Hi all,
It has been an interesting few days for us. We drove east yesterday afternoon after doing some washing and some banking to meet up with Jimmy, Brad and the two foreigners (Andre – Solvenian and Esa – Finnish) who were staying in Lindsay about 80mi away. The only problem was, some solid pulse storms developed over the border in Oklahoma just as we got to Lindsay so Chris and I gave chase. There was some low level easterly flow of about 15knts and this allowed for some minor organization of these storms. With the upper level low quite close by, the mid/upper levels were quite cold. We got quite a few rumbles of thunder near Burneyville before we headed a little bit west and then south back across the Red River into Oklahoma where we got another nice little pulse storm which put out a nice little lowering. We stopped a little further down the road and were watching the storm from about 3mi (5km) away and there were distant rumbles of thunder. In the distance to the east there were some nice towering cumulus going up so I turned around to look and then FLASH…BOOOOOM. A CG hit the next ridge over from us. A clear-air CG had busted out of the storm we were watching, gone over our heads and hit behind us (well…in front of me as I had my back to the storm). Needless to say, we were back in the car in a flash…(pun intended).
Eventually the action diminished at around peak heating time (typical of such events) and we headed back to Lindsay to meet up with the others. We spent the afternoon talking storms and watching DVD’s and then went out for dinner. We stayed in a nearby motel and then met up again this morning and decided to move to northern Oklahoma with the intention of going to the Twister (movie) museum. Jimmy suggested we go to the Storm Prediction Centre (SPC) in Norman, Oklahoma on our way through. This turned out to be an AWESOME afternoon. HUGE thanks have to go out to Kevin Manross who gave us a tour of the (new) National Weather Centre which is the home of the SPC, NOAA and NWS. We were able to take photos all around the building and even outside when we went out to see the Doppler On Wheels (one of which was partially operating…well…the radar was moving…lol).
After we left there, we were treated to some more pulse storms with a few rumbles of thunder as we continued our journey northwards. We are in Blackwell in north central Oklahoma tonight and we are going to head out to the Twister museum tomorrow. There should be some more pulse storms around tomorrow and again on Sunday. Monday is looking like the only potential chase day in the outlook period in eastern Nebraska/western Iowa with some moderate instability and some ok shear. It’s a frontal set up and the front is set to race southwards during Monday night, Tuesday and into Wednesday before it clears right through Texas. After that, it looks like we’ll have another quiet period for 5 days before the upper level ridge breaks down and the next upper level trough moves into the region.
Links to pics from the last two days…
Yesterday…Red River storms:
http://macca.bsch.au.com/gallery/20070510…and today…National Weather Centre and pulsies:
http://macca.bsch.au.com/gallery/20070511Macca & Chris
May 10 - 15, 2007 - Tornado Alley