Team MESO

Southeastern Colorado Target

Chasers: Matt Kassawara, Rebecca Wood, Shane Linke

Where’s the beef, er… moisture? As Thursday approached, each model run pushed the surface moisture and associated convective parameters further south out of CO into areas of OK and TX with less favorable dynamics. Discussions with other chasers generally pointed to a northern target somewhere in northeast CO and a southern target between Kit Carson and Springfield CO. Moisture was somewhat more guaranteed on the southern target, but at least one model hinted at a classic lee surface low floating northeast out of Denver CO in the late afternoon. The latter has spawned many decent storms in otherwise lackluster temperature and moisture. Shane Linke, Rebecca Wood, and I waited until the last minute on Thursday morning to split the difference between both targets and head to Kit Carson CO. On the trip, we noticed little consistency between hourly runs of the HRRR model. Some runs favored the northern target and others favored the southern target. None of the runs indicated long-lived supercells. Around mid-afternoon, some high-based storms began forming along an arc between Springfield and Arlington CO. We decided to drive south toward Eads CO. The northern storm approaching Haswell CO looked promising, so we headed west on 96. As it began to fade, the southern storm west of Springfield CO improved significantly on radar. Given a location with unaltered southeasterly flow, we decided to head south toward the storm with an intention of intercepting it via potential core punch along 89 south of Holly CO. The storm cycled several times during our voyage through Lamar CO. The lack of paved roads in extreme southeast CO prevented us from going around it to the west. Luckily, the actual precipitation was limited to some small soft hail. We got underneath the base of the storm at the intersection of 89 and 116. The structure looked decent, but the base was somewhere near the stratosphere and unlikely to produce a tornado. The storm motion slowed significantly enough for us to hang around that intersection for about a half hour taking photos of more interesting items including some abandoned buildings. We eventually ventured east along 116 toward Johnson City KS where the storm began showing some rather photogenic rotating structure in the evening sun. After this storm merged with another storm and lost some structure, we decided to head west hoping to grab some footage of the cluster from a distance with deep colors from the setting sun. Unfortunately, low clouds kept obscuring it until well after sunset. The cluster continued to produce some spectacular lightning for a while before it decayed into grunge. On the way home, some storms along I-70 and the Palmer Divide in CO provided a nice lightning show.

Northeastern Colorado Target

Chasers: Mike Bates, Dustin Price, Kelly Price

I chose the northern target late on Wednesday and confirmed after looking at the HRRR for 6pm for northeast CO which had several storms starting up. (Another consideration was I had to get early to work Friday morning.) Thursday morning storms were dropping rain in northeast CO and I was expecting that to lay the moisture foundation for storms. I left at 1pm and hit Wiggins CO at 2pm and watch a cell slide by with wind and rain and another slow moving cell develop just NW of DIA. I followed the first storm to take some back roads into Fort Morgan and then headed to Brush to watch the other storm move northeast. All the storms after they crossed I-76 and HWY 14 just died off and I expected this second storm to do the same.

At that point, Dustin Price and his wife Kelly joined up with me and we had a long discussion about the storms in Salina for the previous weekend. Finally notice the storm had gained intensity and we took off after it going north on state hwy 71 and I was shown a new road to by pass Brush in the future. We cut through the southern part of the core on CR 18 to Willard CO and ended up between the rear flank downdraft and the primary storm rotation which was just south of CR 18 and just east of CR 11. We saw a small funnel develop and disappear and then about 5 minutes later a gustnado spin up as we were going to sneak by the rotation to get on the east side of prior to it crossing CR 18.

After that the storm basically died out about 40 minutes later and since it passed the Sterling reservoir to the west it never intensified.

On the way home I ended up going between two storms that were very electric.

Chasers: Matt Kassawara, Rebecca Wood, and Sue Melena

With exhaustion from returning home at 2:30 AM after chasing soup in northwest KS on Thursday and crazy logistics problems, a relatively new chaser I met last year convinced me to chase the high risk posted for areas in NE and KS with a friend of hers. I’m not a fan of high risks, especially on a weekend considering the number of “leisure” chasers on the road after TV publicity. On the bright side, the models were leaning toward two target areas… somewhere around the northern border of KS from highway 36 into southern NE and between Liberal and Salina KS. Given the option, I tend to favor northern targets because they often contain better dynamics and, these days, less chasers. I also thought the northern target was more likely to erupt during the day with more of a night show further south.

We left Friday after work and decided to grab a hotel in WaKeeney KS to split the difference between northern and southern targets based on future model runs. This location also let us remain far enough west to handle slowing of the system as indicated by the models. Upon waking up to a stratus deck, I took another look at the models. I decided we should try the northern target because the models weren’t consistent on the southern target and we could always dive south if the former didn’t work out. In general, storms moving at 30-40 mph in either target didn’t provide warm fuzzies.

We departed WaKeeney for Phillipsburg KS to get closer to the warm front and potentially Kearney or Grand Island NE. Small, highly sheared storms unexpectedly initiated all around Dodge City and quickly scooted to the NNE. I think the HRRR model hinted at these storms, but I wasn’t sold on such early initiation. Given the speed of the storms and better conditions to the north, we decided to wait for them in Phillipsburg. The storms began to organize into larger discrete cells north of Dodge City, but congealed into grunge north of I-70. We latched on to a few cells showing minor rotation, but couldn’t glean much in the soup. After a couple hours driving through the grunge, the cells south of Dodge City began looking much better on radar as the stratus deck cleared out. The models also hinted on a bulls-eye of several important rotation parameters passing through the middle of the state in a couple of hours. With the grunge situation growing increasingly worse, I decided to abandon the northern target and head south. The trip took a bit longer than expected because we needed to avoid some hail cores and possible
soupnadoes. I’m not fond of chasing solely by radar because I can’t see anything.

Meanwhile, Chris Rozoff decided to bail because of a stupidly long drive back to WI and Sue Melena chimed in around Russell KS near one of the soupnado storms. We wandered toward Sue and met up just east of Russell. After grabbing a quick bite and fueling up, we decided to try getting south of the sexy storm heading out of Dodge City. Navigation was extremely challenging due to quick storm motion and the potential of getting pounded by basketballs chucked from cells further south. I routed us through Wilson, Ellsworth, Lyons, and Sterling before heading west down a mostly chaser-free road that led us to the base of the storm near Seward. We saw a pronounced wall cloud, but no official tornado. The storm structure was amazing including what seemed like a 50 mile long inflow band. After taking some photos and briefly meeting up with Wes Carter, we backtracked east and north trying to keep up with the storm. Just east of Lyons, we saw the storm produce a wedge tornado. I figured we could easily get closer to it, but an unexpected brush with the path of destruction along with some chaser convergence slowed us down considerably. We saw a large number of down power poles/lines and trees in the path, but no significant structure damage. We lost further ground on the storm with chaser convergence in Lindsborg, but I managed to gain some back by taking highway 81 just east of and parallel to I-135 through Assaria and Salina. Most of the chasers took I-135 and jammed it up. I was also worried about debris and/or road closure from the tornado. I decided against jumping on I-70 for similar reasons and took highway 40 to Solomon. Along this road we saw the storm produce a cone tornado. After crossing I-70 north of Solomon, the storm produced more of a stovepipe which later fizzled into an unusually long rope. With the sun setting and a victory steak waiting in Salina, we decided to drop off the storm. My group parted ways with Sue after dinner and luckily escaped Salina before the next tornadic storm pounded it.

Overall, we did quite well considering the difficult forecast, hours of low visibility in soup, navigation involving fast-moving storms, and nasty chaser convergence. First score on a high risk day! Thanks to Chris Howell for providing information I couldn’t otherwise easily obtain while busting ass after the storm. Also, just for the record, I used only RadarScope and the map on my iPhone after storms initiated. Pretty cool stuff!

Chasers: Chris Rozoff, Matt Kassawara, and Scott Longmore

I left Denver CO with a chase buddy from the past, Scott Longmore, toward an initial target somewhere between Goodland and Dodge City KS. Surface observations and satellite imagery painted the dry line progressing eastward between Limon and Burlington CO and with an increasingly healthy cumulus field. A relatively stout warm front harboring a considerably thick low cloud deck east of the boundary stretched SSE from about Imperial NE to Dodge City KS. Meanwhile, a passing gravity wave kicked off a few low-topped storms east of Fort Morgan CO which hinted at a significant erosion of the cap ahead of the dryline.

We met up with Chris Rozoff in Goodland KS in the early afternoon. Hourly updates of data indicated progression of the dryline, but a relatively stationary warm front. Areas east of the warm front looked like they wouldn’t break out of the clouds and receive enough sunshine
to break the cap. Some models suggested storms initiating in NE CO and NW KS from better dynamics associated with a short wave coming out of the mountains and interacting with the surface low. However, moisture simply wasn’t streaming northward into the target area. A couple of high-based storms formed near Atwood KS around mid-afternoon considerably close to the tight dryline and warm front intersection. The structure of these storms indicated a warm layer around 700 mb and weak rotation. Meanwhile, some storms began popping up to the south near Sharon Springs KS. We decided to leave the current storms and head southward to an environment with marginally better moisture. For whatever reason, the southern storms quickly dissipated. Around the same time, one of the storms we left earlier reconstructed itself with considerably better features. We drove back northward to the storm now located south of Trenton NE. Upon nearing the border, we found the storm just off to the west and a thick low cloud deck just off to the east encroaching on our position. The latter quickly killed our previously decent view of the storm. After an hour or so of trying to locate rotation and lowerings in the soup between Trenton and Culberton NE, we decided to cut our losses and head to dinner in Colby KS.

We just finished polishing and posting our article archive containing a wealth of useful publications on various weather topics written by members of MESO. The archive also contains several pieces written by the media about MESO. Check it out!

We’re in the process of updating our web site. New features will include easy access to articles, photos, and various weather information. We are open to suggestions on how to make this site better. Our goal is to provide an informative and entertaining site that can be utilized by individuals, schools, businesses, media, and any entity that is interested in learning more about how to keep your organization or family safe in thunderstorms, tornadoes, flash flooding, or any other severe weather.

2010 was a great year for MESO in many ways. We got to head to the Great Plains in May and see beautiful country, amazing weather, and tornadoes. But one of the highlights of the year was getting to know new people.

Mike Bates accompanied us on part of this year’s chase, coming all the way from Colorado to Oklahoma for the May 10 High Risk event where we witnessed the awesome multi-vortex tornado that morphed into a giant wedge as we watched from Highway 81 just north of Medford, OK. Mike is an experienced storm spotter, ham radio operator, and EMS professional.

We also had the opportunity to meet up with the Italian storm chasers representing Meteo Network. Marco Rabito, Gloria Cariolato, Niccolo Ubalducci, and Valentina Abinanti met us on the third day of our chase and accompanied us throughout the chase. They impressed us with their knowledge and determination as well as the experience they have gained from several years of coming to the US and chasing as well as chasing in Italy and Europe. Niccolo Ubalducci is currently chasing in Australia. We look forward to hooking up with them again next year.

Although we have not met him in person, Barry Boyce has brought a lot to the table. He works for the American Red Cross and is very active in disaster relief operations here and abroad. He was out of the pocket for much of this year helping with the relief efforts in Haiti after the massive earthquake that literally destroyed the country. We look forward to someday chasing with Barry.

Multi-vortex wedge just north of Medford, OK on May 10, 2010.

It looks like the season for 2010 is over as the polar air mass has settled in on the US, bringing freezing temperatures to the Great Plains, Midwest, Atlantic Seaboard, and the Deep South. However, it is a La Nina winter so there may be some surprises in store later this winter especially in the Southern Plains and Southeast.

Right now is a good time to reflect on 2010 and figure out what we did wrong, what we did right, and how we can make 2011 even more productive and maybe get the word out to a few more people that severe weather safety needs to be a priority in most places in the world, especially here in the US. Severe weather can happen anywhere, anytime. It follows no rules that we set forth.

If you live in the US, a NOAA weather radio is a must-have for every home. Many people have said they don’t like the radios because they alarm for events happening several counties away, and in many parts of the country the springtime can see severe weather happen on almost a daily basis. But the new radios can be programmed with SAME codes specific for your county so that if there is no severe weather in your immediate area, your radio will not sound an alarm. This reduction of false alarms is a very significant advance in severe weather warnings for small businesses and households. The new radios can be bought for $25-50 depending on the features you want.

Now is the time to get the radio. You have time to program it, get used to it’s operation, and the shelves are full of them. They make wonderful Christmas presents for your loved ones as well.

Allan Detrich captures a tornado passing through his hometown in Ohio.