April 5, 2010

This blog will include previous weather/sky/landscape photography summaries, most of which will be from storm chases.

My first storm chase was on April 5, 2010. At the time, I was not very familiar with how synoptic scale meteorology worked, as I was in the midst of my freshman year as a meteorology student at OU. Thus, I was beyond excited when forecast output from the GFS and NAM depicted a sharp dryline extending from central Kansas to north-central Oklahoma, accompanied by large theta-e at the surface, confluent surface flow at the dryline, relatively steep mid-level lapse rates, and strong southwesterly mid to upper tropospheric flow. To me, it appeared to be an excellent setup for isolated to scattered tornadic supercells in the late afternoon, in terrain very forgiving to mobile storm observing.

Then I learned about the cap.

Stratocumulus near Cheney, Kansas.

After finishing classes for the day and meeting in the Walker-Adams dormitory mall at about 1 p.m., a few friends and I departed Norman northbound on I-35. Discussion in the car in northern Oklahoma focused on the likelihood of convection initiation. All ingredients were in place for tornado producing thunderstorms, but a large scale lifting mechanism to remove convective inhibition was lagging behind. The axis of the 500 hPa trough, which we hoped would remove enough inhibition to allow for ascent along the dryline to initiate a storm, was situated over Nevada at 7 p.m., not close enough to south-central Kansas to provide synoptic scale ascent.

500 hPa heights, winds, and isotherms (SPC archive, 00 UTC 4-6-2010) 

We turned west onto U.S. 54 in Wichita and chose to wait in Cheney, KS, a quaint small town west-southwest of Wichita. We tested out hand-held anemometers along a gravel road, enjoyed the small town scenery, and watched the sky in anticipation of an updraft breaching the cap and sustaining itself.

Cheney, Kansas.

Suddenly, a cumulus tower billowed upward, and the parcels making up this plume strained to maintain buoyancy above the cap. To our dismay, this process abated when enough dry air mixed into the tower to nix its buoyancy. The afternoon wore on, and no other towers came close to a deep convective transition. After a brief jog southwest, we pulled up to a McDonald's in Anthony, KS. Immediately after I stepped out the car, a host of meteorology students gathered in the parking lot. A fellow student exclaimed "Curtis! Welcome to your first bust."


Shortly thereafter, we left the parking lot, merged onto eastbound KS-44 and headed for home. Despite the busted first chase, the charm of small Great Plains towns, the expansive and colorful skies, the rolling, sculpted hills, and the freedom of the open road had me hooked on storm observing ventures across the plains.

Sunset in south-central Kansas