On Monday we traveled south east from Amarillo, TX to Estelline, TX to intercept a super cell that was forming. Before the radars were able to deploy the storm dissipated and we began to look for a new target. We then moved onto a target that was to the north east. This time we arrived in time to at least get some of the radars setup on the storm, however, like the previous storm, it died soon after. This storm was very photogenic and rotation was evident. We then moved a few hours northwest in order to target another super cell that was forming. Once again, the storm dissipated upon our arrival. The running joke of the day was, “VORTEX2, saving lives, one storm at a time”, because of our ability to kill storms. We stayed in Childress, TX in anticipation of storms to our southeast on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, we targeted north central Texas. We waited most of the day for a storm to develop. A storm finally developed late in the day, however, the storm was moving towards the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. This creates many issues for an armada as large as ours. The primary concern is traffic which will slow us down, or put us in a potentially dangerous situation if the storm begins to come towards us. Luckily for us, we noticed that the storm had begun to split, the right mover went towards the metroplex while the left mover went north of the city. We then decided to target the left mover in the open country. We begun to race towards the cell and noticed something odd, the left mover was thriving while the right mover had died. This is extremely odd, as the right mover usually survives and the left mover dies. This case will make an interesting study to see why this occurred. We deployed before the storm and began doing transects in our probe vehicles. We initially drove out of the precipitation, but on our return trip we headed back in. We picked up mostly pea-sized hail, but some reached ½ inch. It was pretty neat hearing all the pea sized hail hit the car, then every now and then you head a “thud”, and we all turn to each other and go “that was a little bigger than pea-sized”. Operations soon ended after the storm dissipated and darkness set in. By this time, we were really far from out hotel in Norman, OK and hungry. We wanted something quick so we decided to go to the only open restaurant in town, Jack in the Box. However, the main dining room was not open, only the drive thru. This presented a little issue because of the 13 foot mast on the front of our vehicles. We ended up walking through the drive thru, but only after pleading with the clerk to allow us to order, apparently it is against their policy. We arrived at our hotel at 1am in the morning, after a long day.

The following day was a travel day to Topeka, KS. We spent two nights here because of the inactive weather. This allowed time for us to prepare mission reports that will be presented during Saturday’s down time.