VORTEX II: Day 1
This morning I got out of bed a little before 7 AM and headed into the National Weather Center to prepare the initial weather briefing for VORTEX II. To me this was simply a formality as I’ve been preparing and giving weather briefings to a handful of VORTEX II participants for two weeks now, but to the roughly 100+ scientists affiliated with this project this was the beginning – the beginning of the “great tornado hunt”. As I looked through this morning’s numerical weather prediction models, I realized that there was hardly any chance for severe thunderstorms and tornadoes across the VORTEX II domain so at 9 AM I gave the bad news to the rest of the scientists – based on the forecast, there was no chance of capturing a tornado. Based on this forecast, the V2 steering committee decided to call a “maintenance day” which meant no operations but people should work on getting their equipment ready.
While I can’t go into specifics, it does appear that there might be a better chance of seeing severe thunderstorms and supercells tomorrow. For the safety of the V2 crew, I can’t say where this chance of severe weather might be. In fact, you’ll get that a lot on this blog. The fear is that if people knew the V2 armada would be operating in their area they would be tempted to go out and either try to catch a glimpse of the armada, or worse, follow it. This would prove detrimental to us being able to conduct our research and also pose a safety hazard if the storm change directions rapidly. I can, however, say that the potential for tomorrow does not have a high risk of tornadoes with it, so the V2 crew might use this case as practice. Tuesday and Wednesday actually appear to be the better days for severe weather and the armada is really gearing up for that. Thus, even if the armada does not attempt to collect data tomorrow, there is a good chance they will leave and head toward the target area for Tuesday.
Anyways, I’m still at the VORTEX II Operations Center and am about to head home for the evening. I’ll try to post pictures and more information about the VOC in future posts, but for now, I’m going to head home for dinner. Most nights, I won’t have this luxury!
Feel free to post any questions you might have, and if I can, I’ll answer them.
Happy Mothers Day to all the moms and moms-to-be!
