This is a painful entry… but I will feel better if I at least type something. My beloved alma-mater… the University of Kansas Jayhawks… were defeated once again in the first round of “The Big Dance” by the Bradley Braves, a team who clearly no one knew much about… at least I didn’t (and the KU team itself, by the looks of the game!)… and pretty much wrote this game off as a “should-win”, looking ahead to a fairly competitive match-up against Pitt.
I sat and watched this game this evening, and I felt like I had gone back in time…. to a time about 4 months ago when young frosh were running up and down the court tossing the rock like it was a hot potato with every other possession resulting in an unforced turnover. What really makes a game like the game against Bradley so difficult to swallow is the fact that we came off one of our best games of the year last week against a good Texas team. Granted, I didn’t watch that game, but rather listened to it on the radio at work, but it amazes me how a team can go from such a stellar performance to something so unbelievably full of mistakes… like it was the first time the school ever played in a big tournament. Hah.. reminds me of my bowling, quite frankly — the up and down.
That’s the way a team will play, though, without senior leadership. I think the coaching staff can only provide so much motivation. There needs to be on-the-court leadership, and quite frankly the very young Jayhawk team has NONE. The two seniors we do have — Moody and Hawkins, do not provide much in the way of leadership because they are not on the court often enough to be leaders (How about a total of 16 minutes between the two of them? How’s that for on-the-court leadership?). They just aren’t as talented as our younger crew. Our age showed big-time… and it was exposed tremendously by a much more eager-to-win Bradley club. I watched my young Hawks and I just saw a lack passion and obviously experience. The sophomore crew were freshman against Bucknell last year, so they gained little tournament experience last year. It’s as if they knew they were better than Bradley and just mentally didn’t have it in them… whether that was because they were emotionally fatigued still from that big Texas win… or were looking ahead to Pitt… or knew “they were all that” after the Texas win… or a combination of all the above. I don’t know what it was, but there was no desire or passion out there on the floor.
I am still having a hard time putting my finger on Brandon Rush. He has been our highly touted freshman star all year… but I’m just not seeing the fire in Rush. He’s definitely not ready for the NBA, that’s for damn sure. I’m seeing much more passion out on the point with Chalmers and Robinson. These two guys will end up being the leaders on this team… especially Russel Robinson. Someone has to step up BIG-TIME if the Hawks are going to compete with serious competition on a consistent basis. Bucknell and Bradley are NOT serious competition!
So now I’ll root for Wichita State against Tennessee tomorrow… it’ll be interesting to see how that turns out. It would be one of the biggest wins in the WSU program in a long, long time (if not in the history of WSU Basketball), and a huge recruiting kick for Mark Turgeon. Wichita State is looking up, and that’s awesome to see.
Now time to “try” and get into Royals Baseball season now. It’s difficult being a KU Basketball, Royals, and Chiefs fan.
Here in Dodge City, the total snowfall for the 2005-06 winter season has been around 5.5″ as of today. This is pretty much the case for much of the central High Plains in what has been an extremely dry winter. We have already had two significant storm systems blow through with very strong winds (March 12th; 60 mph wind gusts… 15th; near 50mph wind gusts) causing reduced visibility in blowing dust with a couple of large grass fire events.
What I love about the month of March is that the swing towards spring can throw the planetary scale pattern into a chaotic re-adjustment leading to a wide diversity of possible sensible weather outcomes. March 12th was a perfect example, as a historic tornado outbreak consumed the lower Missouri River valley. As can happen a lot of times in March, the following week’s weather could continue this jump right into spring…or the weather could take a step back into winter. Well, in this case… March 2006… we appear to be following the latter. A very significant storm will be digging into the southwest states this weekend. The huge difference between this storm and and the March 12th storm is the fact that there will be cold air in place across much of the plains out ahead of this large storm… instead of a large warm sector across the plains.
Despite there being an intrusion of much cooler air ahead of this storm system… there will be an abundance of low level moisture advecting from the Gulf of Mexico. This is evident as of the time of this writing (Friday 7pm CST) by the mid to upper 60s dewpoints advecting northward through south Texas.
For about 3 weeks around the vernal equinox…there is a climatological “peak” if you will…for the best juxtaposition of remnant winter cold air and the resurgence of Gulf of Mexico moisture. It is this combination that allows for robust development of synoptic scale extra-tropical cyclones that can cause major winter storms in western Kansas. Looking back at some of the snowstorm records I’ve compiled for Dodge City, KS, 4 of the top-5 snowstorms in Dodge City since the late 1800s have occurred within 2 weeks of the vernal equinox:
- 20.5″ — Feb 24-27, 1903
- 18.5″ — March 22-25, 1957
- 18.2″ — March 12-17, 1924
- 18.0″ — March 9-10, 1922
- 15.7″ — March 12-13, 1999
Other one-foot snowstorms centered around the vernal equinox include March 15-16th, 1970 (12.8″), March 23-24th, 1987 (11.5″). An early spring blizzard in 1938 produced 14.3″ of snow on April 7-8th.
Will we also add March 19-20th, 2006 to the list of one-footers in Dodge City?? The models are painting a very rosy picture in the 72-84hr time frame for a significant snowstorm for portions of western Kansas. It’s still unclear who will really get the bulk of this storm, but there seem to be all the ingredients necessary for a one-foot snowfall for at least a couple locations north of the surface low in western Kansas.
From the 12z model runs… the ECMWF, Canadian, and UKMET models show at least 6 to 8″ of wet snow for Dodge City. The GFS and NAM show the bulk of the precip just north of Dodge towards I-70… like the Wakeeney to Hays areas. Stay tuned!!!
Well, I’m not going to elaborate too long on this, but I went on my first long chase of the 2006 season on Wednesday the 8th. Long story short… 6 hour drive to near the Red River in southern Oklahoma to see a *&$!@-load of cirrus clouds. It appeared for all the world that things would erupt nicely after 4pm or so in the target area, and I KNEW ahead of time that there would probably be a significant problem with high cirrus clouds… but I went anyway. Storms did actually develop a bit farther south of my target in the Throckmorton to Decatur, TX areas just around sunset, but it was at least an hour before that when I threw in the towel and headed back to Dodge.
Now that I have another passionate hobby…photographing wildlife (mainly birds) at Quivira NWR… it’s going to take more to get me out the door for these early season marginal events. Especially with the way gas prices are.
A little about my Kyocera/Alltel setup. In looking at the coverage map on the Alltel site, I knew I would be in a world of hurt for data on the road. There is ZERO coverage in northwest Oklahoma north of I-40 and west of I-35. The route to my target area was through this area, and I can verify I could not connect…even though the Alltel software was seeing a signal, I would get a “could not connect to remote computer” errors….all the way from when I entered Oklahoma north of Laverne until I approached El Reno. The map indicates high speed service in the OKC metro area, and I could verify I got a great connection with impressive high speed performance in El Reno. About 10 miles south of El Reno, I lost this “OKC Metro” signal, and went back into a data void… which the coverage map indicated. I regained service near Duncan, which was my target town…and I downloaded data in a strip mall parking lot for about a half hour. It was a bit slower than OKC Metro signal, but it was still much faster than 56k….almost approaching DSL speed. The coverage map is a great tool, as it was amazingly accurate in depicting the locations that I did and did not have service. In looking at the coverage map, I am very pleased that most of West TX has quite adequate coverage. As well as, of course, all of Kansas, most of Eastern CO and a lot of the northern Plains. The only huge “hole” near where I live is in Northwest OK. I can live with that.
Well, I did actually chase, although it was a fruitless endeavour other than the fact that I did get out and play with some of the new equipment, mainly my new wireless internet setup with the kyocera air card and Alltel Axcess Mobilelink. I am pleased with the signal and service so far in western KS. Since Alltel digital service is operated on the CDMA network, signals extend farther out than GSM which is what Cingular and a few other providers use. There’s an Alltel CDMA tower in just about every KS county seat, and I could pretty much verify that on this short chase. The only areas where signal faded to “no signal” where right near the county borders. All in all, it was fun to check out the latest high res visible satellite imagery, short-fuse composite graphics, and a myriad of other data and websites out in the middle of nowhere Hamilton County, KS at a download speed just under that of DSL.
As far as the chase went… well, nothing formed on the dryline along the KS-CO border; there just wasn’t enough convergence as the short-wave trough was still too far to the southwest by late afternoon. Plus, increasing cirrostratus negated any outside chance of initiation by 430 or 5pm. I left and headed back to Dodge after sitting around the Syracuse, KS area for awhile. Got back around 630pm in time to take a long nap before my first mid shift. Am watching potential dryline opportunity Tuesday 7th… we’ll see. I’d have to forego bowling if it looks like anything worth pursuing within a 2 hour radius of Dodge.
It seems like every other year or so, there’s a marginal opportunity to get out and chase…
to more or less test out the new equipment for the new chase season…and just get out and observe a convective sky after a long boring winter. Especially this winter…a winter that has been so bone dry, but really not all that cold. Low level moisture will be advecting northward overnight tonight through west TX, getting into W KS tomorrow.
It’s not much moisture, granted…
as it’s early March, but with cold temps aloft this time of year, it doesn’t take much to get some potential instability… the NAM shows CAPE’s of 700 to near 1000 J/kg by late afternoon Saturday 4th with some modest dryline convergence from Liberal to Scott City. So, I’ll watch this closely tomorrow morning and get the camera gear in “standby” mode just in case. I work midnight shift tomorrow evening, so I do have about a 3 hour leash.
