Success! Success?

Vortex2. Day 12. Chase day I'mnotsure. More storms. Oh yes, more storms.

(This lovely graphic here is from a cool place called the Storm Prediction Center. If you are not familiar with the SPC and you live anywhere that ever gets severe weather, I would recommend checking www.spc.noaa.gov on a regular basis to see if the SPC peoples advise you to be wary of atmospheric happenings.)

You see those red triangles over Oklahoma? CSWR got dual Doppler, dual polarization data from one of them (that's a fancy way of saying that DOW6 and DOW7 simultaneously scanned the storm from different locations with their fancy new radars that transmit in both the horizontal and vertical. The dual Doppler bit will allow some lucky scientists - or computer programs - to interpolate 3D winds for the storm, and the dual polarization bit will allow some other lucky scientists - or computer programs - to determine the shape and size of the particles within the storm). This is a first! Huzzah! The sad part is that it doesn't appear any CSWR individual actually saw the tornado. Nor was any pod data collected. That's right, the pod people were stationed close to an interesting part of the storm when it was noticed that radar data had indicated rather large hail coming our way. A big chunk of ice flung mercilessly from a storm cloud will win in a battle against an expensive meteorological instrument or an automobile windshield. The pod people were ordered slightly away from the storm, and ended up too far south to see the birth of a tornado. DOW5, CSWR's Rapid Scan DOW (so named because of it's ability to scan things really fast!), just so happens to be one of the fleet's slowest vehicles, and also missed ye ol' violently rotating column of air.

The pod people did, however, take some lovely cloud pictures...


See, how cool is that?