VORTEX 2: Day 12
Today was a travel day. The armada spent last night in Alliance, Nebraska scattered about four hotels. While the idea is to target the same general area tomorrow, the armada moved to a bigger city in hopes of getting everyone in the same hotel. Tomorrow is about about as bad (for supercells and tornadoes) as we have had on any day so far.
Some more statistics on just how bad this is…
Typically the week of 17 May through 23 May is one of, if not the, most active severe weather week of the year. On average, the Storm Prediction Center issues a combined 30 severe thunderstorm and tornado watches during this seven day period. The lowest number of watches issued was in 1984 when only 10 were issued, and 1989 was the most active with 59. So far in 2009 a grand total of 0 watches have been issued. We have 2 days left to go in the week and it doesn’t appear that severe weather will be a threat during these next 2 days. In fact, it doesn’t appear that there will be much of a severe weather threat over the next 10 days at this point. Simply put, what is currently going on in the atmosphere is amazing.
Anyways, if something doesn’t change soon, VORTEX II will be in even more trouble than they are now.
About Patrick
Patrick Marsh is a Ph.D. student at the University of Oklahoma's School of Meteorology. He earned a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics and Physics (cum laude) from the University of Arkansas in 2005 and a Masters of Science in Meteorology in 2007. In addition to working on his doctorate, Patrick serves as the National Severe Storms Laboratory Liaison to the Hazardous Weather Testbed where his research interests lie in working with operational forecasters, data mining, data visualization, and all things high-impact weather. For more about Patrick's work, check out his complete CV!
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