VORTEX 2: Day 20

Posted by pmarsh on 29 May 2009 | Comments Off

Well the armada spent the night in Topeka, KS last night because the thought was that operations would be in northern MO into southern IA today.  However, when the armada awoke, the cold front was farther south than thought meaning any storms would most likely form in northern MO and then move quickly into the extremely hilly terrain of central MO, where the armada can’t collect very good data.  As a result armada decided to take a chance and chase storms in southern Nebraska…even though the low-level moisture was less in this region.

The armada arrived in Lincoln, NE before 2PM and decided they needed to keep going west.  They first headed toward York, then Grand Island, then Elm Creek in an attempt to get to the longitude of thunderstorm initiation.  Eventually they realized that storms would not develop near them and they would have to head toward Ainesworth, NE and intercept thunderstorms moving SE in the dry air.

This storm looked really good for a while on radar (in terms of reflectivity) but was extremely high based.  Furthermore, the storm was struggling to maintain a vertical updraft in a region of high shear.  All of this led to the thunderstorm briefly reaching severe criteria before dissipating…shortly after the armada got into position to intercept it.

The armada is presently heading toward tonight’s hotel.  Tomorrow appears to be a down day for the armada to do a review of previous operations.  The armada is anticipating returning to operations on Sunday.