Day 170: VORTEX 2 Appendix
As anyone who has read this blog over the last few weeks knows, VORTEX 2 officially ended on 15 June. However, a small contingent of radar trucks have continued to roam the plains in search of tornadoes. The Shared Mobile Atmospheric Research and Teaching Radar (SMART-R) will continue collecting data for the next few days before returning to Norman early next week.
The image above is a screen shot of SASSI (Situational Awareness for Severe Storms Intercept), which was the communications software used during VORTEX 2. The green overlapping circles in the left portion of the image are the radar lobes in which the SMART-R’s were collecting coordinated data. I have annotated where a possible radar indicated tornado was located. As you can see, it appears that good data was collected!
If you happen to have been chasing this storm tonight (the one near Concordia) and have video and/or any other data and are willing to share it, please contact me directly. Thanks!
Day 166: VORTEX 2 Officially Ends
VORTEX 2 officially ended field campaign operations today. It’s kind of a bitter sweet moment as this project has consumed so much of my life for the past two years. I’ve had the fortune to work with some outstanding individuals in the research community as well as the operational community.
In honor of the last day of VORTEX 2, I thought I would post a map denoting all the towns the armada spent the night during the last two years. This map was created by VOC staff member Kevin Scharfenberg. The blue line outlines the approximate edge to the domain which VORTEX 2 ultimately operated within. The colors of the balloons indicate the number of times the armada stayed in a given town:
- Purple: 6 times
- Red: 5 times
- Yellow: 4 times
- Green: 3 times
- Blue: 2 times
- Cyan: 1 time
Amarillo, TX was the most often stayed town, with 6 visits. North Platte, NE and Hays, KS were in a close second with 5 stays.
Nebraska was the most often stayed in state with 22 nights. North Platte, NE; Ogallala, NE, and Kearney, NE combined for 13 nights, which is nearly the number of nights the armada spent in Texas!
You can view the google maps of this image here.
Day 165: 500 Year Flood in OKC
Today VORTEX 2 operated in western Texas in the Lubbock vicinity. Here, an outflow boundary marked the boundary between extremely warm, moist air to the south and relatively cooler and drier air to the north. Unfortunately, the wind shear aloft was not great for supercell thunderstorms, so thunderstorms had a low probability of what is known as supercell tornadoes. However, these storms did have a lot of wind associated with them. Several mobile mesonets reported wind gusts in excess of 70 mph with at least one recording a gust greater than 80 mph. In addition to the strong winds, numerous gustnadoes were observed along with at least one landspout.
However, these storms in Texas were not the major weather story of the day. For that, we have to look to Oklahoma City, OK where over 11″ of rain has fallen in less than 24 hours. (It is still raining at the time of this writing!) Most of the rain – nearly 9″ of it – fell in around a 6 hour period. As you can imagine, this led to major flooding across the Oklahoma City metro area. Numerous high-water rescues were made today, roadways closed, and houses flooded.
Today’s flooding in Oklahoma City, along with the flooding in Nashville, TN during the weekend of 30 April – 2 May, are referred to as 500 year floods. This does not mean that a flood of this magnitude occurs only once every 500 years. It *is* possible to have two 500 year floods in a single year. What a 500 year flood means is that the probability of a flood of this magnitude occurring during any given year is 0.2%. What is the probability of a city having two 500 year floods occurring in the same year? Well, that’s simply 0.002 * 0.002 = 0.0004%. This would be equivalent to a 250,000 year flood! Yikes! Hopefully this means Oklahoma City won’t have a flood like this again this year – but it remains possible.
In any event, the events of today have underscored why Oklahoma City, OK is known for having some of the most wild weather on earth. In the last 6 months there has been a blizzard, an ice storm, two tornado outbreaks, a multi-million dollar hail storm, and now a 500 year flood. If you live in or around the Oklahoma City, OK area, I sure hope you have an emergency/disaster preparedness plan. If not, you might want to consider creating one…
Day 164: Invest 92L
VORTEX 2 once again operated in the northeast Texas panhandle and eastern Oklahoma panhandle. The armada managed to target a long-lived supercell thunderstorm that produced several (three) tornadoes. This could be a very good dataset, even though the armada was forced to deal with flooded roadways all afternoon. All-in-all, today could end up being one of VORTEX 2′s best days.
While VORTEX 2 was busy tracking tornadoes in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) has been busy tracking an upper-level trough that has moved west off the coast of Africa. This wave is spinning away over extremely warm Atlantic Ocean waters and has the potential to develop into the first named tropical system of the season: Alex. In fact, the NHC has given this storm a 60% chance (High) that it will become a tropical system. We’ll see what tomorrow holds.
Day 163: Heavy Rain Tonight
VORTEX 2 attempted to operate in the Texas panhandle this afternoon on a thunderstorm that produced a short-lived tornado and 6″ diameter hail. The hail was so large that it smashed through the vehicle’s windshield. Yikes! Unfortunately (or maybe in this case fortunately) for VORTEX 2 the thunderstorm weakened substantially before they were able to deploy. Additionally the storm began to turn into a huge thunderstorm complex resulting in a lot of heavy rain.
Several hours later, the heavy rain threat is continuing to increase as the number of thunderstorms increase across the central United States. These thunderstorms are tapping into an extremely moist airmass across the southern United States, so they will be efficient rain makers! This is part of the heavy rain threat forecast by the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (HPC)discussed briefly in last night’s post.
Day 162: Heavy Rain
I do not have a VORTEX 2 updated tonight because my colleagues in the VORTEX 2 Operations Center forced me to take a much needed night off. I really needed it!
With that said, tonight’s blog depicts the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center’s (HPC) 5-day forecast for precipitation. Please note the widespread heavy rain forecast across the central part of the United States. After being outside this evening and experiencing the warm, moist airmass that is in place across the United States, I am pretty sure a forecast like this will come to pass. The tragic events in Arkansas today highlights the need for people to be cognizant of flash flooding. The HPC 5-day forecast certainly seems to indicate that the potential for flash flooding will continue in the near-term. Remember,“Turn Around, Don’t Drown”
Day 161: Oklahoma Heat Burst
Originally I planned to blog tonight about VORTEX 2′s deployment and successful intercept of a supercell and tornado in northeast Colorado. (Ironically, this successful intercept occurred near Last Chance, Colorado!). However, details of how successful the deployment was are still a little sparse. I do know that the tornado was observed by many pieces of the armada, however it will be a few days before we know just how good the data collection actually was. The armada went a long way today – starting in Chadron, Nebraska and going as far south as several miles south of Last Chance, Colorado – so I’m extremely happy for them.
Since I don’t have any good images of the VORTEX 2 deployment, I thought I’d display a meteogram from Beaver, Oklahoma. A meteogram displays a time series of meteorological data for a given station for multiple fields. This meteogram displays temperature (red) and dewpoint (green) in the top panel; sustained wind speed (dark blue), maximum wind gust (light blue), and wind direction (diamonds) in the second panel; surface pressure (brown) in the third panel; accumulated rainful (light green) in the fourth panel; and incoming solar radiation (orange) and approximate maximum possible incoming radiation (grey) in the bottom panel.
This meteogram is special in that it captured a rare atmospheric phenomenon known as a heat burst. In a heat burst the temperature increases rapidly, the air becomes really dry (dewpoint falls), wind speed quickly increases, and often times the pressure changes. All of this occurred at Beaver, OK this evening when an apparent heat burst affected the area. Oklahoma is very lucky to have the Oklahoma Mesonet so that we can record such awesome atmospheric phenomena!
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!
Connect with Patrick!