Weather, Climate, and Other Science Topics
When most people think of the conditions needed for wildfires to grow, marine pushes aren’t the first thing to come to mind. Our famous summertime “natural air conditioning” brings a thick layer of morning clouds and keeps nighttime temperatures in 50s even in the heart of summer. But it also brings very windy conditions to […]
Sorry for such a hiatus on blogs pertaining to Pacific Northwest weather! I had a backlog of storm chasing blogs to finish up, but now that they have all finally been posted, it’s time to get back to talking about the weather in our neck of the woods. But before we focus on the Pacific […]
Here are the last 5 days of our storm chasing trip from early June. I apologize profusely for not getting these out in a timely fashion! Day 6 (Saturday 6/2/2018) With no storms in the vicinity for the next two days, we decided to take it easy and hang out in Grand Island. As we […]
NOTE: I never got around to finishing this on time, but here it is. This post refers to our storm chasing day on Friday 6/1/2018 It was really nice to have an off day on Thursday, because Friday ended up being an exhausting day. A vigorous shortwave trough centered over the northern Plains drew warm, […]
Our 4th day of storm chasing (5/31/2018) was a much-needed off day. After driving all the way from Albuquerque to the Texas Panhandle to catch some supercells on Memorial Day and seeing fantastic mesocyclones and gust fronts on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively, a break was in order. But unfortunately, this day was still fairly exhausting […]
We knew that the majestic, rotating supercell we saw yesterday (Tuesday 5/29/2018) would be very hard to surpass, but Wednesday ended up far exceeding our expectations. Even as early as the night before, the Storm Prediction Center only had “marginal risk” for severe weather over the Western Oklahoma/NW Texas region. But in the morning, the […]
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 […]
Most people run away from storms. But some people are crazy enough to run towards them. I am one of those people and from today through June 7, I’ll be joined by two others as we go tornado chasing over the Great Plains Storm chasing is unique because it seamlessly reconciles both being a nerd […]
Before I was interested in meteorology, I was fascinated by volcanoes. Even as early as preschool, I would religiously watch my many volcano VHS tapes, and I’d make my parents read this book to me. I was particularly fond of the Hawaiian volcanoes because the lava was so colorful, so my 5-year-old self was beyond […]
