We finally went mobile today! However, because of the unfavorable weather setup we moved from eastern Norman to western Norman. We used today to ensure that all the pods were working correctly and has a class on pod deployment. Some pictures from today:
Well, after 1,258 miles we are finally in Norman, OK. The trip was mainly uneventful, expect for a wakeup call from Mother Nature in Joplin, MO. We left State College around 7:15am yesterday and were able to make it to St. Louis for dinner. After dinner, we continued for a few more hours arriving in Joplin, MO around 12:30am. We had planned on leaving Joplin around 10am to make it to Norman, OK for a 2pm meeting, however, Mother Nature decided to wake us up at 7:30am with hail on the roof. The hail was followed by severe winds that were accompanied by a sky that had a noticeable green tint. Luckily, we appear to have missed the worst of the storm. Storm reports indicate that in other parts of town 1.75 inch hail fell and farther to the southeast a couple of tornadoes were reported. The greatest damage from winds were at television station KSNF that lost their broadcast tower, you can view pictures here. Our hotel had lost power after the storm so we decided to leave early and arrived in Norman, OK around 1:30pm, checked in to the hotel, and then headed to the National Severe Storm Laboratory where we toured the vehicle bay and had mobile mesonet training. Tomorrow brings CPR/First Aid training.
Due to the size of VORTEX2 and the post “Twister” era fascination with storm chasing the media is highly interested in documenting the project. Storm Chasers, from the Discovery Channel, will be following Dr. Josh Wurman and one of his DOW for the upcoming season.
Also, the Weather Channel will be doing live updates from the field and run nightly segments with their anchor Mike Bettes, who will be embedded within the research group. You may view their website here: http://www.weather.com/tv/programs/Vortex.html . The website will include live streaming video.
Websites of Interest:
http://vortex2.org/ – Main project website. It will have daily mission summaries.
http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/vortex2/ – NSSL Project Website. This website provides an excellent overview of the project and they will be posting pictures from in the field.
http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/noaastory/book.html – Information on the first VORTEX project.
Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2 (VORTEX2) will be the largest field experiment to explore tornadoes. The project will take place from May 10th – June 13th 2009 and again during the spring of 2010. The project will cover a domain ranging from Southern Texas to North Dakota and from Colorado to Indiana. Because the domain is so large, the project will be nomadic with no home base. Therefore, over 50 hotel rooms will be needed each night, and the hotel can only be booked 8 hours in advance due to the ever changing weather forecast for the following day.
Despite technological advances, atmospheric scientists still do not know why, how, and when tornadoes will form. Currently, seven out of ten tornado warnings in the United States are false alarms; this is a dangerous situation because after a certain amount of false alarms people begin to ignore warnings. The long term goals of the project are to increase the average lead-time of tornado warnings from 13 minutes and to be able to predict how intense the tornado will become. The project will also aim to develop an understanding of the low level wind fields which are not resolvable on Doppler radars.
About 100 scientists and students will be participating in VORTEX2. These scientists come from sixteen different organizations that span four countries. The scientists will man approximately 40 vehicles that will surround a developing storm. The project will use 10 mobile Doppler radars, 12 tornado pods, 24 sticknets, 1 unmanned aerial vehicle, upper air soundings, 6 mobile mesonets, 4 particle probes, and Photogrammetry. For more information on these observing instruments please see this website: http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/projects/vortex2/instruments.php
I will be participating with Dr. Josh Wurman’s group from the Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR). Some of you may recognize him from Strom Chasers on the Discovery Channel. I will be in what is a called a DOW-Follow vehicle assisting with radar deployment.
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