June 2009 on the Great Plains
We just got back Saturday from our annual storm observing and Great Plains photography vacation. It was amazing — day after day of storms somewhere, in the most prolonged favorable pattern for supercells from any early-mid June period that I can recall. The only bad side was that we chased so much, we didn’t get too many of our usual side diversions, nor much time with Elke’s folks in the Denver area that usually occupy those 3-4 lame storm days between patterns.
Elke got to see a birthday tornado on June 5 from a storm in Wyoming while we were just over the border in Nebraska. The day before I pulled an all-nighter at work (last midnight shift), packed, drove all afternoon to Hays KS, stayed at a Patel Cartel roach motel (more on that experience in a future post), and slept in late. Then with good fortune on the 5th, we somehow made the long drive from Hays to NW of Sidney NE, just in time to see the last several minutes of the Goshen County WY tornado. It was the second time we’ve seen a tornado in one state while we were in another. That storm produced striking structures thereafter until sunset.
Several other chase days followed with assorted severe storms and photogenic skies from southeastern Nebraska to Kansas and Colorado, including a surprise supercell that erupted just a few miles away while we ate dinner in Liberal KS. This storm turned into a small bow echo by sunset, spreading a wild assortment of curved cloud bands across the southwest Kansas sky, intermittently lit from within by diffuse lightning flashes.
That was followed the next day (11th) by an absolutely dazzling storm structure show in the Arkansas Valley of southeast Colorado, where two out of four close-proximity supercells that we observed for hours merged into a stunning singularity.
Then on the 12th, we chased near there again (closer of two potential target areas), only to spend a restless night fielding and making calls because of a nighttime tornado that passed over our home in Norman.
A few more supercell days followed, capped off by a wild chase into central Nebraska on the 17th. After following a late morning supercell that became tornadic in northeast Kansas in early afternoon, we recovered westward to arrive in Buffalo County in time for an amazing supercell that greeted us with several tornadoes and another gorgeous storm structure display.
With three escape options and the car running and ready, we let the largest and longest lived of the tornadoes (near Aurora NE) get within less than a mile, so we could hear the whoosh of it out in the field. When relatively safe to do so (very rare), it is amazing to see a tornado up close, admire its sinuous power and ever-changing form, then back off again and let oneself be captured and enraptured by the full beauty of the whole storm’s vaporous and ephemeral sculpture.
After a bust in Iowa, we turned the lemon into lemonade by thoroughly enjoying Winterset’s classical, down-home Americana (more on that in a future post), John Wayne’s birthplace, and the photogenic covered bridges of Madison County. Elke and I can’t seem to let a Plains vacation pass without quiet time together on the shady front porch of the Spring Hill Ranch house at Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. This “tallgrass porch time” has become a custom for us, and we did so again this year, on the way home from Iowa.
Over the next few weeks, work and family time permitting, I’ll try to process and upload many more of the best photos and accounts of our storm experiences, in simple and easy chronological order, to our storm observing BLOG. I’ll also post a few of the best and worst of our non-storm related experiences in future BLOG entries here.
This also was the last chase season for my 10 year old Crown Vic (a.k.a. Squad Car), which now has 227,000 miles and is festooned profusely, on top and both sides, with hail dents. The formerly trusty old steed starts to overheat when 1) the AC is on, 2) it’s in the upper 80s or warmer, and 3) I’m driving uphill. It also has other mainly nuisance troubles that will compel its relegation to teenage driving. This fall, my son gets the car, along with the responsibility for its maintenance, insurance and fuel bills. It, like the Meatwagon before, has served me well.
Thoughts on the Norman Tornado of 12 June 2009
One of the greatest ironies of my life happened on the night of 12 June 2009 while I was on vacation, within a few hours after I observed a non-tornadic supercell in Colorado.
My house in Norman was in a tornado. Not just near one, not just within sight of one, but smack-dab inside one.
Shortly after the day’s Colorado storm observing ended we arrived at Elke’s mom’s place near Denver, my son called to tell me a supercell had blown up over Norman and a tornado warning was out. Earlier that day, while doing photography at Bent’s Fort CO, I specifically suspected something like this could happen, given the location of the stalled outflow boundary, the supercell-favorable bulk shear, and the massive CAPE along and S of said boundary. Indeed, while approaching the Fort before noon MDT, I even half-joked to Elke that a big honker storm could go over Norman and her flower beds could get pounded by grapefruit hail that evening. Ask her.
OK, so her gardens were just inside the edge of a nighttime tornado instead, and the hail was a few miles farther E and not quite that huge. If all my “forecasts” were that close, I could make millions as a fortune teller/prophet instead of being a meteorologist at an unnamed national center, and then, make a nice living charging you all premium coin for the near-perfect daily chase forecasts. If only…
Fortunately the tornado was a bird fart as these things go: a narrow, two mile long path with marginal EF-1 in another neighborhood and EF-0 in mine, mainly minor roof damage to a few homes. My house came away intact, with not even a shingle lost, though trees snapped on all sides in the north (weaker) side of the vortex). The supercell erupted over Norman, spawned the small tornado, and soon died. In the grand scheme of things, it was but one of nearly a thousand weak tornadoes each year in the United States. The 1/2-to-1 mile wide 3 May 1999 Bridge Creek/Moore F5 tornado probably processed more air mass in a second or two than the 2009 Norman tornado did in its entire lifespan.
Rich Thompson and others graciously swung by by night and by day to survey the damage on my property, and he also checked with the house-sitter. Rich also sawed up and cleaned up a lot of fallen and hanging tree debris while I was gone, for which I’m grateful.
A tornado path goes across my property in Norman, in mid-June, while I’m chasing in Colorado. Radical, dude. I told RT that I should just quit chasing, go to my back porch, sit for a spell with some fresh lemonade, and watch the hoses go overhead.
After a busy night of phone calls and little sleep, I determined that the property was secure, the occupant safe, the gawkers kept at bay. In the true spirit of the storm hunter, the chase trip went on. More on that in another post later…
While Elke and I continued to roam those blue highways and big horizons in search of atmospheric violence (fulfilled resoundingly on 17 June near Aurora NEb), quite a bit of controversy erupted within the Norman meteorological community about the fact that the sirens failed to sound until after the tornado hit the neighborhoods.
As someone whose home was in the tornado vortex, I followed the discussions and revelations from afar, but with great interest, in effort to get well informed as to what happened, what succeeded, what failed, when and why. Now that I’ve heard from folks on every node of the Integrated Warning System, here’s my take:
* Norman WFO looks to have done a good job with warnings and TV media seemed to be mostly on the ball. Nonetheless…
* If any link in the chain breaks, the whole system fails. Whatever the reasons or excuses, who ever did good or bad or right or wrong along the path from outlooks through watches/warnings/media/spotters/EM/individuals…what matters are results! Results, results, results. That’s all. The bottom line here was a failure of the Integrated Warning System. Simple as that.
* Disasters, or scary non-disasters (this was the latter) perform a needed service in revealing fixable flaws. Documenting and openly discussing these flaws isn’t blame, it’s necessary information. Points of failure must be revealed and repaired.
* Every property owner (me included) and home/vehicle occupant who was along the path, was very fortunate this was a weak tornado, for various reasons.
* For accountability’s sake, any given person who would have to answer for their decisions anywhere along the chain, also is lucky that this was a weak tornado. Will they use their good fortune as motivation to improve, or sweep it under the rug and place head firmly back in sand?
* Ultimately, tornado safety is personal responsibility of the individual. Some of the people in the path at the time were storm-ignorant. They therefore were irresponsible by being passively unaware, sirens or not.
* Norman and OU clearly are not “Storm Ready” — and I mean in the practical, not official sense. Just like we in Norman have these silly “Bike Route” signs recently slapped up alongside miles of narrow, hilly, shoulderless, dangerous rural roads, “Storm Ready” signs also serve no actual purpose. They’re mere decorations, ego-stroking exercises that are, by themselves, practically meaningless. The real test is in results, results, results. Never should the sirens sound so long after the tornado starts, whatever the prior forecast or lack thereof. Never should occupants of OU buildings under a tornado warning mill about them confused, uninformed of the threat and unaware of what to do. Can anyone argue that such a situation is just fine, as is? No way. So how can it be claimed Norman and OU are, quite literally, storm-ready? It can’t! Therefore, the official designations and pretty new signs are just fictional BS. It makes me wonder: What does “Storm Ready” mean, if events prove the designee is not really storm-ready? How many other “Storm Ready” communities and universities nationwide are in the same boat and don’t know it?
* Sirens are not meant for indoor warning; and over-dependence on them is a combined educational and personal responsibility problem.
* I agree with friend’s and colleagues’ suggestions to rewrite the local plan using city officials and NWC meteorologists, including ideas such as sectorized sirens, backup/remote activation (presently it can be done only by someone present with a key), city spotters. Norman and OU should set the national example. This is, after all, the world capital of severe storms meteorology. Anything less than setting the highest bar of tornado preparedness would be a damn shame.
* This was one singular, weak tornado: just one among over a thousand reported nationally in most years…nothing more, nothing less. It just happened to cause damage on a couple of properties owned by meteorologists in a town chock full of weather people. Let’s not make more out of it than it was, but let’s do use it to make smart improvements to those links that did break.
* Throwing money at problems doesn’t solve them. KC Public Schools got a massive windfall in the form of a judicially mandated 1% city income tax and later assumed some of the worst rankings in the US by many measures. The Titanic was very expensive, and look what happened to it. DOD once spent hundreds of dollars each for assorted hand tools no better than what I can get at Ace for $15 apiece. That’s not a political statement; it’s established reality rooted in factual events! Instead…
* Smart use or reallocation of whatever is available, of whatever the citizenry is willing to support, performed by experts in civic economics, city planning and meteorological preparedness working together, can improve the situation. Good stuff can come of this. If not here, where?
Finally, some strange trivia… How many professional meteorologists have had a tornado and the eyewall of a hurricane pass directly over places of residence? The list must be extremely short, and it may be just me. Either way, I feel honored!
Scattershooting…
…while wondering whatever happened to Charlie the Tuna and the Frito Bandito.
A few topical smatterings for the week…titles included so you can skip what you don’t care to read.
NATURE: The National Park Service is about to offer fee-free weekends in your national parks. Not cool! Here are the weekends to avoid if you are a photographer, due to crowds and extra traffic:
* June 20-21, 2009
* July 18-19, 2009
* August 15-16, 2009
Fortunately, as every year, I already have a paid 1-year parks pass anyway, so it doesn’t matter when or to which park I go. Well, actually it does — I want to be where and when there are the fewest other people to get in the way of the shot, screaming kids to scare off the wildlife, or beer-swilling and music-blaring morons engaging in their usual uselessness.
POLITICS: B. Hussein Obama, during his campaign, did everything possible to divert attention from his Muslim heritage. If he was really proud of it, why didn’t he just do what I would, and say forthrightly, “Yes, this is my heritage, I’m proud of it, got a problem with that?” Easy. He’s a pandering wimp. Such lackus sackus comes from being yet another typically two-faced, opportunistic politician. Case in point… BHO stated that America isn’t a “Christian nation.” Then he goes before French TV and says “If you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” Say what? How many faces and fronts does this guy have anyway? Most Muslims, who worship the same God of Abraham as Christians, oppose abortion, promiscuity and sodomy (like most Christians worldwide). Will they see, then, the duplicity in his policies versus his rhetoric, and better yet, call him on it? I hope so.
SPORTS: Check them off: T.O. — Gone! (Empty) Tank Johnson — Gone! PacMan Jones — Gone! Addition by subtraction alone tells me the Cowboys will be better this year. Roy Williams (WR) doesn’t bother me; I know what he’s capable of, and it’s plenty good enough. I have grown to accept, even like, some of the draft picks, and the great blue star will be worn on the helmets of the deepest and most talented stable of running backs in the NFL. Now if only…Princeton alum and former QB Jason Garrett figures out how to balance out the passing attack better with more of Marion the Barbarian, a healthy (and therefore astoundingly explosive) Felix Jones, and the surprising Tashard Choice. Emphasizing the run game in the rugged and physical NFC East will allow the massive OL to do what they do best — plow open some space — and minimize Romo’s mistakes under pressure. Let’s hope so anyway!
WEATHER: Good news: The pattern is changing, and for the better! It’s about stinkin’ time we’ll have some robust mid-upper level winds juxtaposed with foci for supercell genesis! Thermodynamically speaking, the lack of even indirect Gulf trajectories bothers me a little, but maybe Friday will be a test as to whether the origin of the moisture matters much with regard to modulating the shape and geometry of the moist profile in the low levels. Prospective storm inflow all will be “recycled” air. After that, virtually every day for the next week looks to be a potential storm intercept day somewhere. Let the chase season begin, at long last.
The central Great Plains beckons. With all the snow in late winter, and all the rain so far this spring, parts of western KS, NE, and eastern CO ought to be green and bountifully blanketed with wildflowers. Let’s hope some bad-mother supercells complete the scenery whenever we get up there.