6/10 - 6pm - More Hot Weather!?

Tomorrow and Thursday will see highs top out in the lower 90's, something that we really don't want to see the return of. Today was just about perfect, the temperatures held out in the mid 80's and the humidity dropped dramatically from yesterday. We should drop to the upper 80's after Thursday and rain on Friday and Saturday is not out of the question.

Not much else going on here weather wise!

6/9 - 5pm - A Little Cool Down

91 degrees isn't my idea of a nice day. If you cut out some of the humidity, it probably wouldn't be so bad, but that's Kentucky in June for you. Tomorrow will be a welcome cool down day, with highs only reaching into the lower 80's and a little rain in the morning. Things will warm back up into the 90's by Wednesday, but it looks like we won't breach 92 this week. Next rain chance is on Friday.

Looks like we're going to be spared from any severe weather this week, but unfortunately some could make the flooding problems in Indiana go from bad to worse....

Still editing my storm chasing video!

6/7 - 10:30pm - I'm Back!!!

Wow, did anyone notice that it's substantially hotter and muggier here than it was two weeks ago? It feels downright oppressive to someone who's been in 40% humidity with temps in the 80's and 90's for the last few weeks.

As promised, here's some of the panoramas I stitched together from the last couple of weeks (click on any of the images for a larger view):


Big "mothership" updraft base from Sunday


Grapefruit size hail-maker from Monday


A restaurant that was damaged by the Greensburg, KS tornado from last May

I'm still working on getting video edited, and it could take up to a week to get it all sorted out. I'll put out a nice compilation of all the video I took with hopefully some sort of coherent chronological story line. I won't be able to do a forecast video this weekend due to all the triage I'm performing on the photos and video. Next week won't have a forecast video either since I'm attending the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, TN. I have a weather website for that event at weatheroo.info.

6/6 - 1:10pm CDT - Back to Denver

Yesterday we were on our way to Yankton, SD when one of the lines of thunderstorms caught up with us and we stopped to watch it. It had a nicely defined gust front for such a weak storm:

Since it was such a wide storm, a picture just doesn't do justice:

(no sound due to bandwith constraints)

This morning we visited Ashfall State Historic Park just south of Yankton. It had some incredible fossils from that resulted from various wildlife being covered by over a foot of ash from an eruption of a supervolcano in Idaho many millions of years ago. There was a building that covered some of the best fossils that were dug up about 30 years ago:

So now we're on the road to Denver so that the guests from tour 5 can fly back home tomorrow. This is my day to fly home as well, so I'll be back in Louisville tomorrow evening. It's been a great week meeting everyone and seeing some awesome weather!

6/5 - 10pm CDT - Big Bust...

We drove from Woodward, OK to Yankton, SD to get in the most prime super cell development area as recommended by the surface conditions and the SPC. All we saw was a small line of storms. Not one super cell showed up in this area. What happened to the HIGH risk!? Well, an area of low pressure that was forecast to stay in Kansas decided to move into Central Nebraska. That messed up the whole works. The stable flow of east winds shifted around quite a bit and that made multiple areas of storms fire and then combine. It was a storm chaser's nightmare on radar. There was a little bit of tornadic activity in Kansas and other areas south of us, but nothing near what the SPC had prognosticated. So we drove over 500 miles to see a little gust front and a few drips of rain. Ouch!

Tomorrow's risk shifts east, so we're going to head back to Denver so all of us can fly out Saturday. It's sad that we didn't see anything good today, but at least Sunday and Monday had some remarkable weather.

6/5 - 9:15am CDT - Yet Another HIGH RISK...

Before I go into today's mess, here's some pictures of the Twister Museum from yesterday:

The original Dorothy I probe from Twister (pretty good looking prop!).

We also visited the Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma as well:

Now, today looks like the best day all week (two weeks maybe). The SPC has issued a HIGH risk for severe weather in a vast area in the Plains. We're headed to the Nebraska-Kansas border in search of the highest possibility of storms. The cells (when they form) will move very fast, so we'll have to really be on our toes when chasing them. They'll also form later in the day, say after 5pm or so. I can't be sure that we'll see a tornado, but I think we'll at least see some impressive super cells.

You can track our position later this afternoon at:

http://www.spotternetwork.org/google.php

Just look for the "stormchasing.com" vehicle icon on the map.

6/4 - 11pm CDT - No Storms, Tomorrow Looks Better

After visiting the Twister Museum in Wakita, OK, we drifted around between the Kasas-Oklahoma border waiting for storm initiation to happen. We saw a dry line on radar and the moisture that it was pushing and quickly drove to that boundary. Nothing but a few puffy clouds came about; The cap (atmospheric pressure cooker lid) was simply too strong.

So we motored as fast as we could to Woodward, OK so we could get there before Mazzio's Pizza closed. Dinner was a pleasant reward for waiting so long without any storms. Some linear storms did form in Northern Kansas, but there was little chance of a tornado and they wouldn't be fun to chase due to all the rainy mess and wind-driven gust fronts.

There's quite a bit of hype surounding tomorrow's storm situation. Various sources like the Stormtrack.org forum and Norman, OK NWS office indicated that this outbreak tomorrow could be an earth-shaker. The SPC has a MODERATE risk out for most of the Plains tomorrow, but we'll take that with a grain of salt. It's difficult to forecast severe weather even the night before and even harder to pinpoint a general location of the storms. Hopefully we can get in some adrenaline-fueled chasing tomorrow...