Grand Forks.
Bustola! ;)
Did see "a storm," so I can't complain much, but it was a little frustrating with gas as expensive as it is to put over 300 miles into the effort. It was a fun trip, though and got me out of Grand Forks for a good portion of the day.
A much more complete chase log will be forthcoming on the web-site later this afternoon, including a few select photos.
Overall, not bad for the first chase of 2007. Could have had better results, but well, what can you do when the atmosphere just doesn't quite cooperate!?!
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