The Big Texan
If you read my last post, then you know about David and his journey of eatig a 72-ounce steak. I have never used iMovie before, but I got a hold of my sister’s Mac last night and put together some pictures and videos. I added some cool audio, and the following video is the result. I am fairly pleased!
I still plan on putting together a video on the two-week storm chase, but I’ll be busy this week practicing wedding music. Hopefully it’ll be up here next week. And if YOU have never signed my guestbook, YOU should!
“On the road again, I just can’t wait to get on…”
Me at Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota...Click to Enlarge.
Since I last posted about the Faith tornado, we have been doing a lot of traveling and touristy things. After spending the night in Hill City, we went to Custard State Park in the Badlands of South Dakota and were able to drive up some pretty steep, winding terrain…with no guard rails, might I add. It really is beautiful country here. We then drove through some wildlife place and were able to see numerous pronghorns, buffalo, and a mountain goat. We then stopped by the adjacent Mt. Rushmore. Very impressive! After that excursion we went to the town of Wall, SD. Coming in at 76,000 square feet, Wall Drug is the largest drug store in America…or something like. We spent an hour looking around! I have even eaten a buffalo burger while in South Dakota. It was pretty tasty! Oh, we also drove through Sturgis one time!
Overall, I have a love/hate kind of thing going on with South Dakota. I hate it because cell phone service there (at least on AT&T’s part) is terrible. But it is very scenic. Pros and cons…as with most places.
Yesterday we left South Dakota, went through Nebraska, Colorado, and then ended in Goodland, Kansas. I think it’s funny how I can spend multiple hours in a car now and not really be affected by it. All ten of us still get along well. We play games, talk, joke, etc. The time really passes by quickly. Our intentions that day were to just drive to Kansas, but we did detour a bit to check out a storm that was producing some hail. And that night I took a break from everything–watched some basketball and then made it to the hot tub!
Buffalo at Custard State Park in South Dakota...Click to Enlarge.
Today we trekked form Kansas to Amarillo…watching Shawshank Redemption along the way! That is my all-time favorite movie. If you want to win me over, you should buy it for me. That and Air Force One. It’s a top 5. We watched another movie, but it doesn’t need to be mentioned because it will take away from Shawshank 
And tonight we had a guy on the trip, David, eat The Big Texan…a 72 ounce steak, salad, shrimp, potato, and a roll. Okay, so he attempted to eat it. If you finish in an hour the meal is free. He got pretty close, but the time limit was too stringent for him. He said he could’ve finished if he would’ve had more time…and I believe him. It was actually streaming live at bigtexan.com for all to see! I let many friends and family know about it!
David about to indulge in a 72oz steak and a few side items. Click to enlarge.
We got back to the hotel and all gathered and watched a video Dr. Brown put together of the trip. It was nice to see all of the things we have done and seen over the past couple of weeks. I have learned so much and become even better friends with all of these people. I really don’t want it to end. I have found a new fascination with severe weather!
Tomorrow the plan is to drive to Oklahoma City. I am not really sure what we will do when there. Renny and Mike are meeting up with other students (in a distance learning program) with another round of storm chasing. And we eight students from State will be going home Saturday.
I plan to post a video of the trip and write one more post. And next week, I should be getting back to providing North Mississippi with forecasts!
Faith, South Dakota Tornado
Tornado and Me = Raw Power. Click to enlarge.
WOW!!!! We are the luckiest group of storm chasers there has ever been. Last year, the team saw one tornado. We have had multiple days where we have seen more than one tornado! Today was no exception. It is really late, so I’ll write a narrative about it later as well as post a video. (I’ve have been working on my Facebook album and sending in pictures and videos to The Weather Channel. Look for them tomorrow sometime between morning and lunch, probably. Ha. I know that’s broad, but that’s the best I can do.)
Until then, check out the professors’ website. You can read a blog post about the day like I normally write, watch a video Dr. Brown made, and also track our location on the right! Pretty neat stuff. Check it out!!
And if you haven’t seen it already, here is a public link to my Facebook album.
We will be at Mt. Rushmore tomorrow, so expect pictures from that later!
This tornado had some awesome rotation. Click to enlarge.
This is called a stovepipe tornado...for obvious reasons. Click to enlarge.
Tornado in South Dakota
IF YOU ARE HERE FROM CLICKING ON THE HOME PAGE, CLICK HERE FOR ALL STORM CHASING POSTS.
On Wednesday morning, the Mississippi State storm chasing team left Ogallala, Nebraska for Central South Dakota in hopes of seeing supercell storms…. The video below demonstrates the success we had!
This was my first time messing around with Windows Movie Maker. I am not sure why there is no audio, but trust me, the winds were kickin’! (I may put together another video with pictures leading up to the storm and images from after the tornado…you know, so you get the full effect. Hopefully that one will have audio!)
Friday did not yield any storms for us. We started out in Garden City, Kansas and headed into East Colorado. We ran into some road construction, so that slowed us down. Storms fired in Wyoming, but we decided that we would just call it a day and get ourselves positioned for Saturday’s events.
We headed out from our hotel in Ogallala, Nebraska (my first time in Nebraska!) a little later than we had hoped; Mountain time kind of messed us up! We crossed over into South Dakota that afternoon and before long could see cumulus clouds building. (That’s indicative of the atmosphere being unstable–necessary for storm development!)
Unlike the mid portion of the week when chasing storms in Oklahoma, the roads were not nearly as crowded. That, coupled with relatively flat terrain, made for great chasing!
This was taken a while after we saw the tornado. Impressive picture.
We followed the storm closely on radar and positioned ourselves East-Southeast of it. We got out of the van to snap a few pictures as the rotation intensified. Quickly, the wall cloud lowered and began to rotate noticeably faster. And almost in an instant, it seemed liked, a tornado formed! It was AMAZING seeing a funnel form and drop to the ground right before our eyes. As it approached, we got back into the van. At one point we could see multiple vortices! Our 15 passenger van began to rock as the rear flank downdraft was over us. And we could still see the remnants of the tornado. It was an experience I hope to never forget…and probably the coolest one I’ve ever had!
We followed the storm a little while longer (going down stretches of gravel roads), but it became rain-wrapped. So if there was another tornado, which I don’t doubt there was, we couldn’t see it due to the rain. We have seen at least four tonadoes this week, but this one was the coolest because it initially was low precipitation. We could easily discern the twister.
We are in Aberdeen, South Dakota tonight–not far from Bowdle, where we saw the tornado. Tomorrow, I am hoping the plan is to stay in SD and go to Mt. Rushmore. It’s on my life to-do list!
Oh, and how did I forget to mention this? Vortex 2 decided NOT to chase today…and remember they were complaining about roads being too crowded in Oklahoma. This was the PERFECT storm for them. Great terrain, and low amounts of storm chasers. They have nothing to complain about.
THANKS for taking the time to read this, and don’t forget you can see my most recent storm chasing album by clicking here, and you can follow the MSU storm chasing website which has professors’ blogs and you can track our location by clicking here. I sent in my video to The Weather Channel, so maybe you’ll see it on TV Sunday. And if you have never left a comment on Comment page, click here! Yes, YOU!
Oklahoma Was Good To Us
Driving from TX to OK, we passed by the largest free-standing cross in the Western Hemisphere in Groom, TX.
Wednesday was focused on for a few days preceding it, so I wrote down a lot of notes in our morning briefing. We decided to head to West Oklahoma from Amarillo (where we were) to catch storms around the triple point..where the low pressure center and dry line and warm front intersect. Storms can kind of ride down the warm front after they develop. It was cool driving east because it was really clear and crisp behind us and hazy infront; you can really experience the dry line!! We also drove through Groom, Texas, home of the largest free-standing cross in the Western Hemisphere as well as the famous leaning water tower! You can check it out in my album.
We stopped in Clinton, Oklahoma for lunch and then found a park to wait in while storms developed. (I realized today that my frisbee is still there :’-/ ) Someone was watching the radar and monitoring Storm Prediction Center the whole time we were at the park. A tornado watch for a large portion of Oklahoma was issued at 2:05 and they also stated a probability of over 95% that there would be two or more tornadoes. About 2:30, we started heading north around Leedey and Taloga.
On our way, we passed by the Tornado Intercept Vehicle that you may have seen on the Discovery Channel. I’ve been spoiled the past 5 days or so…. I quickly learned that on high risk days, chasers are out in full force: National organizations, schools, tours, Vortex 2, hobbyists, etc. The roads were packed.
This is the first tornado we saw. You can see the top half about the middle right of the picture. It's hard to see the bottom half, but you could see a dust cloud at the ground. Tornado.
Around 3:28, Renny suddenly yelled out, “tornado!” We quickly pulled over, and sure enough, there was a funnel extending towards the surface. It was very hard to see condensation close to the ground, but it was there. And it quickly dissipated. Overall, the storm was moving east about 20 mph. As of 3:45, 4 tornadoes had already been reported by spotters. I was getting excited that the day was just getting started!
The storm we were on seemed to get disorganized as another “got in the way.” However, it did ingest it, and at 4:53ish, hail of 3.5 inches was reported…that’s baseball size! We played around with the idea of going northeast to get on another storm, but Dr. Brown made the call to turn around. And not too soon after that… Renny again yelled out, “tornado!” We were all fortunate to see it when we did. It was very rain-wrapped. (This was around 6 o’clock, according to my watch, but I think it was recorded as 5:50.) We pulled over on the side of the road to take a couple of pictures. (The tornado was to our left because we were heading south…coming back from the storm we were going to get on. We were looking right into the hook.) However, we only got about 10-15 seconds of picture time as the tornado was quickly approaching us.
We were really close to this tornado in Dover. Rain-wrapped. Very dangerous. (Ignore the semi-circle at the top right.)
I just remember Renny saying, “Go, go, go! We need to go!” Dr. Mike Brown, our driver, hadn’t seen the tornado so he didn’t know how close it was. But it really snuck up on us due to all of the precip falling around. We were speeding away and the tornado seemed to follow us. It was moving at a good pace and seemed to be getting closer. Renny estimated about 100-200 yards. In hindsight, it was probably about a quarter of a mile away. Still very dangerous. And at the time, we had no idea what kind of vertical extent it had. After looking at some video shot by a helicopter, it was MASSIVE! I believe I heard it was a couple of hundred yards wide at the top…but it’s been a long day and that may be a little skewed. As we continued to drive, rain and hail began to fall on us. We were speeding, a tornado was drawing near, the hail falling made loud clanks on our van….probably the most amazing, adrenaline-filled experience I have ever experienced.
There were still plenty of chasers behind us as well as a guy OUT of his car putting in gas. Okay, that’s his own fault for going out tornado hunting with an empty tank of gas. But I am sure not everyone had the narrow escape we did. A few minutes later we saw cop cars with their lights flashing, heading that direction.
Me showing my strength by holding up the cloud layers.
We got going east so we could stay infront of the storm. It was unbelievable how many cars were out. Traffic was backed up for a long way on those two-lane roads, and everyone was, of course, wanting to go the same direction. As we continued to head east, the geography became very unfavorable. It was very hilly country and lined with trees. This is why chasing in Mississippi (the Delta is exempt) is terrible. …so we decide to call it a day. A very profitable day, at that. We pulled over once more to take some pictures of a shelf cloud and just the overall structure of the remnants of the storm. I got some cool images. We had a nice meal at Cracker Barrel and then continued to Oklahoma City for the night.
As always, you can check out the MSU website to track out location and see the professors’ posts.
Here is the link to my Facebook album from Wednesday’s chasing. By the way, the close tornado we saw was in Dover, Kingfisher County. Here is a video.
Good job at reading all of the way through this!
Quick sidenote: If you have watched The Weather Channel at all, you have heard them talking about Vortex 2. You have probably also heard them saying they are tired of everyone being out there ruining their chase and research studies and that everyone is messing up their stuff. I need to go on a quick tangent about this. They have an armada of about 60 vehicles. What do they think that they can get everyone circled around a tornado to collect data? And even if they do, they have people in this experiment from all over the country. How are they going to collaborate anyways? And maybe they are just upset that they seem to not be in the right places to see tornadoes…. Maybe they are upset that the hoi polloi can do everything they can… if not better. We don’t need research grants and fancy radars and all kinds of equipment. Having all of that will not guarantee your spot to view a tornado. I think their feelings got hurt Wednesday and they are taking it out on the other people around. Don’t get me wrong, obtaining data that can save people’s lives is invaluable and much needed! I am all for that. But I am getting school credit for this and learning so much. I have learned more on this trip already than sitting for weeks in a formal classroom setting. So don’t hate on the “little guy”- the people that aren’t followed by national TV and have a plethora of monies. (I will say I was frustrated, too, at the traffic. I do wish some of the weather enthusiasts would stay at home. But they do have rights to be there, so I won’t throw fits about it like Vortex 2. Okay, I’ll stop there.
Kingfisher, OK Tornado
http://i45.tinypic.com/2u6dx92.jpg Picture of the tornado from yesterday taken by Renny Vandewege (one of my professors)
Yesterday was another profitable day of chasing! We saw two tornadoes, one with multiple vortices. I thought today would be an “off day” in Oklahoma City, but we are heading out in a few minutes for Colorado to put us in postion to chase tomorrow. We got to the hotel late last night, so I didn’t upload yesterday’s tornado pictures, and it will be tonight before I get to. Until then, you can entertain yourself by…
looking at the MSU Storm Chase website where you can see video from and read about yesterday as well as track our location.
Here is video from The Weather Channel of the tornado: http://www.weather.com/outlook/videos/oklahoma-tornado-on-the-ground-17355#17350 If you can see a white van at the very bottom of the tornado, that is us!! Ha. We were about a quarter of a mile away at one point.
and also http://www.weather.com/outlook/videos/oklahoma-tornado-on-the-ground-17355
I don’t have time to proof this… ‘Sorry if there are any errors.
The Amazing Chase
That whitish color in the middle is a tornado in Stinnett, TX. This was taken by Andra Harris. My pictures don't show it well.
Ha, get it? Like The Amazing Race? Anyways, we really couldn’t have asked for a better storm chase so far. We are headed out of this hotel in Amarillo in about an hour, so this will be a quick recap of the past few awesome days.
Two days ago we went to Palo Duro Canyon near Amarillo to see the 2nd largest canyon in the United States. It was awesome! Great pictures. We then headed towards Tucumcari, New Mexico closer to where storms where forming. This was my first time in New Mexico! We pulled over on the side of the road to wait on storms to get closer, and some random guy pulled over and started talking to us about New Mexico ghost towns. It was…different. But he then told us how to get to the top of a mesa there to get a better look at the storm. It was great advice! We ended up finding a high elevation place and chased storms for over an hour…and we saw no one else! The sun was getting close to setting, so it made for some FABULOUS pictures. We were able to see rotation on the last storm we were on. It was all very impressive. PLEASE, do yourself a favor and look at this album. If not all the pictures, at least enlarge the last 51 or so. It was a really breathtaking experience.
Yesterday, we kind of slept in and then met up with two former Mississippi State students who now work at the National Weather Service office in Amarillo. We when to some to Green Chile Willy’s or something. Great local place! We then headed out to a park to wait on the cap to break. (This is a level in the atmosphere where there is a lot of energy. If it is tapped into, awesome thunderstorms can form depending on the CAPE value. I’ll explain it all in great detail if you really want me to.) Anyways, after doing some reading at the park, we saw storms firing up north of us, so we decided to head that way. This was around 5 pm, a tornado warning was put on the storm…and shortly thereafter, already three reports of tornadoes.
I was getting a little ancy because we were about 35 miles south of the storm. Luckily, it was a beast of a storm and lastest a long time! As we got closer, I thought I saw a tornado off in the distance…a defined base with a cloud extending close to the ground. It was so far away though, we couldn’t tell if it was rotating or if it was really a funnel. We got closer to the storm…around Dumas. A tornado was actually reported there. We pulled over a few times to take pictures. The storm was just so impressive. I’ve never seen anything like it. The wall cloud was SO close to ground. Even the professors were amazed. The inflow to the storm was very impressive. I had to brace myself; the winds were very gusty. Gah, I just can’t put this storm into words. It was awesome seeing the rotation in the storm.
I was happy! Inflow to the storm was crazy. Please look at the awesome pictures in my Facebook album.
Storm chasers were out in full force. We saw hundreds of people… Plenty of Vortex 2 people, The Weather Channel doing coverage, a guy from Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers, plenty of schools with weather programs, NOAA and other professional organizations. That’s actually the most dangerous part of chasing…other chasers. Most of them have their heads in the sky…not on the road.
As we pulled away from taking pictures, one of the girls on the trip almost screamed out that she thought she saw a tornado….so we pulled over quickly and our professors pretty much confirmed it. (It was later reported by storm spotters.) It was hard to see due to the rain behind it and the low, dense clouds. And in my pictures, unless you know right where it was at, it’s very difficult to see….but it’s there! We then drove farther up the road and stopped and two funnels formed right in front of us! We were begging them to touch the ground! Ha. After they went back up, we drove on and got to see some impressive hail falling. This was all in Stinnett, TX.
We were probably around 1/2 mile away a lot of the time. Overall, it was just a AWESOME experience. I really am running out of adjectives.
Today looks even more impressive than yesterday’s outlook did. The threat for tornadoes is definitely better. We could see some very strong ones as well as large hail. A lot of this will be in Southern Oklahoma, we think. That’s a good distance away! I am confident we will see some GREAT stuff today. (I’ll add I hope no one’s property is damaged.)
We have already been in so many hotels and places that I wake up in the morning and it takes me a minute to remember which way to go to get to the lobby for breakfast, and yesterday, I completely forgot where my room was. Ha.
The trip this far has just been amazing. Today looks great for severe weather as does this weekend.
CLICK HERE TO SEE MY ALBUM FROM YESTERDAY, OUR TORNADO DAY
Don’t forget you can track our real-time location here. The professors also blog here.
Breathtaking Day!
I’ll write a more lengthy description later, but today was a very picturesque day! We spent time in the Palo Duro Canyon near Amarillo, TX and then got near some breathtaking storms in New Mexico. Click here to view the album on Facebook. If you don’t look at all of the pictures, ATLEAST look at the last 51 pictures. You owe it to yourself.
Breathtaking scene of the sun setting behind a storm.
This is just ONE photo. There are plenty more astonishing pictures in the full album.
Those Who Wait Get Rewards
Storm in Oklahoma
Yesterday (Saturday) and today (Sunday) were both very different. There was a good bit of energy in the atmosphere (called CAPE) yesterday…enough to produce some good-sized storms. However, you have to be able to tap into that energy. (The P in CAPE stands for “potential” for good reason.) There was an extensive cloud deck overOdessa, so we headed west-southwest towards Mohanas where clouds would soon be breaking up (we hoped) and the sun would come on out, warm the atmosphere, get some instability going, and get some good convection for storms…and use the energy that was there.
We got to Duffey Park and ended up playing frisbee/football/Scrabble and talking for over 5 hours. I did learn a lot about why we didn’t see storms, so all was not a loss. It’s part of the storm chasing…a large part: waiting.
Today, we left Odessa and headed towards the panhandle of Texas-a few hours away-to look at some storms we thought we might see some hail out of. (There wasn’t an impressive tornado threat anywhere close.) We got to one storm, pulled over and took some pictures, then followed another into Oklahoma. The topography here really allows one to see the features of a storm…the part I learn about but just see in textbooks. ‘Too many trees in Mississippi!
Seeing those two made me call today a success. I pointed out wall clouds, scuds, mammatus clouds, rain shafts, possible hail…. We thought the day was done, but right when we got back from eating supper, another storm came into picture that had a big hail threat with it. We quickly went to it, actually passing some storm spotters and kids like us in a van from school on some old dirt road–not good for chasing, by the way! The features of the storm were very discernable. It was showing up as a beauty on radar!
The other storms of the day, we really couldn’t see rotation. But this one, I definitely saw c of it doing so. It was dropping lots of rain, and there was an extensive hail core showing up on radar of over 2 inches. And we saw evidence of there being hail there.
Possible funnel cloud extending from the wall cloud. Getting late!
***We even saw what looked like a funnel cloud extending down from the wall cloud*** It was all REALLY exciting. Too bad it was getting dark very quickly, and although the funnel seemed to group in size and length towards the ground, it never touched the ground…making it a tornado.
We positioned ourselves in front of the storm, took some nice picture of lightning and the features still discernable with what very little daylight was left. We were basically waiting on hail to come to us. We were getting readings of, at times, over 3 inches, if I remember correctly. Most always over 2. It was very refreshing getting some shots of cold mid-level air, too, coming towards us as part of the outflow.
After driving around a bit more, we got hailed on. It was awesome! It actually came from another cell we went to.
Overall, AMAZING day. I hope soon those funnel clouds reach the ground As of now, Saturday is looking pretty good!
Day 2
Pictures at the bottom! We got out of Fort Smith a little after 8 in the morning, drove to Oklahoma City, then made our way south to Wichita Falls. Along that route, we saw some structural damage from tornadoes that came through earlier this week. Some good storms were firing up in southwest Texas around 1pm–where we were thinking the night last night. Actually, by 1:30pm, there were three tornado warnings out. We still had quite a distance to drive to get to the storms. In the process, we saw a LOT of wind mills. They’re pretty massive.
We drove towards Abilene, stopped on the side of the road and took some pictures. We didn’t go towards an area were there was a tornado vortex signature. If a tornado were present, there would have been far too much rain around to even see it. So we settled to see some nice lightning and get some pictures of storms moving by. And when we headed towards Odessa, TX (very close to New Mexico!), there was still a tornado warning out, but it was getting dark.
We probably drove over 10 hours today, but the Storm Prediction Center has the Slight risk over western Texas tomorrow, so we won’t be doing nearly as much driving as today. And tonight, I got to spend a couple of hours in the hot tub at our hotel! I’ll sleep great tonight, I’m sure. We are in Odessa, Texas. The football field they filmed Friday Night Lights is right next to our hotel! I think we are going to see it tomorrow. Our morning weather briefing isn’t until 9:30, so we won’t head out until later.
Below is the tomorrow’s outlook as well as a couple of pictures from today.
Tomorrow's Severe Weather Outlook
Lots of wind mills in Texas.
I'm having fun!
Flood Damage in Midland, Texas
For complete album photos, you can go to my Facebook account or CLICK HERE!
And don’t forget you can constantly track our location. (Image on the right.)
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