The Dominator team led by Reed Timmer are one of three groups of chasers in this season of Storm Chasers. (Discovery Channel)
Every spring and summer storm chasers take to the Great Plains on a single-minded quest to experience a tornado up close and personal. While many people may find this odd, the cast of the Discovery Channel series Storm Chasers relishes the annual ritual and the channel is set to kick off the fourth season of the hit series.
The 1996 movie Twister brought storm chasing on to the big screen and to the forefront of the public consciousness. On the small screen, Storm Chasers has become one of the most popular shows on Discovery Channel as camera crews follow teams of professional chasers hunting tornadoes. Both have been responsible for the increasing interest in “tornado tourism” during severe weather season.
For the 2010 season the show sees the return of familiar faces for those that have seen the show before but also a notable one appears to be missing.
ThorntonWeather.com is ready to begin the hunt for tornadoes!
Storm Chase 2010 is making final preparations to take to the Great Plains on Saturday. With severe weather forecast for the northern plains, the opportunity is too good to resist so the hunt begins a day early.
The Storm Prediction Center has placed a slight risk for severe weather on an area from northeastern Colorado into Nebraska and then north from there. The risk for tornadoes is relatively small but even if we don’t see a twister, there is a good chance to witness some great storm structure as well as strong winds and hail.
The tour we are a part of isn’t officially supposed to start until tomorrow and we must be in Denver this evening to meet with the rest of the group. As such, today’s chase will be relatively short and won’t cover too much of a distance.
Roger Hill, famed storm chaser and tour leader, will outline the plans for the chase later today but we are anticipating we will hunt northeastern Colorado and western Nebraska. If all goes according to plan, we should be on the road by noon (MDT) and on our way to the target area.
We will be bringing along Examiner and ThorntonWeather.com readers on this great chase. There are no guarantees because as we all know, Mother Nature is far from reliable – six days on the plains could yield little more than rain. However, confidence is high that you will be taken on a virtual ride unlike any other with videos, photos and more from the road.
To keep things simple, ThorntonWeather.com’s chief amateur meteorologist will be primarily posting things to the Storm Chase 2010 Examiner’s home page. To be sure you don’t miss a thing, check the Storm Chase 2010 Examiner’s home page regularly. Be sure to click the “Subscribe” link at the top of the page and you will be emailed whenever a new story is posted.
Dangerous driving and irresponsible behavior by some storm chasers has led to worries that someone will get killed while chasing storms soon. In this image from a video, the infamous Tornado Intercept Vehicle (TIV) is seen passing other vehicles in an unsafe manner. Watch the video at the link below. (YouTube / Steve Miller)
Professional and amateur storm chasers, television and movie crews, researchers and news media all converge on Tornado Alley during storm season. Severe weather is fascinating and it has been brought more and more into the public eye thanks to the Internet and popular television shows. That popularity has given rise to increased danger to everyone and many say it is only a matter of time before someone chasing a storm gets killed.
Over recent weeks, tornado outbreaks in Oklahoma have seen hundreds of chasers of all types converge on tornado producing storms. Some are there for fun, others to study the phenomena for science, a few to get their two minutes of fame by capturing video to be shown on the Weather Channel and some to capture ‘the perfect shot’ for a movie.
With so many people in a relatively small area chasing the same target, conflicts are sure to arise and they have. Traffic jams of chasers around the storms have created a safety hazard as vehicles are unable to move. People are exiting their vehicles, standing in the middle of roads, all to get a glimpse of a twister.
Many have put the blame for the problem on inexperienced chasers, lured to the chase by what they see on television and the Internet. To be sure these novices can cause problems however they are not the only ones by far.
Vortex 2, the largest tornado research project in history, has brought a veritable armada of vehicles to bear chasing storms. The group’s mission of trying to learn more about tornadoes is important and Dr. Josh Wurman, one of the scientists involved with the project, laments that chasers are getting in the way of science.
Radar image of the tornado in White County, Arkansas. Two other twisters were reported in the state Wednesday, one that claimed the life of an elderly man. (NWS)
Tornadoes tore through Arkansas late yesterday and claimed the first tornado victim of 2010. One person was reported dead and three injured as the series of storms moved across the state.
The first twister of the night struck at 6:28pm local time in Saline County. That tornado damaged nearly two dozen homes but no injuries were reported.
The National Weather Service reported a second tornado was spawned out of a storm cell near Center Hill in White County. Nine homes were damaged and one person was injured.
The deadly twister was the third of the night which struck near Pearson in Cleburne County just after 9:00pm. Renee Preslar, spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, said that twister killed an elderly man and injured two others.
Thus far there has been a distinct lack of tornadoes reported in 2010. There were 41 twisters reported in January, slightly above the three year average for January of 37. That was followed by only one twister in February, the fewest in the month since record-keeping began in 1950.
There have been seven tornadoes reported thus far in March, all of which occurred in the last 48 hours.
For the first time since at least 1950, no tornadoes were recorded during the month of February. (Chris Foltz, NOAA)
While there was plenty of notable weather last month in the United States including the severe winter storms in the northeast, tornadoes were not one weather phenomena anyone had to worry about.
According to the National Weather Service, there were no twisters reported during February 2010 – the first time since record keeping began in 1950 that February did not have any. The previous low number of tornadoes in February was 2 in 2002.
Harold Brooks, a meteorologist with the National Severe Storms Laboratory, said the last time the United States went a calendar month without a tornado was January 2003. Through yesterday it has been 36 days since the last twister struck on the 24th of January in Tennessee.
Brooks cautions against reading too much into the statistic. He said it tells us, “Somewhere between a little and nothing at all.”
Most years that start out slow in terms of tornado events end average or below average Brooks said. However, he also points to 2003 when the year started out 45 days without a tornado but by the middle of May the season was above normal.
Former vice president Al Gore famously used an image of Hurricane Katrina to illustrate his argument that natural disasters will increase in intensity and frequency. Empirical data howeverhas shown that is not the case. (An Inconvenient Truth)
Manmade climate change is said to present humankind with some of its greatest challenges in the planet’s history, not the least of which is an alarming increase in frequency and intensity of natural disasters. Massive flooding, super-powered hurricanes, endless tornado seasons and more have all been said to be the direst of consequences of global warming.
In his movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, Al Gore famously proclaimed that, “Temperature changes are taking place all over the world and that is causing stronger storms.” Standing with Hurricane Katrina as a backdrop, the former vice president issued a cautionary tale of disaster in the making, all due to our irresponsible handling of the atmosphere. As recently as February Mr. Gore was giving a presentation showing flooding, drought and wildfires saying, “This is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented.”
But what if you predicted global natural disaster catastrophes and they didn’t happen? Does that invalidate your entire message? This is the conundrum faced by climate change alarmists as many of their predictions begin to fall flat.
Sean Casey, Josh Wurman, Reed Timmer next to Storm Chasers vehicle, TIV2. (Discovery Channel)
Storm Chasers is the Discover Channel’s hit show that tracks a team of tornado chasers across Tornado Alley as they hunt for twisters. Entering its third season, the season premiere is this Sunday, October 18th at 8:00pm MDT.
This season the team features a number of changes over year’s past. Josh Wurman and his team of scientists manning the DOW (Doppler On Wheels) radar returns but now he is participating in the VORTEX2 project as well. Sean Casey and the TIV2 (Tornado Intercept Vehicle) return as well.
Last season’s new addition, the TornadoVideos.net team with Reed Timmer, join with an impressive new piece of hardware – the Dominator. Lastly, world renowned storm chaser Tim Samaras joins the show as he continues on his lifelong hunt and scientific quest.
Here is a preview video for the coming season. Be sure to tune in on Sunday!
Is global warming responsible for fewer tornadoes in 2009? Stu Ostro of the Weather Channel thinks so. Image courtesy NSSL.
Stormchasers across Tornado Alley have been frustrated this spring by what seems to be a lack of tornadoes and severe weather. Indeed, VORTEX2, the largest tornado field study ever, has been running for more than two weeks now and has not seen one twister. Last week, Weather Channel Senior Meteorologist Stu Ostro speculated that global warming was the cause.
In a segment with on-air meteorologist Stephanie Abrams, Ostro explained that the jet stream lingering over Canada and a continual ridge of high pressure were suppressing severe weather. Without the collision of low and high pressure (among other factors), tornadoes and supercell thunderstorms have a hard time forming.
Ostro continued his explanation saying that atmospheric pressure in the Northern Hemisphere’s mid-latitudes between 30 and 60 degrees has increased steadily since 1970. He then overlaid a chart showing this increase with that of a chart that shows global average temperatures having increased over the same period. As he says in his blog entry, “That parallels remarkably well the trend of globally-averaged temperatures, which has also shown a significant rise since the mid 1970s.”
Last Tuesday the VORTEX2 teams chased a system that generated hail, wind and lightning but no tornadoes. Image courtesy VORTEX2 / NSSL.
The scientists and researchers taking part in VORTEX2, the largest ever tornado field study, have been confounded by Mother Nature in their search for twisters. The Verification of Origin of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment2 (VORTEX2) and its accompanying 80 scientists and 40 vehicles have yet to track a tornado since the project launched just over a week ago.
The team has tracked severe weather systems from northwestern Texas to Oklahoma and while they have seen severe thunderstorms that produced significant rainfall and winds, twisters have eluded them thus far. While this is undoubtedly frustrating for the team, it has given them time to practice the coordination and deployment of the researchers.
Last Tuesday the team was on their first chase day in west Texas and was able to deploy their mobile radar units and mobile mesonet vehicles. That storm yielded little more than wind and hail but it provided a valuable opportunity to view their plan in action and highlight areas where improvement is needed.
VORTEX2 scientists are on the chase for tornadoes today in west Texas.
Since officially kicking off on Sunday, the weather has been less than cooperative for the VORTEX2 tornado field study teams. From their starting point in Oklahoma, there simply has not been severe weather worthy of them chasing. That is changing right at this moment as the team is on the road and headed to western Texas.
VORTEX2 (Verification of Origin of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment2) is nothing short of the most ambitious field study of tornadoes ever launched. Comprising a team of more than 80 scientists utilizing 40 vehicles, 10 mobile radar units and an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) from the United States, Canada, Australia and Finland, the study hopes to answer many of the questions about twisters that we do not have answers to.
How do tornadoes form? What exactly causes the wind to spin into a concentrated funnel? How can we tell exactly when a tornado will form and when it will die, or how long it will last? Why do some thunderstorms produce tornadoes and others do not? What is the structure of tornadoes? What is the relationship of tornadic winds to damage?
