Discovery Channel: Storm Chasers

Tornadoes in Missouri and Illinois on April 19, 2011

Video of two tornadoes on April 19, 2011; the first near Bowling Green, MO and the second just east of Carlinville, IL.  These supercells tracked eastward right along a sharp warm front orieted W-E from a surface low in northern MO yielding enhanced low-level wind shear.  Check out more pictures and videos at Rarearth.tv

Footage from historic southern U.S. Tornado Outbreak!

Over 200 tornadoes were reported from Oklahoma to North Carolina on April 14-16, 2011, including several strong, damaging tornadoes, especially on the 15th and 16th from the Lower MS River Valley eastward.  TVN chased a supercell in Oklahoma on April 14 that produced a small rope tornado, and several supercells in Mississippi the following day, two of which produced violent tornadoes.  One of these tornadoes was produced by a storm in extreme southeast MS into southwest AL that was only 50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico!  I've never chased an outbreak like this with so many simultaneous supercells with large tornadoes on the ground.  Check out the videos of the MS tornadoes below.  Moderate risk today in MO into IL; the last chase without the Dominators.  This weekend looks HUGE!

 

Active start to the 2011 season for TVN!

Active tornado seasons in the U.S. have been known to accompany La Nina conditions in the Pacific Ocean (cold opposite of El Nino), and 2011 is living up to climatology.  TVN has already documented 18 tornadoes, including several in Northwest Iowa on April 9 and one in central Wisconsin with snow on the ground and frozen lakes on the following day!  The Iowa chase featured at least a dozen tornadoes of all shapes and sizes, especially after dark while illuminated by near-continuous lightning, and a wedge tornado of over 3 miles in width (widest in recorded history - beating out the Hallam, NE F4 of May 22, 2004 which was 2.5 miles wide).  Below is the video from that chase: 

Today was another active day for tornadoes, but in the Southern Plains states of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas which is way more typical for this early in the spring.   TVN filmed a slender rope tornado that touched down harmlessly in Central Oklahoma farm country (video below), but a much stronger tornado sadly struck the towns of Atoka and Tushka, OK near the Red River, causing injuries and at least two fatalities.  Several storm chasers were some of the first to arrive on the damage, and helped out substantially in the recovery effort, yet another example of the positive side of storm chasing/spotting.

The forecast models are in agreement on yet another tornado outbreak today over the Lower Mississippi River Valley ("the jungle"), and TVN is currently in the midst of an all-night drive to our target area south of Memphis, TN.  Stay tuned for updates from this storm chase as well as for the rest of the season!  Dominator 2 is almost completed.. pictures coming soon.

TVN intercepts dust devil by golf cart!

EXTREME video of a dust devil intercept at Purcell Golf Course by Reed Timmer, Aaron Ruppert, Chris Chittick, and Andy Gabrielson..  Great way to start off the 2011 tornado season!

 

 

TVN intercepts incredible supercell near Santa Rosa, Argentina

Check out this video from an incredible tornadic supercell just north of Santa Rosa, Argentina on January 5, 2010, along with Argentinian meteorologists Ramiro and Matias.  Note how the supercell is rotating clockwise instead of the counter-clockwise direction we are used to here in the Northern Hemisphere.  We left this storm for other supercells further north that were migrating off the Cordoba Mountains, but it actually produced a tornado to the east in Buenos Aires province.  We hope to ship the Dominator down the the Argentina Pampas one of these years!  Don't forget to check out Storm Chasers on Discovery Channel tonight at 10 pm eastern/9 pm central as we track down a 1.8 mile wide tornado in southern Mississippi!

Preliminary radar data of vertical wind inside EF4 tornado!

The plot below shows vertical wind data recorded from the radar on the Dominator as we intercepted an EF4 tornado southwest of Wadena, MN on June 17, 2010.  The x-axis is in seconds, which is reset every 30 seconds as we collect data from the radar.  This plot shows data from the intercept of the EF4 tornado as it was a 1/2+ mile-wide tornado, as we dropped to the ground inside the intense inflow jet on the east side of this northerly-moving tornado.  Confidence is high in the measurements of vertical wind gusts in the 160-180 mph range during 22.5-25.0 seconds, with velocities possibly even exceeding 200 mph.  Other weaker gusts in the 70-100 mph range were recorded in the first 10 seconds of this data set, possibly associated with a wobbling of the tornado as it drifted east toward our position.  We have much more data to sift through, but this is the most striking we have found so far with Hyperion Technology Group in Tupelo, MS.  We'll be returning to Hyperion in a few weeks to discuss the rest of the data we collected, and plans for next season to improve our tornado field project.  You can check out the tornado intercepts when we collected this data on the new season of Storm Chasers on Discovery Channel, which premieres on Wednesday, October 13 at 10 pm eastern/9 pm central!

Video from Argentina Storm Chasing! TVN in the Southern Hemisphere

Check out this video from our first day of storm chasing in Argentina on December 27, 2009.  We'll be releasing our chasing experiences down there as a series of webisodes, starting with this one, as we intercepted several supercells down there through the first few weeks of 2010.  This first video shows a nighttime supercell we intercepted the night of December 27, after flying all night from the States down to Buenos Aires, renting a few vehicles, and surging 6 hours west of BA across the perfect storm chasing terrain of the Argentine Pampas -- definitely one of the longest single storm chases I've ever been on.  This supercell was likely producing tornadoes further west of the Santa Rosa area, but the small engines of our rental cars would not let us catch this storm until just after sunset.  The low-level wind shear must have been incredibly intense that night, because I remember the low clouds streaming SOUTHWARD across the Pampas (opposite from the southerly low-level jet streams that fuel Great Plains tornado outbreaks) with deep moisture from the Amazon.  Note in this video and especially the later webisodes that show some textbook storm structure during daylight, that the supercells and tornadoes actually rotate clockwise (opposite to the counter-clockwise-rotating storms of the Northern Hemisphere).  The plan is to return to Argentina for the 2010-11 tornado season (now through January on the Pampas), and not come back until we get a tornado down there!  But first, stay tuned for more webisodes from last year!   

TVN watching the Tropics; severe weather to slam Southeast U.S.!

The 2010 hurricane season has produced 12 named storms in the Atlantic, but thankfully for residents of the East Coast has been relatively uneventful in terms of land-falling tropical cyclones.  In 2005, the hurricanes would develop over the warm water of the Tropical Atlantic west of Africa, and cruise west toward the Caribbean Sea before exploding into monster storms and making landfall along the Gulf Coast. Conversely, the hurricanes of 2011 have been strong, but are continually "curving" to the north and northeast through the open water of the North Atlantic, before making a beeline toward northern Europe as extra-tropical cyclones.  TornadoVideos.net was waiting in Puerto Rico for a chase-able storm last week, but Hurricane Igor followed suit and curved northward toward Bermuda, missing the Caribbean.  Still though, TVN storm chaser James Rogers was documenting Hurricane Igor last week from Bermuda as it made landfall as a category 1 storm (see below).  Right now, we're keeping an eye on some tropical disturbances that have cropped up in the Caribbean Sea, which could very easily explode into a strong hurricane and head WNW toward Mexico.  The Dominator is in great shape and ready to deploy, so a trip south of the border in Mexico to intercept a hurricane would not be out of the question.  Similar to tornadoes, our goal would be to intercept the eye wall of a category 4 or 5 storm, and measure the vertical and horizontal winds inside with the radar and anemometer.

Video of Hurricane Igor from Bermuda (shot by TVN chaser James Rogers):

 

South Dakota Tornado Intercepts! Dominator cannon probe success

Here is video and a picture (taken by Dick McGowan) of a massive EF4 tornado we intercepted in Edmunds Co, SD on May 22, 2010...  We deployed in the circulation of this tornado twice when it was intensifying, and closed to within 100 yards of the 1/2 mile wide beast with the Dominator as it was stationary in the field to our east.  We considered just sticking the front of the Dominator inside this wedge, but probably would have been thrown if we did!  The sun illuminated the backside of the funnel bright orange at times, as the strong tornado moved over a lake on one occasion.  The surface of gravel roads were scoured off, large farm equipment was flying through the air, and high tension power structures were knocked over and twisted.  Thankfully no one was hurt from this tornado, as it mostly remained over open terrain. 
Two days later, we saw three more tornadoes in Meade Co., SD, two of which were very strong..  Check out this plot of pressure from the Dominator as we intercepted the second tornado...  The barometric pressure sensor on the Hyperion probe attached to the back window of the Dominator recorded a 8.7 hPa pressure drop over 22 seconds during the intercept on Monday afternoon when we were about 50m from the tornado at the very closest.  The pressure fell from 912.1 hPa (at 20:00:35 UTC) to 903.4 hPa (at 20:00:57 UTC) and recovered to 912.1 hPa (at 20:01:42 UTC).  It would have been insane to have this probe on the Dom during the Aurora tornado last year when our ears were popping...  I have a feeling it may have been an order of magnitude greater.  We also shot 9 parachute probes into this tornado as we were in the inflow to the east of the funnel on a dirt road, and recovered 5 of them after the tornado disspated.  We're still analyzing the data from the parachute probes with Hyperion Technology Group, and are making some improvements to the probes to help track them down from a longer range, which is especially important for the long-track tornadoes when the parachute probes could be carried for miles.  The video from this intercept in Meade Co., SD is below.. Notice the elephant-like noise made by the cannons at launch!

Dominator fully loaded! The ultimate tornado research machine!

The engineers of Hyperion Technology Group in Tupelo, MS (www.HyperionTechGroup.com) have been working day and night for the last 72 hours to install the mobile air cannon array and upgraded radar in time for the Northern Plains madness that is about to ensue.  The array consists of 10 cannons, each capable of shooting instrument probes into the heart of a tornado to measure temperature, pressure, and moisture at an astounding frequency of 5 measurements per second.  Since the goal is to measure the vertical profile of these variables from near the ground to high up inside the funnel, the role of the cannons is to "deposit" the probes just high enough above the vehicle so the parachutes will catch the tornado's updraft and be lifted high above the ground.  When deploying the probes, the air cannons sound like the cross between a Sperm Whale and a tuba as the over 100 psi of air pressure will force the parachute probe upward through the tube.  We will have ten shots for each reload, launched by pressing the large red button inside the Dominator pictured above to the right of the cannons.  Contained in the back of the Dominator is the compressor that fills the holding tanks before launching the probes, as well as the "brain" computer that can be used to remotely control all our science equipment (radar, cannons, etc) from a follow vehicle.  Pictured at far right is the probe microchip containing the GPS sensor for tracking, the sd card to store the data, and the temperature/moisture/pressure sensors.  We will have the ability to launch all ten probes into the funnel, track them on our computer in real-time and watch them circulate inside the tornado.  Similar to Twister but in real-life!  Below are several pictures of the cannon setup on the Dominator, as well as some action shots of the Hyperion team while they installed our science equipment.  Also, shown below is a video of our first test launch in the Hyperion parking lot before driving all night to our target in South Dakota.  If we intercept a tornado tomorrow and during the rest of the storm season we'll finally be able to collect our first full data set, which was the primary goal of designing the Dominator in the first place.  Stay tuned!!!!