Intense Day

As the numerical models had progged, VORTEX2 has been keeping busy, operating 8 out of the last 10 days. On Monday the armada was operating on a slow-moving storm near Roswell, NM that failed to impress us (cue the X-Files theme song and conspiracy theories). Tuesday turned out to be probably the best day VORTEX2 has had yet! We operated on an isolated supercell that cycled numerous times, meaning that it would produce a tornado, dissipate, recharge,  and then produce another tornado. This occurred over several hours in the Texas panhandle. It was a textbook-perfect deployment for the soundings team! Unfortunately for my viewing pleasure, my position that day was the far inflow, meaning that I was at least an hour downstream of the storm, so I saw very little of what was going on.

Wednesday, however, was a very different story. The Storm Prediction Center had issued a high risk for much of Oklahoma, meaning that they were expecting another outbreak of severe weather, and in particular, numerous tornadoes. The VORTEX2 armada jumped on a storm soon after it initiated, expecting it to mature quickly and become tornadic. While there were reports of a brief tornado early on in its lifetime, the storm went through several cycles of gaining and losing its supercell structure. My assigned storm-relative position that day was in the forward flank, meaning that I was northeast of the business end of the storm. Ideally I am a bit to the left of where the annotated cold front (associated with the FFD on the image below) begins to curve to the north:

My storm relative position is a bit more precarious than the others on the sounding team, because there is a threat for lightning and occasionally hail is we get too deep into the forward flank (right under the FFD on the above image). This information is important because I ended up being squeezed between two storms as the day wore on: the target storm to my west, where there was a threat of heavy rain, lightning, and potentially hail, and a second storm to my east, where a tornado as well as some hail had been reported. Overtime, these two storms merged closer and closer together, essentially putting me between a rock and a hard place. Because of the few road options allowing my team to escape, we ended up being quite close to the tornadic storm to our east! So close in fact, that we saw another tornado touch down near Stillwater, OK as we were moving east in anticipation of finding an escape route south:

I tried enhancing the contrast in the image, so hopefully you can see the tornado (but even if you can’t, trust me, it was there). We were probably only a couple of miles from the tornado, the closest I’ve ever been to one. It was definitely intense trying to navigate the storm carefully but also trying to get to safety. While we were only a couple miles from our escape route, we had to stop a few times and make sure the more dangerous parts of the storm (i.e. the tornado and hail) weren’t going to overtake us. This was also made more difficult by the numerous chasers and gawkers out on the road, many of whom were not driving safely. Thankfully, the driver of my vehicle kept her cool and got us to our destination safely!

In the end, we were down for the count in terms of being able to collect more data; our mission was simply to be safe! I felt bad that we weren’t in a position to collect more data, but we were treated to some nice views of the storm once we were in the clear:

At this point, operations were called off because the target storm was more of a squall line than a supercell. As we headed to the hotel, the sun was setting we were further treated to some gorgeous views!

Despite the intensity of the day, I feel so thankful that we got out safe and were able to see such beauty. Now it’s time to recharge and get ready for the next round of storms!

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Tags: supercell, tornadoes