Day 1 of Argentina chase=WEDGE TORNADO near Santa Rosa!
Having just received an update from Reed, I will make this post using his words, paraphrasing from an email sent a while ago. Attached are photos taken by Scott Currens and some radar images from the tornadic storm. [Note: I have enhanced a few of the photos for contrast, as indicated] Be sure to follow along on the
Live page, as they will be updating with still images as often as technology allows!
Reed says:
"Our first chase day started off with a bang... INSANE down here. The flight Chris and I were on was delayed a few hours, and we arrived at 9 am local time... Whiteneck, Robert, and Bobo were waiting with all the film equipment, and we rented three euro-style chase vehicles, and of course took out full insurance. Dealing with the language barrier was frustrating but hilarious, and we met some local guys here as we were renting our vehicle and they really helped us out. We're telling everyone that we meet "cazador de los tornadoes", and they usually point at us and say 'loco!'.
Our target was WSW of Buenos Aires just east of the Andes, as a strong trough was forecast to slam into Chile at 00z. However, we faced a HUGE hurdle, since I am not the best at driving a stick shift, especially in a busy Latin American city where people drive INSANE! No one adheres to the laws, and people pass in no-pass zones like there is no tomorrow. We stalled out in the middle of the highway several times, and had HUGE difficulty communicating with the toll booth people. Thankfully I had my iPhone i-translator app and was able to translate on the fly, not to mention quickly learning Spanish. Once we got to the main highway west of town, JR fired up the satellite internet in the back of the car, and we noticed on satellite imagery that supercells were already exploding 3-4 hours to our west. ... Eventually we gained visual of our target supercell on the horizon. The pampas are INCREDIBLE -- flatter than even the Texas Panhandle, but with occasional eucalyptus trees and palm trees scattered throughout. Sometimes you forget you're even in Argentina, as it looks like we're cruising after supercells in southwest Kansas. However, the visibility out here puts the U.S. tornado alley to shame, as we could see storms over 100 miles away, and even a tornado from 30-40 miles. The visibility was so superior that it seemed it took forever to get close to our supercell.
... At about 7 pm, we finally intercepted the supercell. Driving up to it, the supercell structure was textbook, but flipped around as a mirror image from Northern Hemisphere supercells. The updraft has striations, inflow bands feeding into the wall cloud from the north -- the Amazon Basin to the north of the Pampas is the moisture/heat source here just like the Gulf of Mexico in the U.S. tornado alley. When we were approaching our storm, we had very limited options except for shady dirt roads, but we had to take the chance to get closer to this storm, so we took a north-south dirt farm road in our rear-wheel drive Euro-style vehicles...and did some Baja off-roading. Now our vehicle is covered in brown mud. As we were punching though the core (from south to north as oppose to north-south like in the U.S.), we gained visual of the rain free base... but then in a matter of 15 minutes our storm completely evaporated! In 15 minutes it went from raging supercell to nothing!
We then meandered on the farm roads and passed through several farming communities. People were riding bikes everywhere and cooking whole pigs on spits, Latin music everywhere. I LOVE this place and am going to establish a TVN headquarters Latin American edition stat.
... Just when we thought our chase was over and the sun was setting, we looked southwest and saw an INCREDIBLE supercell on the horizon near the town of Santa Rosa. We decided to surge south, with the plan of staying the night in Santa Rosa. We finally reached the supercell just north of town an hour after sunset. The low-level jet had intensified rapidly since earlier in the afternoon, just as it does in the U.S. Great Plains just after sunset, but out of the north instead of the south! Chris then looked out the window and spotted a huge lowering/wall cloud... we came to grinding halt just past a grove of trees, and then to our surprise saw a huge wedge tornado on the ground about 10 miles to our west, with a clear slot rotating around the front. The lightning was so frequent it was like we were viewing the tornado in daylight. JR pulled up a radar image just as the tornado was occurring, and the radar image showed a hook echo on the northwest side of the storm. If you flip it upside down it looks exactly like a tornadic supercell would on radar in the U.S. We watched the tornado for several minutes until we got pounded by the core, and realized we were almost out of gas and still 20 miles north of Santa Rosa... so we punched south through the core. Just on the north side of town, we saw flashing lights from fire trucks and police, with huge eucalyptus trees knocked down over the road. We barely made it passed as they were almost blocking the highway, and we cruised in on fumes to the gasolina station.
Our plan is to chase a great setup today, and then return tomorrow to Buenos Aires for a speaking engagement at the Dept of Meteorology."
http://www.tornadovideos.net/component/content/article/36-tornadoes/1106-day-1-of-argentina-chase-wedge-tornado-near-santa-rosa
