VORTEX 2: Day 2
Well, the slim chance for severe thunderstorms didn’t happen (which is what we thought). The armada, however, did decide to leave Norman and head west in preparation for a chance of severe storms tomorrow. They are currently staying in Custer county, Oklahoma. This place was chosen because there are two areas tomorrow the armada might try and target. One area is to the north, where there is better wind shear (change of wind speed and direction with height; which is good for severe thunderstorm development) but there is a lot of warm air above the surface that will act to suppress thunderstorm development during the day. The other area is to the south where the warm air aloft is not quite as warm, but the wind shear is considerably weaker. Since we won’t know more until tomorrow, we split the difference.
In other news, the project is only 2 days old but we already had to make repairs to 2 vehicles. While driving around Norman today, two mobile mesonets (big vans with instruments on the roof) had their instruments damaged. No, they weren’t in an accident, and, no, there wasn’t vandelism. However, Norman has a lot of places where tree limbs hang over the road and two of these tree branches ripped the anemometers off the roof of the mobile mesonets. I’m sure the armada is happy to be out west where there are fewer trees to worry about!
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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