VORTEX2: May 23, 2009 - 14 days. Operations provided for in the field: intercettamento.Miglia traveled today: 333. Total miles traveled: 3652.
Today is Saturday, but when you're in a research project on the ground there are Saturdays, Sundays and Memorial Day All days are the same because Nature does not wait for Monday or the weekend to deliver rain or shine. At the briefing today on the news everyone was expecting great choice for the next day: stay north or head south to Texas. But the news does not come, at least for today. The boundary conditions have not changed, there are great expectations for the next day, however, the great leaders today decided not to leave the north and try to stay in the area.
for today is marginal instability (CAPE almost zero) but there is a lot of shear in the first few levels of the atmosphere. The sky over our heads is covered by low clouds and dense. The first target is in Bridgeport Nebraska. Even today, as happened a few days ago, we have some distinguished guests in our Hummer. In fact, the Doppler On Wheel 7 yesterday afternoon was brought to Scottbluff to remedy a small problem and then the manager Joshua Wurman and Karen are the vice a ride in our vehicle.
few drops of rain accompanied our move to the south and the greyness of the sky and temperatures around 10 ° C makes it almost impossible to think that 35 ° C only a few days ago we experienced here in Nebraska. The changes in temperature here in the U.S. Great Plains will have the passage of a front is something unthinkable in Italy, where everything seems to be softer.
At lunchtime there is only time for a brief stop in the parking lot of Wal-Mart in the tiny town of Chadron, then you get back off again towards the south-east. Of time it took life in the south-western Nebraska and the Field Coordinator (field coordinator) heard the other leaders decided to concentrate the efforts to find and apply more Western than the cell, as well as being the closest (but still at 60-70 miles), is also the most isolated by the group.
Suddenly one of the temporal development in and around North Platte a tornado is reported, the data we hold about you should treat a minisupercella but there is no certainty about the report whether this is a real tornado, or perhaps a gustnado (dust devils that are raised below the storm clouds, which can be confused with the tornado). However, the fact certainly increases our expectations on the day.
The time the object of our campaign so far, thanks to winds at high altitude, moving very slowly and tend to rise from south to north. The approach is from the north side, since all the means at Armada are on Interstate 80.
The first to arrive on the scene are the means of NSSL that it can carry just off the main updraft, but are now also incorporated by precipitation allowing them to collect little data on the area immediately surrounding the storm. Our group coordinated by the Doppler probe On Wheel 7 in the meantime met the caravan, he was sent to monitor the transect (ie go back and forth a road at constant speed) is the area immediately north of the cells.
We meet so spaced from one another to walk two miles to twelve miles a road which soon becomes dirt and that brings us to cross from one side to the storm managed to collect some good data. The road that is perpendicular to the direction of movement of the cell gives us the opportunity to monitor rainfall and intense that a good shock. A case also appears in some parts of the rotation of radar echoes, but all can create only a few lower clouds, and nothing more.
The mission ends when the storm reaches the Interstate 80 more north of which you can not go to the very complex terrain and the lack of roads.
The day ends with the arrival at the hotel in North Platte. Begun quietly without too many expectations but then turned into an opportunity to collect a good set of data.
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