VORTEX2

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

	Driving, driving and more driving. And... HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZAC!

Posted by: Vortex2, 3:06 PM GMT on June 07, 2010

Hello all, from the Nebraska/Iowa border! We are nearing the final week of Vortex2, which ends June 15th, so there is certainly a renewed sense of urgency within the group to ensure the best data collection. Overall, the group has moved up the departure time for each morning in order to reach areas that may have previously been out of our range.

Friday, I was moved to Texas Tech's StickNet team, which was particularly exciting for me. I'd never worked in those vehicles, as Michigan was responsible for their Mobile Mesonet team back in 2008 the last time I was a part of the Michigan team. The conditions were not particularly good for the V2 crew. After driving towards Kearney, where our hotel was for the night, we drove to capture some potential targets about 90 miles away, only for them to fizzle and us to head back to the hotel.

On Saturday, many of us thought we were going to be down or traveling and were quite shocked when car leaders were informed we were going to drive to Iowa immediately. We probably set a team record for getting ready and leaving the parking lot. The steering committee had seen that there was potential for supercells and tornadoes east of our location. However, the night before, they thought the area of highest potential would be out of reach, into Illinois. Upon looking at model runs the following morning, the steering committee realized the targets would be in range, near central Iowa. So we immediately got on the road. As we approached Des Moines, a few cells began to fire ahead of the cold front. There were a couple of cells we considered targeting, and we finally decided to select one. The StickNet vehicle I was in began to deploy along a north-south road, but the storm wasn't able to organize and was eventually overtaken by the cold front. A discussion by members of the steering committee (Paul Markowski and Yvette Richardson of Penn State) after the deployment alluded to the warm upper level temperatures and mediocre lapse rates that ultimately led to its demise.

Yesterday (Sunday), saw us again surprised with another deployment, this time on the other side of Nebraska near Ogallala (best name ever?). So after driving for several hours from Omaha, we targeted two storms nearby. The first storm had some issues sustaining organization, but we did manage to get some good StickNet drops in. We missed the meso with our final drop, but we were able to get another opportunity with the next storm. It was to the northwest of the first storm and was tornado warned. We had picked up all of our probes and redeployed them on US30 to the west of Ogallala. The other StickNet vehicle in the area deployed more probes north of the city and we were happy to find out after deployment that our probes were centered around the meso! So hopefully this means we have some excellent data coming out of this deployment!

Today looks to be another active day, though with less driving than we've seen in previous days. Hopefully we'll have another successful day, especially as it is the birthday of my fellow blogger, Zac! Until next time, I hope everyone has a great beginning to the week!!

Jen

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1. jerseycityjoan 4:32 PM GMT on June 12, 2010
Thanks for the writeup. I hope you've all been learning a lot -- and having fun along the way, too! Member Since: September 29, 2001 Posts: 0 Comments: 120

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

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