Saturday, May 7, 2011

My first Tornado! May 7th, 2011 at 4:35pm


This video does contain one swear.



It was the perfect end to a long weekend at University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. I was attending the State Science Fair Exhibition in which my project received second place. I had checked the models a few days earlier, anticipating a nice hail storm to witness at the least. I have a fairly large passion for hail and my last experience was about two years ago. I practically ran out of the ceremony when my Blackberry RADAR had updated and I saw a nice cell forming to my Northwest. It was around 3:50pm when my good friend Erica called me informing me of the same cell that had recently gone Severe Thunderstorm warned for its hail. I started paying closer attention to the towers going up, but it took another five minutes of driving to spot the upper and outer bands of my storm.
 I was growing with excitement by the minute! My sister began to throw a fit about her some technology function she was having, causing us to pull over and lose us precious time. Although now, I think her fit may have gifted me a tornado!
Around 4:15pm we started heading west on a road I can no longer recall. That is when I caught my first look of the monsters base! 
I saw two downdraft areas (rain and hail) and figured the spot where I thought there would be a lowering. At 4:20pm we turned North onto Highway 356 and I had a farther lookout on this storm. I figured that this second downdraft I had seen may have been pulled along with the storms RFD (rear flank downdraft). The area I had chosen earlier now seemed to have a slight lowering. I couldn't tell for sure because my mom, now freaking out, refused to open the windows. Thinking back on it, I only saw one stroke of lightning!
Near 4:25pm I could now see a defined lowering and Erica was nowcasting me. 

The storm was oddly enough running south easterly, parallel to the road I was traveling. My luck couldn't have been better! Within the following five minutes SCUD began to rotate around my lowering, which I could now classify a rotating wall cloud.
I had a strong feeling that this storm could produce soon. I tried calling it in to the NWS (National Weather Service) but oddly enough, no one answered the phone. Thank god there was a SKYWARN spotter that had seen the same thing further north and was able to call it in. I would estimate that the wall cloud was about ten miles to my NNE when I got the news it had gone tornado warned. 
At 4:36pm a funnel started to descend horizontally from the wall cloud and that's when I started filming. It took my breath away and I could not shut up. My mom was no longer able to take anything I said into account and started spazzing out. This was probably triggered when I told Erica,"This thing is really wrapping up. It looks to be...an elephant trunk tornado!" Within the next few minutes, you can hear the havoc in the car when I was leaning across the seat, because my sister was unwilling to trade position in fear of not being able to watch her movie. You know when out of nowhere your seat belt suddenly chooses to strangle you and the only thing you can do is rebuckle it? While I had the unfortunate luck of that happening and my mom concerned for my safety would not stop screaming at me although I had buckled up long before she stopped yelling. 
My mom had refused to pull over from the beginning, leaving me without the crucial knowledge of of which direction this rapidly descending funnel was moving in. According to my mom moving north as fast as the speed limit allows of a south easterly moving storm would lead us out of danger. That would've worked (and thank God it did) if we weren't south of this storm. I then started to grow concerned realizing we were about 2 miles from the funnel that could possibly drop down right on top of our car. 
4:39PM on May 7th, 2011 was the most amazing moment of my life as I watched a little ball of dust and soot be thrown into the air by my beautiful, silver-gray, horizontal, elephant trunk tornado. It had touched down in Rantoul, IL just SW of where two highways intersected.
Soon after I called Brandi to try and get a hold of a different NWS telephone number. At this point the rotation and funnel (the tornado had lifted) could only be seen out of the sunroof of the minivan. I lost visual of it within the minute.  I called my friends that were down the highway further south of me and tried to figure where they were. That was the scariest part of my experience. I had now lost all visual site of the funnel/tornado! As soon as the phone connected to Cara, my friend, she told me they had just entered some heavy rain and hail. WHAT A RELIEF. I could see the downdraft she was in from the rear window and saw there was enough space where they would not enter the rotation.
This concludes my first (and hopefully not last) tornado.









Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Chicago Blizzard of February 1st and 2nd 2011

Just over 20 inches of snow was recorded on February 1st and 2nd this year. It cost a staggering $38 million (huffingtonpost.com) for Chicago to sort through its after effects. The NWS employees had already began forecasting the blizzard quite a few days in advance. They sent out the first blizzard warning hours before the first flake fell. Still, people ignored them and got themselves stranded on Lake Shore Drive and their rural streets driving out to buy things they should have had prepared. 

Photo Courtesy of Eddy Weiss
This storm system brought snowdrifts seven feet tall because of winds blowing up to 60 mph, making it close to impossible to get an exact snowfall measurement. Even Jim Cantore positioned in downtown Chicago and was treated with some astonishing thundersnow and hail pellets mixed in with the snow! Thundersnow is a very rare occurrence, but I was able to see and hear five cases of it myself just that night!

I remember looking at the forecast models at least four days before the epic event. They didn’t make much sense to me at the time but I was able to understand that the atmosphere had some big plans for us! My mom, of course, had her doubts. She said, “Oh, it’s not going to happen. Watch we'll just get two inches and that’s it. You know how these weather people are.”  Needless to say this highly upset me and I practically printed out every possible document to convince her, but no such luck.  I told her to just wait and see.

After what seemed weeks of waiting, the day –February 1st, 2011- had finally arrived. School went on as usual, even though I was freaking out about the upcoming storm. As soon as school let out, I raced home and went straight to the computer to see the new models and any new updates. The storm system had already exploded to the west and south of Chicago. It seemed to be moving north and wrapping upwards into the low-pressure center.

The snow began in my area at around 5/6:00 pm. It was very light and dry, but there were very strong sustained winds that dropped the visibility very low. I had TWC on, camera ready, computer set, and IPod Radars charged and good to go. Three short hours later, the winds picked up to very strong gust, most likely 60mph, and a heavier snowfall. At one point small hail pellets started falling, and me being the weather nerd I am, ran out to greet them! By now there was at least 5 inches of snow on the ground, with pavement showing in some places, and one foot snow drifts in others!

           
     

As midnight approached, I had my first thundersnow experience. My mom headed off to bed and I stayed up to embrace this Blizzard…from inside my house and window of course! I fell asleep around 4am on Wednesday, February 2nd to the sounds of footage being replayed by TWC.


I woke up again to see snow falling in clumps! There was at least 10 inches dropped from the last time I had looked. Snow was everywhere, but higher in some places due to the wind pushing it around all night. I could only see out half of my window, so I ventured outside. I could’ve jumped off the staircase into the snow, and still be a few feet off the ground! These snowdrifts were up to 8 or 9 feet in just my backyard! Unfortunately, we had to also shovel through all this mess! A good five hours later and three shovels and two snow blowers we were free!

This is an event not many will forget, and all children will hope for to happen again soon!







Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Chasercon Experience 2011

Chasercon 2011 was undoubtedly one of the best experiences of my life. The annual storm chasing convention allowed me to meet new friends, learn efficient ways of forecasting, and expand new horizons. Chasercon is a three day event located in the Red Lion Hotel in Denver, CO. This is a timeline of my Chaser con experience.

Friday 2/18/11

  • 5pm- My mom and I had just completed a near 13 hour journey from airport to airport and had finally landed in Denver, CO. A shuttle bus picked us up, courtesy of the Red Lion Hotel. When we walked through the front doors of our hotel, I couldn't believe my eyes! It was a storm chaser's wonderland! We checked in and went up into our rooms to freshen up.
  • 6pm- The first stop was the vendor booths! There I met Roger Hill and organizations such as Baron, weathertap.com, SKYWARN, photographers, chaserTV, Unpredictable Weather Guys, SevereStudios.com, Find the tornado.com, Tornadovideos.net, and SilverliningTours.com. I met a number of amazing people, and I started introducing myself as the "backyard Storm Chaser".
  • 8pm to 12am- Jon Davies was offering a Severe Forecasting Class, so of course I took up the opportunity.  It was probably the most intense class I had ever been in! I f I had not been such a weather nerd for the past 3 years, I would have been lost in the first five minutes. At the end of the night, I had taken 20+ pages of notes. The class was amazing and I enjoyed every second of it.Saturday 2/19/11

  • 8am- Breakfast consisted of two coffees and adrenaline for the upcoming day. As we were walking down to the Conference room to start the day's long list of presentations, we passed by many people all of them enjoying themselves (this includes me saying "Hi." ever so casually to Reed Timmer!), and then there was my mom. She brought along two books and her computer, spotted a couch and stayed there for the remainder of the day. She did not appreciate me forcing her to stay up and complete the forecasting class with me. (At one point my mom started to say that the pattern on the rug looked like wind barbs!)
  • 8am to 9am- Dr. Karen Kosiba was the first presenter. She talked about the amazing Goshen County Tornado of 2009. VORTEX2 (Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2) was on this particular twister and was able to document its entire life cycle. Dr. Kosiba also discussed the 2010 season of VORTEX2's adventures and intercepts. 
  • 9am to 10am- Jon Davies' presentation talked about how outflow boundaries in storms and it's effect on tornadoes. It was very informative and it cleared many questions in my head.
  • 10:15am to 10:30am- We had a short break in which I checked on my mom, had some more coffee, and recharged my camera. During this break I also won an Accu Rite Weather Station!
  • 10:30am to 11:30am- Mike Bettes gave a wonderful presentation on TWC's (The Weather Channel) great tornado hunt and scored the Goshen County Tornado (same as VORTEX2). He also discussed the ratings of TWC when there was a "normal" day and when disaster strikes.
  • 11:30am to 1:30pm- There was a three hour intermission to do whatever we pleased. My mom and I headed down to the Cafe where we had lunch. I met Tiffany, Curt, Terry, and Reed there and struck up a great conversation with them. I then wandered off to the vendor booths and talked to the amazing hosts; Roger Hill and Tim Samaras some more. I have to say it was overwhelming meeting some of the best chasers in the world!
  • 1:30pm to 2:30pm- The amazing Dr. Greg Forbes of TWC gave a enlightening presentation on the severe weather of 2010.
  • 2:30pm to 3:30pm- Reed Timmer gave a funny and fantastic presentation on TVN's (TornadoVideos.Net) chase season. It included great media, Discovery's Stormchasers, and their research on tornadoes including graphs from the Horizontal RADAR. 
  • 3:30pm to 3:45pm- Another short break where Tiffany introduced me to Justin!
  • 3:45 to 4:45 pm- Dr. Yvette Richardson gave a presentation on her belonging to VORTEX2. I thought it was very well put and I hope to be one of her students when I finally reach college!
  • 4:45pm to 6:30pm- My mom and I went up to our room to recharge (both ourselves and cameras). I got ready for the Banquet dinner and quickly changed into a new outfit. I soon discovered I was way overdressed. I spent the remainder of my time talking to (and meeting) Brian P., Scott, Kevin, Colt, Isaac, Justin, Curt,Tiffany, Reed, and may others. 
  • 6:30pm to 9:00pm- My mom and I sat down and enjoyed delicious food and , of course, more coffee! The lights slowly began to fade as we awaited the infamous Tim Marshall presentation! It lived up to my expectations and much higher! It involved many cartoons, media, puns, and jokes only storm chasers would get and yet it left everyone (including hotel staff) laughing. It was ingenious. I am counting down until next years!
  • 9:00pm to 12:00 am- The rest of the night was dedicated to videos of fellow storm chasers.I met up with Scott again and he introduced me to Tim Marshall. We soon found a table and sat down. As I looked around my new table I saw Angie, and Justin and THE Dr. Greg Forbes  was sitting across from me. As I was about to introduce myself the first video began. I couldn't find the time in between, but that is alright since I had Scott explaining to me more advanced storm structure than I knew of before. After a while we parted ways and I ran into Brian and his Grandma and we watched videos until it was time to depart to our rooms. 
Sunday 2/20/11

  • 8:00am to 9:00am- Presentations started off with two cups of coffee. Steve Hamilton gave an informative presentation on Orographics, in which I learned quite a bit. It helped explain yet more questions I had! 
  • 9:00am to 10:00am- The vendor booths seemed like the place to go and I met Paul S. there and walked around to every booth double checking I had had my mom buy everything I wanted.
  • 10:15am to 11:00am- Tom Magnuson, a NWS employee, setup a wonderful presentation on the collaboration between the local NWS offices and storm chasers. 
  • 11:00am to 12:00pm- Dr.Greg Forbes gave another amazing presentation on how he made the TOR:CON index and his severe weather forecasting methods. 
  • 12:00 to 1pm- Chasercon is wrapping up with only a NWS SKYWARN program to complete the day.  My mom and I headed off to the Cafe for one last lunch, and we see Dr. Greg Forbes there! There I formally introduced myself, as I had done many times that weekend. He was extremely kind and seemed to take interest in our conversation. We wished each other the best of luck and went our separate ways. Justin stuck around with me for the SKYWARN program. It was a bit different than the one back at home, but none the less fun! 

In conclusion Chasercon let me meet so many new friends, more than discussed here, and help me see the world of chasing from the inside looking out. A chance not many people get and one I am extremely thankful for! I can't wait until next year!


Sunday, May 1, 2011

Welcome!


Welcome to my blog. I have chosen this media to express my thoughts about weather research, to share my feelings during the aftermath of tragedies like we have seen in Alabama and the surrounding states, and to post my forecasts.


You are welcome to visit my FaceBook Page, but it is here that I will continue to update you, share with you and perhaps even teach you...

Past Forecasts

These are some forecasts I had from the month of April 2011. These forecasts are also under my Facebook notes. The dark blue line is my forecast area. The red dots are the tornadoes. 
If you want the details, please e-mail me!