Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
Tuesday was, without a doubt, the best storm chasing day of our lives. Although we didn’t see a tornado, we saw multiple incredible mesocyclones, which are the rotating updrafts affiliated with all tornadic thunderstorms. Moreover, these mesocyclones occurred within the same thunderstorm complex and were rotating in opposite directions. It was a truly incredible experience […]
Our first day of storm chasing was more of a travel day than anything else, so it was icing on the cake that we were treated to some strong storms and spectacular lightning at night. We all decided to meet in Albuquerque, and although Albuquerque is hardly known for its tornadoes, it ended up being […]
With tornado activity well to our north yesterday, we decided to take a day off from chasing and explore Oklahoma! After sleeping in past noon, we decided to head east from Clinton, OK towards Oklahoma City and get some good southern barbecue. We stopped at Swadley’s Bar-B-Q on the western outskirts of Oklahoma City and […]
Our second day of storm chasing was definitely a lot more active than our first! We saw flooding rains, strong winds, lots of (presumably wind, possibly tornado) damage, a weak funnel cloud, several weakly rotating wall clouds, lots of “scud,” and even smoke from an oil tank that got struck by lightning. The storms started […]
After much anticipation, Joey and I finally saw some good storms on our third day of our storm chasing vacation! No tornadoes were in the cards for today, but we saw brief bursts of heavy rain, small hail, gusty winds, an impressive flanking line, and above all, very frequent lightning! We started out the day […]
Hi everybody! This week, I’ll be doing something I (surprisingly) haven’t done before: tornado chasing! I’ll be chasing with Joey Sipos, a computer programmer/game designer (check out his latest VR game, “Glider Island”) and a fellow severe weather geek. Joey’s been chasing once, so I’m counting on him to get us perfectly positioned to […]
