Day 130: High Risk

Posted by on 10 May 2010 | 7 comments

As mentioned yesterday, the forecast for today indicated the atmosphere was primed for a significant severe weather outbreak. The Storm Prediction Center forecast a high risk of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes today, and I can personally attest that there were tornadoes.

Day 130 (a)

Above is a photograph from Dr. Kevin Kloesel, Associate Dean of the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences at the University of Oklahoma. It depicts a developing tornado about 200 yards from the National Weather Center. This tornado, witnessed by me at the VORTEX II Operations Center, eventually tracked east-northeast (indirectly hitting my house; I’m still without power) toward Tecumseh and Seminole, OK. This tornado grew into a fairly large tornado that appears to have claimed several lives.

Below is radar image of the circulation just west of Seminole as the VORTEX II crew tried to collect data.

Day 130 (b)

This is the second tornado I’ve seen in Norman / VORTEX II Operations Center during the two year VORTEX II project. I’ve driven exactly 0 miles for V2 and have seen 2 tornadoes. That is more than most members of the V2 crew.  I wonder if I should share some of my luck…

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  • Bill

    All that work to outfit the chase vehicles, and a tornado nearly hits NWC!

    Perhaps they should leave a pod permanently deployed on the roof. ;-)

  • Lee Kuhlman

    Glad everyone was okay. I work with the Hazardous Weather Testbed team and they were pretty spooked about the tornado being right there.

    On a lighter note, you have drastically increased your MPT (miles per tornado) number. :-)

  • Joseph Martin

    Hopefully they will have your power restored soon. I was in the Enid area yesterday- supercells and tornados can be awe-inspiring, strangely beautiful, but too often tragic. Too bad they all can’t just hit empty fields. Hopefully ya’lls research will save lives someday. Keep up the good work.

    Your track record also suggests that next year around this time you should consider going to Hawaii for a couple of months and give the residents of OKC a tornado break…. :-)

  • http://www.patricktmarsh.com pmarsh

    I love it. Maybe I will do it! However, I’m sure that Hawaii might not like that… :)

  • Michael

    But you’ll love Hawaii

  • Bob

    Why base velocity rather than SRM? Getting rid of that storm motion vector helps a lot. And you’re welcome to bring tornadic supercells out here as far as I’m concerned! :)

  • http://www.patricktmarsh.com pmarsh

    Hi Bob! You ask a very good question. When I first started interpreting radar data, I religiously used Storm-Relative Velocity or Motion (SRV/SRM). However, I quickly found that I could not keep up with all the deviant storm motions on days with a lot of thunderstorms. I decided to put forth the effort to teach myself to interpret the base velocity in such a manner I could see subtle circulations without needing to subtract out a storm motion. This allows me to quickly scan a radar image without changing the storm motion for each individual storm. I hope this make sense!

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