Target: Akron, CO. Interesting day today. This is one of these really marginal days that could make me look like a fool if nothing happens…or a genius of something picturesque develops by early evening. The big problem with northeastern CO today will be moisture. Winds are light and out of the northwest currently (~8:30am CDT) over northeastern Colorado with dewpoints in the 30s… not exactly what you look for in your target area…however, all the models suggest winds will rapidly veer to the east-southeast by this afternoon. The question is how fast the moisture can race back northwest to meet up with the strong forcing for ascent which the NAM and RUC certain suggest quite well between Denver and Akron or so by 00z. It will be a late show. I was briefly tempted at a secondary target near Clayton, NM, however, my gut just wasn’t feeling it…despite the better moisture. Boundary layer temperatures per NAM and RUC show warmer temps up in the high plains of Colorado east of the front-range, so lapse rates will be steeper farther north it appears…which would compensate for moisture deficiencies and strong forcing for ascent to get a good storm to develop. It seems there’s really no rules for Colorado convection… if you have upslope winds and insolation and just a little bit of juice, anything can happen. Chasing farther north will put me in better position for tomorrow anyway, which looks more promising than today’s chase.
and do not necessarily represent those of official National Weather Service forecast products,
therefore read and enjoy at your own risk and edification!"
March 23, 2007
March 22, 2007
Chase Forecast March 23-24
Since I have 3 days off this weekend, I have decided to make a chase trip out of it. It does not look like the best chasing opportunity to ever come, but there’s certainly a chance at picturesque storms where I love to chase — the central H igh Plains. Friday 3/23, it looks like upslope flow will advect enough low level moisture into northeastern Colorado…along with steep low-mid level lapse rates…to promote a decent chance of chaseable storms…and perhaps a (marginal) supercell. I’m thinking of an area around Akron, CO for starters tomorrow. A nearly stationary upper low over the Southwest will lift north-northeast on Saturday 3/24 into eastern Colorado. At this time, it appears an area from far northeastern CO into far northwestern KS and far southwestern NE (what I like to call the "CONEKS" region) will be the best area for interesting chaseable storms just downstream of the ejecting upper low. With two days looking good enough for me to get me out the door this early in the season, I am pretty much making a "Go" decision, leaving early tomorrow morning for Northeastern CO and probably staying the night somewhere in Northeastern CO for Saturday’s setup. A couple charts below from this evening’s NAM model run show my first-guess target regions for Friday (top) and Saturday (bottom):
This will be my first good test at my "virtual chasing" on Underthemeso.com where visitors to the website can keep up with my near-current location out on the Plains. My main front page at www.underthemeso.com will be directed to a secondary index page made especially for monitoring my storm chase. I’ll have that setup for both Friday 3/23 and Saturday 3/24.
March 19, 2007
Arizona & Royals Spring Training [2]
Gordon, Rock Chalk, and more Heat! The short trip to Arizona has come to a conclusion. I’m sitting at our departure gate with Jon, David, and Lori getting ready to head to Denver for our connection back to Kansas City. It was certianly a fun, but short trip. On Saturday, we watched the Royals practice in the late morning, which was the best opportunity to get closer to the players. I was able to get some good photos at practice with my 80-400mm lens. After practice we headed to the game which was at 1pm. Gil Meche pitched — his first couple innings were alright before he got shelled in the 4th. Saturday evening we met up with friends of Lori (David’s wife) who live in the Tempe area. We hung out around Mill & University, the "hotspot" so-to-speak for college nightlife. Anyway, on Sunday (yesterday), we tried to get both Royals baseball and KU basketball in despite both playing at the same time. The Royals were playing the Giants in Scottsdale, and the plan was to catch about 3 innings of the ball game before high-tailing it to a nearby bar to watch KU vs. Kentucky. A bar called the "Upper Deck" in Scottsdale is a KU alumni watch party location, but since it was packed we found another location in Scottsdale to watch the game. KU won, Alex Gordon hit a homerun towards the beginning of the ball game (which I got a great photo of, see below!), so it was quite the good day yesterday. More record heat in Phoenix on Saturday — 2nd straight day of 99°F for a high. The temperatures will be returning to more normal readings in the 70s later this week after we’re gone… of course!
March 17, 2007
Arizona & Royals Spring Training [1]
High Heat and Billy Butler. I’m out in Arizona this weekend with friends from home (Overland Park) watching spring training baseball… our team the Royals (no jokes or I’ll slap you). Anyway, after a big giant cluster F&%( fiasco with our flight out here (pushed back because of over-booking), we arrived in Phoenix Friday morning. The Royals played the Mariners in Peoria, however it was mainly the "junior varsity" Royals team out there, since the "A" team usually doesn’t travel and play away game. Billy Butler was in the lineup though, and if you haven’t heard of him before… well he will likely be a household name in a few years with the Royals. He had two smash doubles and two walks, despite the loss. That was really the only bright spot in yesterday’s game. Oh my god it was hot… the high yesterday was 99°F!! That was good enough for a record, indeed, and was one degree away from tying the all-time March record in Phoenix of 100 degrees. A far cry from the frosty lower 30s we had in KC in the early morning before our flight.
March 14, 2007
Virtual Chasing Coming Soon!!
Virtual storm chasing is coming to Underthemeso.com! With the addition of some new software…StormLab 4… (which I am currently Beta testing right now)… it will be easy for friends, family, and other storm chasers and severe weather enthusiasts to follow my storm chase pursuits during the severe weather season. On days that I will be out in the field, the underthemeso.com frontpage will go into "Chase Mode", which will contain a map with radar imagery, surface observations, and my latest GPS location. My cell phone provider has an incredible coverage over Eastern Colorado, about 95% of the entire state of Kansas, and a large part of Nebraska…as well as south into West Texas. These are the areas that I chase the most. I fully expect to be able to provide near-real time radar images with my GPS location during my chases probably 80% of the time, so you know exactly what storm I am chasing. I do have an external antenna for my data card, which will make it possible to hold a data signal longer…keeping a continuous download and upload process using StormLab 4.
February 28, 2007
Interesting night back home…
The first severe weather event of 2007 in the Kansas City area was a pretty active one…mainly south of the metro though. I was watching a little bit of the long-lived tornadic supercell activity unfold in the Iola, KS area while at work this evening. Here is a StormLab graphic showing the storm reports over east central KS and west central MO:
It’s not even March yet!
February 27, 2007
Quivira short-trip on Feb 26th
80,000 Sandhill Cranes. It was one of my days off Monday, and I decided to head out to Quivira to do some photography… since I haven’t done any shooting since the 2nd of January. With it being late February, I was hoping to photograph some Sandhill Cranes that are staying on the refuge temporarily on their journey north. While the large majority of these cranes stay along the Platte River about 175 miles north of here, there are a number of family groups that use Quivira. I think some stop at Quivira shortly anyway before continuing to the Platte. When I arrived Monday around midday I was greeted to a large conglomeration of cranes on a farm field roughly 3 miles north of the Big Salt Marsh. I photographed from here for about an hour to hour and a half. In the late afternoon, I drove through the rest of the refuge to try and find any other action, but I didn’t find much — although I did spot 5 Tundra Swans. I was anticipating the cranes flying back to the Big Salt Marsh just prior to sunset, but that wasn’t happening — they were all still in that one location, frolicking in two different fields separated by an east-west farm road. I was fortunate enough to have a big row of trees to help use as a blind allowing me to get a bit closer to the cranes than I otherwise would. Anyway, I stayed here until sunset to photograph them as they were not in any hurry to fly back to the marsh. I ran into a local photographer and volunteer at Quivira NWR, and we struck up a conversation for a bit… and he told me that the large percentage of these cranes actually stayed the whole winter! I found that hard to believe given how cold it got during January. Really interesting. I wonder how much last winter’s warmth had to do with that, and they figured it would be just as warm this winter and decided to stay after migrating down in late October.
February 25, 2007
Central Plains Winter Storm Feb 23-24 [9]
. . . Peak wind gust reports across eastern Colorado and western Kansas on the 24th . . .
| Location | Peak Gust (mph) |
Report Source |
| Cheyenne Wells, CO | 82 | Storm spotter measured |
| Hays, KS | 75 | AWOS |
| La Junta, CO | 74 | ASOS |
| Elkhart, KS | 72 | AMOS |
| Hill City, KS | 69 | ASOS |
| Springfield, CO | 69 | ASOS |
| Akron, CO | 68 | ASOS |
| Limon, CO | 68 | ASOS |
| Scott City, KS | 68 | AWOS |
| Hugoton, KS | 67 | AWOS |
| Ulysses, KS | 67 | AWOS |
| Johnson, KS | 66 | AWOS |
| Garden City, KS | 66* | ASOS |
| Dodge City, KS | 64 | ASOS |
| Sheridan Lake, CO | 64 | Storm spotter measured |
| Lamar, CO | 64 | ASOS |
| Hoxie, KS | 63 | Storm spotter measured |
| Liberal, KS | 63 | AWOS |
| Leoti, KS | 62 | Mesonet |
| Burlington, CO | 62 | ASOS |
* Garden City observations were manually taken for 3 hours during the
wind storm and gusts were not reported, so peak wind could have been
higher than 66 mph.
. . . Blizzard criteria met at automated weather observation stations over the central High Plains . . .
| Location of Automated Surface Observation |
Duration of Blizzard (Hrs) |
Time (Zulu) |
| Limon, CO | 9.5 | 1020-1955 |
| Akron, CO | 7 | 1233-1925 |
| Ainsworth, NE | 7 | 1711-0011 |
| Thedford, NE | 6 | 1411-2011 |
| North Platte, NE | 5.75 | 1418-2004 |
| Goodland, KS | 4.25 | 1657-2116 |
| Lamar, CO | 3.25 | 1527-1841 |
| La Junta, CO | 3 | 1446-1753 |
| Burlington, CO | 3 | 1253-155 |
Note of interest: Immediately west of the low in western
central Kansas, blizzard conditions were reported from Hays to Rush
Center to Larned during the late afternoon hours, however, the band of
snow was rather narrow, and conditions lasted less than 3 hours, not
officially meeting blizzard criteria, but came close in some areas.
Addendum: I was wrong, I found out that this corridor from Hays to Rush Center to Larned did indeed meet blizzard criteria after looking through our logs at work. Several reports of 3 to 4 hours of less than 1/4 mile visibility in snow and blowing snow to go along with the 50+ mph wind gusts.
February 24, 2007
Central Plains Winter Storm Feb 23-24 [8]
Tornado damage southwest of Dodge City on the 23rd. I came in to work this morning to check my e-mail and the latest on the storm since my cable/internet are out at home (Ugh!)… then after receiving a report of damage from last night’s tornado in southwestern Ford County, our WCM came in and I went on a damage survey with the WCM at our office, and we found a decent track through southwestern and west-central Ford County…with a smaller track to the southwest of it. Damage was not major with the primary indications of tornado being flipped center pivot irrigation systems. This storm was extremely rare being in February and at night as well. Dodge City was in the cross-hairs of this storm between 10:45 and 11:00pm last night but the storm circulation diminished quickly and lost supercell characteristics. While out on the survey, the northwest winds were incredible…
55 to 65 mph wind gusts behind the low! Some of the surface obs in western KS and eastern CO are awesome today. Many 33040G55KT surface wind observations (northwest at 40 knots gusting to 55 knots). Even here in Dodge City we have peaked at 55 knots at 3:00pm, which caused commercial power interruption at the office. We’re missing out on the blizzard conditions though as it’s not snowing in Dodge City. Farther northwest in western Nebraska, far western Kansas, eastern Colorado… blizzard conditions are incredible with the winds as strong as they are.
February 23, 2007
Central Plains Winter Storm Feb 23-24 [7]
"Panhandle Magic" begins the Great Plains tornado season! At least a handful of chasers witnessed and documented the first Plains tornado of 2007 as a few supercells developed over the eastern Texas Panhandle early this evening. Below is a radar image with a few of the storm report icons from around that time. Apparently the tornado north of McLean was the one that was observed by several chasers… Not much has happened yet in Southwest Kansas but I think that’s about to change per the water vapor loop… tremendous upward motion is about to impinge on Southwest Kansas and dewpoints are rising into the lower to mid 50s just south of Dodge City. More later…
