VORTEX2

Last Updated: 3:48 PM GMT on August 27, 2010 — Last Comment: 1:14 PM GMT on December 21, 2011

	Dry Spell...

Posted by: Vortex2, 8:23 PM GMT on June 04, 2010

The past few weeks have been pretty inactive for Vortex 2 in terms of severe weather targets. We have seen more U.S. national monuments lately than tornados. Last Thursday we were able to visit Devils Tower in Wyoming, which appeared in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was a breathtaking sight to see and we were able to climb up part way to take in a gorgeous view of the sunset. The next day we had a down day and were able to go visit Mount Rushmore. The monument itself is spectacular, but it was much more commercialized than Devils Tower.

Tuesday was the first day of operations we had in almost a week and with the SPC marking a moderate risk for severe weather in the central plains the Vortex 2 project had very high hopes for intercepting a tornadic supercell. The day started off promising, but the outflow boundary, which the mobile mesonets measured as being 12-14 degrees Celsius cooler than the environment, undercut the target cells and our target became a huge mess of storm clusters covering half the state of Nebraska. We went from chasing these storms to being chased by them within half an hour. The only way we were able to evade the massive hail core was to escape south into Kansas.

Yesterday I was called up to replace one of the Texas Tech students in a sticknet vehicle. It was my first time in a sticknet this year so I was very excited to have a change of pace for deployments. It was a lot more physically exerting than I could have imagined and we also encountered pea size hail on my first deployment. Overall, it was a lot of fun and I hope to partake in sticknet deployment once again before the end of the project. The day started off with a very isolated cell that was tornado warned based on doppler radar, but not for very long. By the end of operations there was a huge cluster of cells, none of which had features capable of producing a tornado. However, this was probably the best looking storm we have seen in the past week and the sticknet line we deployed collected valuable data.

Today we are looking at targeting Eastern Nebraska or Eastern Kansas. The terrain out here should cooperate with us, but the prospects of seeing a supercell today are very low. Actually, the best place to be today is back in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which the SPC has given a five percent probability of seeing tornados today.

Ari Preston

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1. tornadofan 9:02 PM GMT on June 04, 2010
What is the last scheduled date for Vortex2? Member Since: April 5, 2007 Posts: 83 Comments: 12345

2. Vortex2 2:53 AM GMT on June 05, 2010
The Vortex2 project will conclude on June 15 Member Since: April 30, 2009 Posts: 31 Comments: 13

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About Vortex2:

This blog documents the experiences of five University of Michigan Atmospheric Oceanic and Space Sciences undergrads participating in VORTEX2.

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