This is sorta a weather blog isn't it? It's about time I share a weather photo. For this week's photo of the week, my first tornado! This tornado was spotted near Groom, TX along Interstate 40 on a storm chase on April 22, 2010. This particular tornado was only on the ground for a few seconds, and was rated EF0 since it basically did not cause any damage.
Meteorology: A large cutoff low was noted on 500 mb analysis, with a surface dryline in place over the Texas Panhandle. The morning SPC convective outlook had a large Slight Risk area over much of the High Plains, including a 10% significant tornado probability over the Texas Panhandle. It should be noted that under today's SPC outlook conventions, this would have been an "Enhanced Risk". The outlook text noted that supercells capable of very large hail were likely to develop along the dryline, with the tornado risk increasing during the early evening hours as a low-level jet developed. At 2:35 p.m. CDT, SPC issued a Tornado Watch for the Texas Panhandle. At 3:00 p.m. CDT, SPC upgraded their outlook to a Moderate Risk with a 15% significant tornado probability. The first tornadoes (in Texas) were reported just after 5:00 p.m. CDT (including the one in the photo above). By the end of the day, there would be 12 preliminary tornado reports, with additional tornadoes reported in Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
500 mb analysis valid 1200 UTC (7:00 a.m. CDT) April 22, 2010
Preliminary storm reports for April 22, 2010
The Chase: At the time of this chase, I was in my sophomore year at the University of Oklahoma. The chase team included Stefan Rahimi (now a postdoctoral scholar at UCLA) and Curtis Riganti (now a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center). We departed Norman around 1 p.m. (which was cutting it close!), and headed west on I-40. The initial target was Shamrock, TX. As we headed west, we monitored NOAA Weather Radio and what little we could get over cellular data networks. In 2010, cellular data networks was kinda just starting to be a thing, but it generally consisted of fairly slow 3G and AT&T "Edge" (ahh, those were the days!). We approached the first supercell right on I-40. A prominent wall cloud was noted, and multiple funnel clouds were spotted.
Wall cloud associated with the first supercell
Funnel cloud beneath the wall cloud
A few minutes later, the first tornado (photo at the top) occurred. By the end of the day, our team would see three tornadoes.
Tornado #2, partially wrapped in rain near McClellan Creek National Grassland
Tornado #3 north of I-40 near McLean, TX
It was quite awesome to see these first three tornadoes. Up until this point, I had only seen tornadoes in photos and videos. In fact, I had not even really seen a classic supercell in person. Growing up in South Louisiana, a true classic supercell was fairly rare. It was so cool to finally see what this looked like in person. Finally, below is a video taken by my friend Curtis, primarily of the first supercell and tornado.
For the next two nights of the trip, we would stay at Ridgway State Park , which has quickly become one of my all-time favorite places to camp. Not only is it just a great campground, but you have excellent access to the northern San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado. On Day 4 of the trip, we would explore the town of Ouray and its immediate vicinity. We started off the day by driving up Owl Creek Pass. Owl Creek Pass is accessed by Ouray County Road 8 which intersects U.S. Highway 550 very near Ridgway State Park. The road is unpaved, but well-maintained (at least during the summer... I cannot speak to it in the winter), and we had no problem driving a Nissan Armada up the pass (in fact, we saw a few sedans). The views did not disappoint as the fall foliage in the San Juans was very near peak! Ascending Owl Creek Pass. The road offers numerous easy turnouts to take in the views. Ouray County Road 8 in Owl Creek Pass. The road gets narrow and steep at times (prepare to go slow and u...
Panorama of my parents' neighborhood at the height of the flooding. My parents' house is the one on the left side of the image on top of the hill. On Friday, August 12, 2016, it started raining in Lafayette. Over the next two days, we would receive nearly 21 inches of rain (about one-third of the average annual rainfall). This was not the result of a tropical cyclone, but a large, persistent, and slow-moving MCS with access to a deep fetch of tropical moisture. Radar loop from NWS New Orleans. The spin you see is weak low pressure, not related to any kind of tropical storm or hurricane. Below is the 12Z (7:00 a.m. CDT) sounding from Slidell, LA the morning of August 12th (image created using SHARPpy). The vertical red line in the upper-left panel is temperature, and the green line is dewpoint. With these two lines nearly on top of each other from ground-level to the tropopause, we can see that the environment is extremely saturated. In fact, the sounding parameters in the low...
For this week's installment of "Photo of the Week", I am featuring what is probably to date, my best Milky Way shot. This photo was taken last June from the South Rim Campground at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park , Montrose County, Colorado. The photo was taken using my Nikon D3300 DSLR equipped with a Tokina 11-18 mm wide-angle lens. I used a wide aperture (f/2.8), short focal length (11 mm), kicked the ISO up to 6400, and did a 20-second exposure. My advice to photographers attempting a similar shot: don't focus overly on what my settings were, or what someone else's were. While those settings may be a good starting point, some trial and error (and I mean, a lot of error) will be required. I think I initially started with a lower ISO, and kicked it up higher to really get the deep space objects in the shot. I should also point out that this photo was minimally post-processed, except for perhaps some slight adjustments to the exposure. Using Stell...
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