Rainbow Chasers (aka ‘The Ones That Got Away’).

In which borders are crossed, boundaries are overcome, and spectacular displays of light are witnessed.

The day started out as any other day. The alarm went off. A girl, presently on the morn of her twenty eighth birthday, silenced the incessant noise of the alarm and begrudgingly removed her feet from the soft, warm comfort of her bed and placed them upon the cold, hard, desolation of the hotel room floor. It was morning. Sleep was obligated to retire for the next several turns of the hourglass and make way for the day and its promise of productivity. There were things to be done.

Wait, I’m sorry. What am I doing? This is a blog, not a novel. (On a side note, I just got a call from the occupants of the awesome Probe 11, wishing me a happy birthday. Thank you Eric, Rachel, Carrie, and Eddy. Y’all rock. (On a side side note, I just got a call from my super cool friend Christy, wishing me a happy birthday. You rock, Christy.)) Anyway, today did start out like any other day on Vortex2. Shower, (pathetic) hotel breakfast, weather briefing, mad rush to get everything packed and ready (usually so we can sit in a hotel parking lot waiting for an hour or so with everything packed and ready)… then we head off to some target destination that usually changes at least once or twice (sometimes more!) during the drive. (On another side note (there are lots of side notes in this blog), we just got stopped by a constable on patrol, because he apparently could not see our license plate. As we do actually have a license plate, and our driver is an upstanding Dutch citizen who is legally authorized to be and drive in the States, the nice constable gave us neither ticket nor warning. I also just got a call from the fabulous Karen, first inquiring about why we were stopped on the side of the road and then wishing me a happy birthday. You rock, Karen.)

Today, all of the storm ingredients (like CAPE, helicity, large scale flow, and moisture) the atmosphere provided for our disposal were in the most favorable combination (for us) in southwestern Kansas and southeastern Colorado. As our hotel for the evening before was located in Ogalalalala, Nebraska, this translated into a bit of a late morning/early afternoon hike out of the state of corn and feed lots to many target destinations farther south. The Vortex2 people are very good at bringing us to where convection (well, storms) is (are) going to happen, but getting a large fleet of vehicles in the right place and at the right time to witness tornado formation is a bit trickier. Consequently. Probe 13 and nearly all of CSWR’s probe vehicles spent a good portion of the afternoon going back and forth between Kansas and Colorado on the orders of our esteemed leader (Josh Wurman) and the magical forecasting peoples (The FC). We spent so much time going back and forth between Colorado and Kansas though, that we missed an opportunity to catch a storm that parented a couple of tornadoes on the southern end of the weather system we were watching (we could have perhaps caught up to it, at the expense of our windshield). Insult was added to injury when we looked at the radar feed several minutes after it was determined that our probes could not get in good enough position to intercept our target storm and saw that the storm Vortex2 had initially been watching that day, but had left for more interesting options, had intensified and formed a perfect little (big) hook echo that parented what we are told were some very nice tornadoes. We just saw lots of precipitation. Hopefully the DOWs got some usable data And so the Vortex2 (the Verification of Ordinary Rain and Thunderstorms Experiment) continues…

We did, however, see several rainbows today.



The day’s first rainbow(s).



The day’s second rainbow(s).



Mallie upset about seeing only rainbows (and no tornadoes).



Alex looking at GR Level2 and the storm we should’ve stayed on all day, weeping softly and with tears in his eyes.