Final chase days

Observations of America part 2

Here's part 2 of a slightly tongue in cheek set of observations made on my travels across the southern States: 

Extra large toilet seats in McDonalds achieves nothing except encouraging obesity

BBQ flavoured Pringles taste different. I am yet to decide which is superior.

Free refills of soft drinks are possibly the best thing invented. Ever.

All roads are very straight and therefore boring. It's now easy to understand why Americans don't make very good cars, there is no fun to be had in motoring here.

Americans can't be any good at sport. After all how can you have a World Series where only one country competes. 

American road signs are not helpful. Telling me the number of the road means nothing if I don't know where it is going.

Breakfasts in roadside hotels are awesome.

Final chase day

With nothing much going on yesterday was spent trying to get a tan by a beautiful lake in Kansas. It was super hot, and a great way to spend a down day.

Today on the other hand is looking anything but quiet. It is sobering to think, especially after seeing the destruction in Dallas a few days ago that by this time tomorrow potentially hundreds of people will have lost their homes, and the death toll could well exceed that of a few days ago. There will be severe storms, there will be large hail and there will be tornadoes. The best that anyone can hope for is that the worst of it occurs in a very remote rural area. That kind of prediction however is impossible, even this close to the event.

Continued 24hrs later

So sadly the initial hype of yesterday didn't really materialise for us. Tornadoes were recorded but they were never on the part of the storm we decided to go after. It was almost certainly the most frustrating day I've had out here. Up until now we have been blessed with having made decisions that have meant we have been on the right storms at the right time. Sadly yesterday other factors had to be considered, primarily not wanting to get drawn too far north, so as to be able to get to the airport on time today. As a result it was decided that we would pursue a cell that was making its way north across the Oklahoma border, however we struggled to get in position for it and for what ever reason it never really got going, despite looking promising for a time. The decision not to follow a cell to the north proved to be a mistake as it soon started producing several tornadoes across rural parts of Kansas, footage of which even made it onto the BBC News website. It was an incredibly frustrating way to end a trip which otherwise had been exciting, fun and fascinating, perhaps made even more frustrating by the fact that the forecast for the next couple of days looks extremely promising. It is pretty disappointing to be having to leave without having spotted the ultimate in storm chasing; a tornado. I guess it just means I have an excuse to have to come back and do it all again, sooner rather than later!

I'll leave you with some final photos of the past few days. The trip has been truly humbling in terms of being able to experience nature at its most violent, extreme, unpredictable and even deadly. I leave The Plains with a new found respect and love for my subject (something which had naturally been eroded somewhat with the pressures of final year exams). Like it or not, whatever the weather, there will always be 'winners' and 'losers', as I have seen being able to stay one step ahead is something that can make all the difference. 

Day 7 Don't flash: We're all tired!

Today has been reasonably quiet across much of the plains. One storm had a tornado warning on it, but this was the remnants of yesterday's monster drifting across Louisiana. We decided to leave this one as it was never going to be as impressive as yesterday, would send us in the wrong direction for where we wanted to be the next few days and apparently the terrain is far from ideal for chasing. As a result we've spent the day in north west Nebraska chasing a very slowing moving line of multi cellular storms. A couple of cells had severe warnings on for a time but never for particularly long.

One of the good things about this system was the clearly defined outflow boundary that was visible on radar. So we ended up spending a large part of the day playing with that. It was really cool to feel the wind change from being warm and rushing into the storm to suddenly changing direction and feeling very cold as it rushed out of the storm. Sadly we could only do this for so long, as the road network in this part of the world is far from ideal with very few routes to choose from.

Radar sweep showing the MCS and the outflow boundary

 With the storm back building we headed south on one of the few roads available to us in that direction and were able to get some pretty cool photos, especially with the sun setting. Eventually as the sun dipped further west we were blessed with a beautiful sunset and a rainbow, all framed with the constant flash of cloud to ground lightning.

We're now heading north ready for tomorrow, with the storm providing its final breaths of lightning. After the devastation of this time yesterday it feels strangely idyllic and except from the wind noise of the car, extremely peaceful. 

Who knows what tomorrow will bring, hopefully another decent day!

Day 7 Dallas gets hit

So last night seems to have made headlines around the world. We had received reports of hail the size of grapefruit and a tornado supposedly a mile wide whilst in out hotel room. We had just got back from collecting our car and a quick visit to Walmart for food etc and had been caught in an area of outflow, but as we'd expected to only have been a short time we hadn't bothered taking our chasing gear so had no idea just how big the storm had become or where it was heading, sadly the Dallas rush hour and road works put paid to the notion of a quick trip and a valuable lesson was learnt!

There were several storms around, 3 of which had tornado warnings on around the Dallas area last night, by this morning there were 5 confirmed tornadoes and 2 suspected, with (at the most recent count) hundreds injured and 6 people killed, a figure which is expected to rise today as rescue teams continue there work. The area hit seems to be residential and the weather deteriorated during the rush hour and was at its peak during the hours of darkness, which will have no doubt contributed to the numbers injured.

A radar sweep from last night, the red boxes indicate tornado warned storms and our location (hotel) the blue circle. This period was not the most intense but gives you an idea of where the storms were in the city and the number of cells out there.

As much as I am here to storm chase, and by all accounts last night was a big'un, chasing through a city as big as Dallas during rush hour would have been far from ideal. Whilst we all get gleeful at the thought of large hail, strong winds and tornadoes none of us enjoy the fact that these things devastate homes, and turn people's lives upside down forever in a matter of seconds. You could say it is quite a macabre fascination. Either way we were lucky, staying on the northern side of the city we missed the larger cells, something that can only be attributed to pure luck. 

Today we are heading north from Dallas to the Kansas area. As I write we are driving through Oklahoma City. The forecast for this afternoon is fairly marginal, and all quite high based. That's said the forecast for yesterday wasn't great, certainly giving no indication as to what was to kick of later in the day, so we will see! Even if there isn't much, we should at least be in a great position for tomorrow!

Day 3-6 all quiet

With nothing to chase the past few days have been spent seeing what's on the ground and what's been to the stars rather than what's happening in the skies immediately over our heads! Day 3 was spent at Todd's house near Corpus Christi and after a slow start to the day we headed to the beach and enjoyed the afternoon sun, and the evening tucking into Mexican food, and Texan beer!

The following day we headed out to Huston and spent the afternoon watching a baseball game between the Huston Astros and the Texas Ranges, from Dallas. It was a convincing win for the Rangers, but a pleasant afternoon, and by the end of the game I think I was starting to get a rough idea as to what was going on!

Minute Maid Park, home of the Huston Astros

After spending the night at Chris' parents home, we headed over to Galveston Island, finding out a little bit about the towns history, especially the impact of a big hurricane in 1900 (well what else would you expect a bunch of weather geeks to do), and enjoying the local sea food, which was excellent, all washed down with the local beer, Shinner.

Yesterday we started to make our way back to Dallas so that we could meet the two Hannah's this evening. On the way we passed through Huston, so made a stop at the NASA Space Centre. 

Huston Mission Control, used for all the Apollo Missions and the early Space Shuttle Flights (up until 1992). The ISS Mission Control Centre is directly on the floor below.

A mock up of the ISS, used for training and troubleshooting

Space vehicle development part of the Orion Program, NASA's future manned space programme.

The Saturn V rocket, scheduled for use on the Apollo 18 mission. The mission was later scrapped due to budget cuts.

After a night spent in Dallas we said goodbye to the two Chris', who are flying back to the UK today. The weather over the next few days seems to be improving, the weekend especially looks like it could be quite promising, with good conditions likely to continue into next week. Typically I fly out of the plains to Boston on Sunday! I guess it's the fickle nature of the weather that's part of the fascination, and hopefully the next few days should be good enough to make up for it!

Day 2: Fire and Ice

So I hear there has been some hail back home today? Hmmmm, we'll see about that!

We started the day in pretty much the perfect spot, so hung around waiting for things to kick off. Around 1400 we decided to head towards Rocksprings, sadly the gods were conspiring against us and we ended up on the side of the road needing to change a tyre. Frustratingly there wasn't anywhere level enough to be able to get the car jacked up high enough to get the wheel off so we were forced to hobble into Rocksprings and find a garage to get the wheel replaced.

By this time we had lost a fair amount of time, but storms were starting to pop up to our south so thats where we headed.  Sadly they weren't particularly organised and pretty messy, so picking a storm to go after was more a case of which ever one we can get in position for rather than what one is looking best! To get to it we punched the core, at this time there was nothing more than very heavy rain. As we got to the south side we quickly encountered some strong and gusty winds which was kicking up a lot of dust which looked like it had some rotation inside it, possibly forming a landspout for a time. We followed this storm for the rest of the afternoon and evening. Further down the road we came pretty close to finding ourselves amongst some hail that was larger than golf balls and would have almost done some pretty serious damage to the car! It was a pretty close call, and we were within a Km of getting smashed, but a decision from Todd to hang back a couple of minutes certainly made the difference between losing the windscreen and keeping everything in one piece!

How close we came to hitting the core berore we stopped, our location circled in blue, and the road is the dark blue line.

Golf ball (and larger) hail.

Hail shredding signs, as well as completely shredding trees and smashing windows.

We ended up following the storm as it moved eastwards, with some reports suggesting the size of the hail increasing upto that of a baseball! The landscape here is very much dominated by oil and gas exploitation, and with the light fading quickly the excess fumes being burnt off just added to the drama of the view. We had set a course to role into the town of Three Rivers just after the storm had passed and try and find some more massive hail stones. However just outside the town (and probably fortunately for the locals) the storm died and produced nothing more than heavy rain and flash flooding, a slightly disappointing way to end another good day!

Radar before it hits Three Rivers, just as it started to die, you can see how it's weakened since the previous radar shot above.

Day 1, chase 1.

After meeting up with Chris, Chris and Todd we headed west from Dallas towards towards Abilene, where the dry line was and the prospect of some stuff to chase. We pretty much got straight onto a storm and was able to chase it for a short while and for a time it was looking pretty good with a tornado warning being issued on it at one point. However another cell cut off the development of this first one and it quickly started to die. After a quick stop to get a last couple shots we took off after our second cell of the day. Although no tornado warning was issued on this one we  chased it for quite a while and it had some very large hail reports associated with it and a great green tinge to the clouds. After chasing for a while it appeared to be weakening so we decided to try and punch the core and get ourselves amongst some big hail (upto ping pong ball size). By the time we got on a road that we could intercept the core the storm had really died and sadly was producing nothing  but heavy rain. Whilst still looking photogenic we were low on fuel, and the best of the action appeared to be further south, so that's where we headed.

The days first storm

The second storm, shortly before it started to decay, showing the green tinge to the cloud.

Mammatus cloud

A rapid pit stop in Brady and it was time to chase the third cell of the day, along with every other chaser in Texas converging on this one cell, it was looking pretty impressive. Sadly as we moved further south the topography became less favourable, more hilly and bigger vegetation. We finally found a spot where we could get a decent view, complete with lightning bolts touching the ground all around us, making leaving the car a non starter. The base of the cell was looking even more impressive, and with another tornado warning in force it looked like we might be about to hit the jackpot on day 1! Sadly we had to move at this point so continued on along the road in an attempt to find another vantage point, but with the light fading we had to find somewhere to stick the car and try and ride the thing out. Baseball sized hail and windscreens don't tend to mix very well! After a couple of false starts we ended up under a hotel awning, and with the tornado warning sirens wailing faintly in the distance we waited. When the hail arrived it wasn't quite baseball sized but a couple were getting on for golf balls. One blokes windscreen didn't make it and got smashed in.

Video of the hail to follow.

For the geekier, below is a couple of radar scans/model outputs from yesterday. Below shows the CAPE levels from around lunch time. To put this into some context, in the UK CAPE (CAPE being a measure of instability) of 1000 J/Kg would be a lot, you can see we're upto 4x that level yesterday.

Today's forecast from the SPC seems even more positive than yesterday, so we'll see what turns up!

Day0 LHR to Dallas via Atlanta

1800 - Atlanta Airport Domestic Terminal

So it's now 1800 local time and 2300 back in the UK it's fair to say that things are catching up with me! I have no doubt that just getting to tonight's hotel is going to be an emotional experience! The flight over the Atlantic whilst uneventful, was emotional in itself! The combination of a busy few weeks recently, and what I think must be the first stages of Man Flu made for a very uncomfortable journey, and the food offered by Delta could do with some considerable improvements. Nevertheless we finally touched down here in Georgia for a quick stop over, getting through Immigration was not as bad as I had prepared myself for, I think when you tell people the purpose of your visit is to chase one of the most powerful forces of nature on the planet they immediately feel sympathetic for the individual they see as a bit of a fruit cake (no doubt one or two of the few people that could be bothered to read this will agree with that assessment)! Regardless it was a pleasant surprise.

A few quick observations of America so far:

Everything is big. Small is not an option. Hardly the most surprising statement I admit but when all you're after is a small bottle of something to wash an ibuprofen down (did I mention the Man Flu?) and the smallest you can find is nearly 600ml just seems a tad unnecessary.

American Diet Coke tastes minging. A disappointing first purchase on American soil.

I have already been patronised by every female shop assistant that I have come across for saying 'cheers' in the place of 'thank you'. I swear one of them even described it as 'cute' to her friend as I walked away. Threaders.

American Kettle Chips are inferior to British Kettle Chips (2nd disappointing purchase).

Everyone is very polite. The whole time. Without exception, which is nice.

2230-Dallas

Arrived. Bed.