Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Pick a storm...any storm: Part 2















So after some sleep and post morteming (apparently my grammar has yet to improve) with the other Vortex2 research groups, it is time for me to present the conclusion of this saga...

(according to my Google search on "story arcs" I should be about 75% through my story...)

Radar teams found "good" deployment sites.
Instruments were tested (and, in some cases, fixed. funny story about that...now).
The field coordinators of Vortex2 became one with their computers.

Teams converged in Stroud, OK around 330.
Storms had formed to the west of I-35.
There were no shortage of storms.
A target storm was picked.
The radars set up their network.
Now all we needed was for a tornadic storm to pass through the radar network...
No problem...except for the tornado part.
Some of the radars, disdrometers, mesonets, etc. were too far north.
Others were able to get south and east of Seminole, OK.
Some good data were collected near Seminole by the NOXP and the UMASS-X radars (Go Team X!). Ultimately, though, the storms were too fast and too numerous to collect the type of integrated data set that Vortex2 aspires to obtain (more on the holy grail data set later...). But we are optimists (and James Bond fans), so we will Chase Another Day.

If you are the type of person who likes to keep score (i.e., competitive):

Weather = 1
Vortex2 = 0.5

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Picture 1 (Left): The storm reports for 10 May 2010.

Picture 2 (Right): Some of the damage that the DOWs drove through en route to the hotel.

6 comments:

  1. Apparently the damage to the DOW5 radar was not substantial?

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  2. DOW5 is tough...and wrapped in duct tape.
    Justin, Jon, and Herb were able to repair the damage.

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  4. As proven by Mythbusters, duck tape will hold any car together. So don't worry about DOW it seems. ;p

    Joking aside, it's nice to hear about what had happened those days. I was unlucky enough that we lost our internet and cable until just now since Monday afternoon. =(

    Sad to hear that you didn't get the full set of data! D: You can do it guys! Here's to hopping for more tornadic storms... not near people.

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  5. Wow, that must have been rough. Good job though!

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