Red is the new Blue
So............ Saturday, they issue a blue box (severe thunderstorm) and several tornadoes occur...albeit weak ones. Yesterday, they issue a red box and not one tornado warning....and only marginally severe storms. Why such a huge discrepency?
I chased yesterday and stayed home Saturday. :-) Thus my powers as a storm killer is evolving into a large synoptic scale phenomena. I need some sort of super-villian outfit (or super-hero as a defender of the public). LOL!!
Yes, I did chase yesterday but wasn't expecting tornadoes, but thought I might get lucky with a brief spinup and decent storm structure. Plus, my SDS was raging out of control. That along with wanting to test out all of the equipment and technology with something relatively close to home helped push me out the door. Although I really liked my target area of SW OK, things just didn't pan out. The consolation prize was a brief spectacle of impressive CG bolts early in the storms' lives.
I believe that a little too much dry air in the lower levels encouraging cold outflow and higher LCLs combined with very weak instabilities (00Z upper air sounding at OKC revealed < 300 j/kg) and storms moving off the dryline and losing the important surface convergence, all spelled doom for a stormchaser. They quickly became higher based storms. In addition, the unseasonably warm mid level temperatures certainly didn't help matters as strong looking updrafts quickly became mushy and weak looking as they encountered an equilibrium state. The result were premature precipitation dumps close to the updraft base. Ugh.
The good news is that I successfully streamed video on ChaserTV. It worked flawlessly. It would pop up and start streaming quickly after initiating it. Not once did I lose the stream or have to jack with it. This even in some notoriously weak signal spots in SW OK I encountered last year. So, I'm pleased as punch with the new setup. My only complaint is the pixelation of the video with any movement of the camera. But, it settles down pretty quickly once it stabilizes. I'm also experimenting with some tweaks this morning and already see a notable difference. So, next time, it should be a better image on the website. To me, it's a very small tradeoff for stability and reliability.
For future chasing opportunities, things don't look very good for the next couple of weeks...unfortunately. The only good news are some significant beneficial rains for Texas this week. A large upper air trough and upper cyclone is forecast to establish itself along the eastern seaboard. With strong NW flow forecast to establish itself into the GOM, moisture will once again be shunted deep into the tropical zones. This will serve to frustrate any setups that might appear on the distant horizon. Hopefully we'll get some more solid signs of hope for a favorable upper air pattern in the next week with the model runs. I fear though that March may end up being a real dud. That's ok....let's get this annoying upper air pattern over with in time for April. :-)
I chased yesterday and stayed home Saturday. :-) Thus my powers as a storm killer is evolving into a large synoptic scale phenomena. I need some sort of super-villian outfit (or super-hero as a defender of the public). LOL!!
Yes, I did chase yesterday but wasn't expecting tornadoes, but thought I might get lucky with a brief spinup and decent storm structure. Plus, my SDS was raging out of control. That along with wanting to test out all of the equipment and technology with something relatively close to home helped push me out the door. Although I really liked my target area of SW OK, things just didn't pan out. The consolation prize was a brief spectacle of impressive CG bolts early in the storms' lives.
I believe that a little too much dry air in the lower levels encouraging cold outflow and higher LCLs combined with very weak instabilities (00Z upper air sounding at OKC revealed < 300 j/kg) and storms moving off the dryline and losing the important surface convergence, all spelled doom for a stormchaser. They quickly became higher based storms. In addition, the unseasonably warm mid level temperatures certainly didn't help matters as strong looking updrafts quickly became mushy and weak looking as they encountered an equilibrium state. The result were premature precipitation dumps close to the updraft base. Ugh.
The good news is that I successfully streamed video on ChaserTV. It worked flawlessly. It would pop up and start streaming quickly after initiating it. Not once did I lose the stream or have to jack with it. This even in some notoriously weak signal spots in SW OK I encountered last year. So, I'm pleased as punch with the new setup. My only complaint is the pixelation of the video with any movement of the camera. But, it settles down pretty quickly once it stabilizes. I'm also experimenting with some tweaks this morning and already see a notable difference. So, next time, it should be a better image on the website. To me, it's a very small tradeoff for stability and reliability.
For future chasing opportunities, things don't look very good for the next couple of weeks...unfortunately. The only good news are some significant beneficial rains for Texas this week. A large upper air trough and upper cyclone is forecast to establish itself along the eastern seaboard. With strong NW flow forecast to establish itself into the GOM, moisture will once again be shunted deep into the tropical zones. This will serve to frustrate any setups that might appear on the distant horizon. Hopefully we'll get some more solid signs of hope for a favorable upper air pattern in the next week with the model runs. I fear though that March may end up being a real dud. That's ok....let's get this annoying upper air pattern over with in time for April. :-)
posted by Steve Miller TX at 3/10/2009 08:51:00 AM
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