Coldest of the Season

Temperatures and wind chills are at the coldest they've been this season, thus far.

Here are some numbers to mull (and pout!) over...

 Site      Time      Tmp Dpt %RH W/H Wdr Wsp Cld Ceilg  MSLP 
-------------------------------------------------------------
 KGFK Nov 20 2253UTC  11   6  80   0   N   7 SCT   UNL 1043.8
 KGFK Nov 20 2353UTC   8   4  83  -1   N   6 SCT   UNL 1043.7
 KGFK Nov 21 0037UTC   7   3  83   1   W   3 SCT   UNL       
 KGFK Nov 21 0053UTC   6   3  87   0  NW   3 FEW   UNL 1043.1
 KGFK Nov 21 0153UTC   5   2  87  -4  NW   5 FEW   UNL 1042.2
 KGFK Nov 21 0253UTC   4   1  87  -1   W   3 CLR   UNL 1041.3
 KGFK Nov 21 0335UTC   3  -0  87  -6 WNW   5 FEW   UNL       
 KGFK Nov 21 0353UTC   2  -1  87  -8   W   6 FEW   UNL 1041.0

Late-season Thunderstorms

Apparently, we have some rigorous updrafts out there. We've had some lightning and thunder outside our windows here in Grand Forks, and we even had a 0.75 inch report of hail down in Stutsman County (near Ypsilanti) earlier this afternoon. With freezing heights fairly low that doesn't surprise me.

The abundance of lightning is, however; especially this far north. In my forecast last night, I had thunderstorms as a pType in my grids along the frontal boundary, but scaled things back fairly quickly as the afternoon/evening progressed and the boundary lifted northward. So, that part of the forecast busted!

First snowfall of the season!

I apologize it's way after the fact, but we had our first snowfall of the season this past Monday, October 27th.

A particularly strong cold front pushed southeast across the region the previous Saturday night and this provided the first arctic air to settle into the Northern Plains for several days. A system that pushed through Sunday and into early Monday brought showers overnight and before all was done some of these transitioned into brief, heavy snow bursts. One of them just happened to push through Grand Forks around 9:00 am Monday. It did provide us with a quick accumulation on mostly grassy and elevated surfaces. Officially, the airport reported 0.7 inches, but it looked like it could have been slightly more here in town.

Here's a loop from the UND-RWIC webcam from 9:30 am to 3:15 pm. As you can see, the snow that did accumulate didn't stick around for long! Click on the image for a larger version to open in a separate window or tab.

Vacation...

Hello folks,

I'm cross-posting this from my personal blog...

Just to let you know... Beginning this evening, I will be away on vacation until late Monday. My brother-in-law and I will be traveling along with a few co-workers of mine to the Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota. We look to do some hiking, camping, and sight-seeing.

Yes, we realize it's going to be in the 30's at night. Call us crazy, but it's something we're all looking forward to...

If, by chance, you need to contact me, I'll have spotty cell coverage, but you can certainly try me there first. As always, the contact information is linked above.

Take care and have a wonderful weekend!

Chilly...!

A cold front passing through the area Friday evening resulting in unseasonably cool temperatures Saturday and last night. In fact, observations out at KGFK indicated that the official low temperature dropped below the 40° mark! This is the coolest temperatures recorded in several months.

 Site      Time      Tmp Dpt %RH W/H Wdr Wsp Wgs Cld 6hX 6hN
----------------------------------------------------------------
 KGFK Aug 24 1041UTC  41  41 100       W   6     SCT         
 KGFK Aug 24 1053UTC  42  41  96     WSW   3     SCT        
 KGFK Aug 24 1153UTC  41  40  96           0     CLR  46  39

Vacation!!

Cross-post from my Personal Blog

Hello everyone!

Effective later this afternoon, I'll be out of town on vacation. I'm hoping to be on the road and on my way home back to Indiana by 5:00 PM. That would put me in Bluffton by 8:00 or 9:00 AM Friday morning, at the latest.

If there is anything you would need to get a hold of me for, I will have Internet connectivity from home, so I will have access to E-mail. Otherwise, I obviously, will have the cell phone with me, so by all means, feel free to give me a ring any time. My contact information (E-Mail address and phone number) is linked above.

Also, I will have my GPS operational throughout my drive home. If you would like to track where I'm at on my trek through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, feel free to check up on me on my GPS Tracking web-page. My position updates by the minute and the page will update every two minutes. Also, note you can zoom in and out of the map by using the "+" and "-" buttons in the upper left-hand corner of the map and can maneuver around the map by click and dragging the map from left to right, to up and down.

Take care, and some of you I'll see very soon... Others, I'll see you in about a week and a half!

Status

It appears that the chase potential today has become rather dull... The models had progressively diminished chances for storms today over the past couple of days and with the MCS that pushed southeast across SErn ND, NErn SD, and Central and Southern Minnesota this morning, I think it pretty much zapped the better forcing and moisture much further south.

There's still some decent moisture convergence out there (DMC, for you Doswell groupies... hah!) and the instability is there for possibly some random showers and thunderstorms to bubble up to the east. I've been watching the radar scope and other than a few weak echoes, nothing has really taken off, other than up near Lake of the Woods, where there was a valid SVR earlier.

I'm holding out hope for this weekend. Saturday, another decent shortwave pushes across the region and that may bring another potential chase day. I'll continue to monitor that situation and will update the ol' blog here to let you all know the plan of attack.

More later...

Chase Day?

Thursday is looking like a potential chase day around the area. Since I'm on a fairly short leash regarding money and mileage on my car with my up-coming vacation, this seems to shaping up quite well.

Granted this is a few days out yet, but the 00z NAM and GFS, as well as the 06z NAM are staying rather consistent. The 06zNAM is indicating plenty of shear (200+ helicities over much of Ern ND) and instability (EHI's of 2+ over SErn ND) for big storms. Flow is respectable with a nice 70-90 KT westerly jetlet at 500mb above southeasterly flow at the surface. The resultant hodographs are simply amazing with all kinds of curvature and storm-relative inflow...

It's something I'm certainly going to be keeping an eye on. If things remain consistent, I may just take the opportunity to finally make it out again. After an active two weeks at the beginning of the month, we've fell back into a lull the two weeks since. Yesterday's setup was very marginal and things pretty much happened the way I figured it would - not firing up until after dark, at least in and around the Nrn Valley area.

Let's hope Thursday pans out!
Stay tuned...

July 7th, 10th, and 11th Summaries

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!

Potential Chase Day

We may be looking at another opportunity to chase tomorrow. Looking at the latest models, much of central and eastern North Dakota may just be looking at a decent threat for Supercells and tornadoes. Low-level and deep-layer shear and instability look outstanding and our mid and upper-level flow is more than enough to support Supercells.

I haven't seen hodographs like these in quite some time, so I feel I need to share these... This image is a forecast sounding near Grand Forks, ND at 3Z Friday (10:00pm Thursday evening). The hodograph in the upper-right hand corner is one of the largest I've seen in quite a while. That is some outstanding storm-relative inflow!

Capping won't be as much of an issue as with our chase days over the past week and if the trends continue on the NAM, convection may fire late in the afternoon and that would certainly help my cause. Since I'm on mids this week, I'll have Thursday open, but I'll have to be back into town by 11:30pm Thursday night for work.

It doesn't look like I'd need to drive far and that will help, as well.

This definitely looks like one of the better setups we've had around these parts in some time.

I'll continue to watch things over the next day or so and will try to update the blog here.

More later...

Local chase

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...

Another chase day?

It's looking like my plans for my extended time off this weekend from work will be changing somewhat. I was initially thinking of taking a road trip out west to finally see the badlands here in North Dakota.

It's looking now, that while I'll still be heading west on Saturday, it will be to see Supercells! This afternoon's 12z NAM is indicating a fairly significant surface trough pushing eastward across the Northern Plains. Steepening lapse rates and good flow in the mid to upper-levels should give us plenty of instability and shear for Supercells. I'm a little concerned with the mid-level temperatures. With 700mb temps from 10 to 15° C, it will be fairly capped out there. The NAM is convecting things over western/central ND between 21 and 00z, which I think is being quite liberal. I wouldn't be surprised if things hold off closer to sunset. It does show some slight weakening in the inversion along and just behind the frontal boundary, so maybe ascent will be strong enough to provide that trigger to bust through it.

It's a couple of days out yet, but it will be something I'll keep close tabs on over the next 24-36 hours.

I'm definitely enjoying this pattern...

July 1st, 2008 - Chase Summary

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/

June 26th, 2008 - Chase summary

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/

chase status

Well, as written previously, today (Thursday) looks to be a fairly active severe weather day across the Northern Plains. As such, a few co-workers and I will be out chasing this afternoon and into this evening.

We are initially targeting somewhere west, perhaps southwest, of Bismarck. We plan on departing GFK by 11:00am to make it out there by 3:00 or 4:00pm.

I'll have data available and as such, will be able to sync the GPS with a new tracking function on the web-site. If anyone out there is curious and wants to track where we are, you can now get it on my web-site:

http://www.mhartman-wx.com/mwx_gps.html

Enjoy the new function and if you see any glitches, please let me know!

Wish us luck!

Potential Chase Days?

Looks like this week may be the first real opportunity to get out chasing across the state. Tomorrow could be active across the western part of the state with Thursday looking like another active severe weather day.

I'll be monitoring things closely tonight and may decide to head out west tomorrow to check things out. Depends on dynamite of a setup it turns into overnight tonight on the models and how much sleep I want tomorrow. Otherwise, I may just wait it out until Thursday's event.

Stay tuned...

Roll cloud over KC

Nice roll cloud sitting over western parts of Kansas City this morning:



I happened to be stepping through WeatherCams this morning and found this. Pretty cool, considering I haven't seen one of these things in quite some time.

Extensive squall line

Wow, what a squall line over the mid-section of the country tonight!



Especially interesting with this thing is that while the squall line itself is propagating east-southeastward, the stratiform rain behind is training northeast along the frontal boundary.

Lots of places are going to see flooding concerns continuing through a good portion of tonight and into Monday.

Web-Site Additions and Photos

Good evening everyone...

Thought I would share some news with everyone. I've been working on the web-site the past couple of nights and can officially announce that I am now offering semi-live radar feeds on my site.

The radar feed comes from GRLevel3, a radar visualization application currently running on my laptop from home. While the radar will not always be current, it will update every six minutes when I have the application running. Please note, also, that it will not always be centered at a set location. Radar sites will likely change fairly frequently, giving you an idea of areas where I may be monitoring weather features. This will generally be where severe weather will be occurring. As such, I'm referring to it as a Radar Imagery Floater. Featured among the radar imagery will be Base Reflectivity and Storm-Relative Velocity on a half-degree volume scan, as well as VIL (Vertically Integrated Liquid) data.

In addition, information regarding storm attributes, storm-tracks, storm reports, chaser/spotter locations, and surface observations will occasionally show up on the radar images.

I have also uploaded over 100 new photos to my Photo Gallery. These include pictures from a bowing segment from July 22, 2007 here in Grand Forks, ND, photos from Northwood, ND when Justin, Mike and I stopped through on our way back from the Northern Plains Convective Workshop in early April, and all my photos from my Chase Vacation that extended from May 24th through June 1st.

Enjoy looking through the photos and if you have any questions regarding the new radar imagery or photos, please feel free to shoot me an E-mail.

Days Eight and Nine

Sorry, this is coming so much after the fact...

We woke in Independence, Kansas Saturday morning thinking we wouldn't have much traveling to do. I had decided to park my car at Ed Robert's place in KC the night before, so in doing that, I pretty much committed myself to chasing on Saturday.

We chased north-central and north-eastern Oklahoma Saturday and it pretty much turned out similar to Friday. Storms along the trailing boundary didn't quite develop, as planned during the afternoon, but did finally pop near the OK/KS border near Osage County, where the outflow boundary had intersected the frontal boundary. We decided to play that and took off east-northeast towards the storms. The NWS quickly went SVR on the storms and while stopped for gas near Tonkawa, a TOR came out for the eastern storm that had developed. We busted east on US-60, trying to catch up, but never did quite reach it. The western storm also went tornadic and when we caught up with that, we had to drop south on OK-18 so that we wouldn't drive into the precip core. This took us in and out of hills, trees, and curves. This part of northeastern Oklahoma will certainly go down as one of them spots never to return to chase, that's for sure. Horrible chase territory!

Anyhow, we still were able to observe the storms from afar and while we never did see any tornadoes from these storms, we did see a few wall clouds and a nice mothership look to the eastern storm for a short time.

We followed the storms eastward and at Skiatook (or what Jared liked to refer to as "Skankytown"), we took 75 north, effectively bagging the rest of the evening for our return to Kansas City. Along the way, we were treated to quite a lightning show from the storms to our north and east. We pulled off for a short time to get some photos, but other than that, it turned into a long drive back north.

I picked up my car at Ed's around 1:00am and we pulled into our hotel in Merriam, KS by 2:00.

I awoke with the guys a little late, but anticipating leaving when they did Sunday morning. We all got on the road around 9:00am. Jared, Gregg, and John planned on playing the Nebraska panhandle, if they could make it out there in time and I made my way back up I-29 through Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and into Grand Forks.

I pulled onto 32nd Avenue right at 7:01pm, so my drive was almost exactly the 10-hour drive I had expected. I noted 9:15am as my departure from KC Sunday morning.

I unpacked the luggage, put things away, and went for dinner. All I had eaten all day was two packs of SweetTarts and a Tropicana Twister to drink. ;)

The trip, in all, was a blast and I'm anxious to go again next year.

Here are a few notable stats of my own, if you're curious...

Total mileage: 2,649 miles
Total gas used: 110.049
Avg. Miles/Gal: 24.071 (not bad!)

Tornadoes: 2 (the first is highly debatable)
Reports: 1 (TOR - 8 S of Elm Creek, KS)

No. of Photos: 293 (will be forthcoming...)