We went out on Tuesday to target a convective cell south of Clinton, OK. I took a bunch of pictures, which I posted on Facebook. This initial cell was “classic” in the sense that all the typical features were visible to anyone who cared to look. There was an inflow layer, an anvil high overhead, and multiple pulses. While we watched, the cell weakened and died, which is to say that it separated from the ground and stopped growing.
After this we headed north and caught another cell further to the north which reportedly produced tornados near Harmon, OK and Woodward. I posted some pictures of our radar data on Facebook as well. It was during this storm that Terra and Lou noticed that the return from the storm looked very odd near the ground. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that the dish had begun pulling away from a mounting plate. So on Wednesday, SR1 was sent home for repairs with Scout 2, and we stayed in the field with SR2.
While covering a very large supercell to the south of Clinton (again), some previous issues with SR2 reared up again, and made it very difficult to collect meaningful data. Naturally this occurred while Mike Bettes and his Weather Channel crew were covering our deployment. Eventually, we just took what we could get, and then headed back to Norman. The storm we were covering had tornados reported in the vicinity of Clinton, though we didn’t see any damage track on our way back through.
So now both SR crews are home, and we get a little time out while the radars are fixed. Time that was genuinely needed by our teams. My time with VORTEX2 ends on Tuesday(ish), and I still haven’t seen a tornado, though I’ve been within 50-100 miles of several, and our radars have scanned the parent storms of both. If there are no more chances, then I feel good for all of the lives and homes spared. If there are tornados, then I would like to be a part of collecting the data, and see one if at all possible.
Sean M. R. Crowell 