I shall type this straight away: Vortex2 likes people. Without people, Vortex2 would be a bunch of radars and trucks or minivans with weird looking things attached to their roofs sitting in a parking lot all day idling (wait... nevermind). Vortex2 likes people so much in fact that part of Vortex2's mission is to better understand tornadoes for the greater good of people. See, Vortex2 must be one of the most benevolent research projects ever! Wow!
Unfortunately the past couple of days have been a bit problematic for Vortex2, partially because people have come to shower Vortex2 and the storms it watches with as much love as Vortex2 has for people. It's like one big traffic ridden love fest! (Umm, that didn't come out right) As much as we all enjoy seeing people come out to say 'hi' while we're hanging out in parking lots or stopping for a quick bite to eat, it becomes hard to work when people do this during operations. It also tends to become hard to work when people see us and come out to see the storms we're trying to study. Please follow us on twitter, not in the field! Science ends up ultimately losing (no! not that! anything but that!), and it can be quite dangerous (unless, of course, these people enjoy having their windshields destroyed by hail... you know, whatever floats your proverbial boat...).
Anywho, today was a circus! (I'll say the TIV was like the elephant.) There was a clown (seriously, there was a clown walking around the hotel parking lot this morning), music (provided by the weather and the tornado sirens of western central Oklahoma), and a ringmaster (DOW7). There was a huge audience as well. The CSWR probes stopped to wait for instructions from our esteemed CSWR leaders (the magnificent Josh Wurnam and Karen Kosiba), and yours truly peered back behind the probes to see this sight:
I'm sure they are pleasant, well meaning folks. I then took a moment to perhaps grab a pretzel or sip some Perrier and looked back again to see this:
Holy shnikies, they multiplied! Are these individuals Vortex2/tornado paparazzi? There are times during Vortex2 when I feel like we're Lindsay Lohan's younger sister. Maybe that's not the best analogy, but it makes sense to me! There were so many fine young (and youngish) onlookers today and traffic was so bad on these poor little country roads that Vortex2 operations screeched to a halt for some teams. Our CSWR fleet ended up caught in a virtual parking lot of chasers while attempting to get ahead of an evolving supercell, and missed an opportunity to collect some potentially valuable data from a tornadic storm. Sadness. Vortex2 had to call off operations a short time later. Stop the madness! Help us help you!
Thankfully DOW7 was able to get out of traffic in time to observe this strange formation in the wake of the MCS (Mesoscale Convective System: code for big blob of rain) formed as the supercell of interest continued evolving:
... strange.
pops! i recommend anything from the jackson hole soda co and the grilled onion burger. you guys get anything from the rotation near guthrie/meridian?
ReplyDeleteWell, there was a funnel cloud that was starting to drop as it passed over us while we were sitting in traffic (trying to get out of the rotation's way) around that area.
ReplyDeleteMan, what a side-show you guys are becoming! Why don't you try to be less public, leaving at a wierd hour and avoiding the chasers? I don't know the answer as to how to cut down on the public's interference. You could set up a decoy group, whose sole purpose is to mislead and distract the public from the real work. It would have gizmos and electronic noises and blinking lights to amuse 'em...
ReplyDeleteO.