04/05/05 TALK: Central Plains

[Tony Laubach]

I felt under the circumstances for which we are under right now, I would take the liberty to open up the forum's first TALK section...

Verne Carlson and I are currently at a Days Inn in Pratt, Kansas where we have just been towed from Greensburg as my alternator died 1 mile from the Best Western which we had our original reservations for the night. We're not too panicked over missing out on the days action as we're hopeful that the alternator can be replaced by noon and we can be on our way to wherever we end up targeting, which right now, looks to be a bit north of where we are here in Pratt (more in tomorrow's forecast). Two prayers going up right now; 1. We can get the alternator fixed for a reasonable price ($300ish); 2. We can get back on the road early in the day where tonight's events don't set us back.

We ran too many toys we think, and I imagine that alternator was the stock that came with the car which crossed over 116,000 miles this evening somewhere in Southeast Colorado. We'll see how this pans out tomorrow!

 

[Chris Frost]

well, "stratus-blatus" hanging around NE Kansas ATT. Hopefully it will break before noon. If it doesn't, probably will save my $$$ for may. If it breaks, a local chase/spot is probably on tap. CAPE,moisture,are descent while the shear and SRH values could have been a little better. Still, nice cyclone. Not to stray, but, do you think a system similar to this, Caused the Super Outbreak in the 1970's? Anyway, wait and see what hot mamma nature deals us.

Tony, sorry bout the alternator dude :x Maybe you should run 2x alternators :lol: :lol:

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Ouch, Tony, that sucks! I thought you were runnning in a pretty common car, so at least parts availability shouldn't be a huge issue. When my alternator went it, only took 2 quick phone calls to find a store that had my stock alternator (for '95 Pont. Bonneville)... That didn't really matter, since I have a higher-output alternator that they needed to special order anyways.

My group is leaving late this morning, heading for Gainesville, then eastward towards Sherman. Storm motions will be pretty quick down there, but it seems to me to be the best place for some supercell tornado action. Looks like the non-broken 60 Tds are just south of Dallas attm, so we should have uninterrupted low-(mid?) 60 Tds to work with... But hey, I suppose the rest if left to the FCST thread...

Anyways, ya'll are able to get out there! Hope to see some other folks in my target area as well!

 

[Mike Peregrine]

My alternator died on a chase last year ... it sucked. My feeling today is that there will be other, better chases coming. I'm not that impressed with the setup today and feel like when things pop it won't take long closer to home for isolation to disappear in favor of linear, etc. And I don't feel like it's really worth a trip to Dallas. But still hope that those who are out and about find something cool to see.

As for the alternator, one option is that you can go to Auto Zone or something similar, take the old alternator out and trade it in to get a new one for less than $50 ... they're really not hard to take out or install ... can have it done in an hour or so. Only like three bolts holding them on there. To loosen the belt there is a hole that can be turned in the cam that keeps the belt in place ... just make sure the belt gets back in place nice and snug when you're done. This is why I always carry a good tool set with me on the road. Hope it goes well, Tony - - - -

 

[Nic Wilson]

Myself and Eric Holthaus are going to play the southeastern OK game today. We'll depart Norman around 12:45pm...targeting the Durant area for initiation around 21z. Good luck to everyone, should be interesting to see how each sector of the low plays out for tornado possibilities. Kind of concerns me the dryline is mixing thru Norman already this early, but the RUC wants to slow it down so i'll believe it for now.

 

[Verne Carlson]

Tony and I have been hanging out waiting for his car in Pratt, KS. Should be leaving soon - they ended up just changing out the voltage regulator since they didn't have the right alternator and we aren't about to wait until tomorrow for one to be ordered. SPC just issued an MD for central KS and it seems that the dryline has pushed through here. We'll hopefully be heading north to Great Bend, KS around noon local and wait for some convection to begin!

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Gabe and I (and others) are sitting in Ardmore right now, preparing to head east toward Duncan as soon as I get my wifi fix here at the Microtel off of I35. Things look pretty good out here, with low 60s in se OK and ne TX. In addition, winds remain nicely not-veered (well, not what I'd call "backed", since at least some easterly component) across this area, so I think we're going to be game, with SPC mesoanalysis showing 150-200 m2/s2 0-1km helicity with 1500-2000 j/kg sb CAPE currrently across the region.

We actually have a tag-along now... Some random guy just came up as we were at Love's here in Ardmore... guess he has a day or two to spare, so he's following us. I see this as a pretty severe problem since he's completely weather/chasing-ignorant... "What's a dryline?" yada yada yada... Oi...

 

[David Drummond]

Gabe and I (and others) are sitting in Ardmore right now, preparing to head east toward Duncan as soon as I get my wifi fix here at the Microtel off of I35. Things look pretty good out here, with low 60s in se OK and ne TX. In addition, winds remain nicely not-veered (well, not what I'd call "backed", since at least some easterly component) across this area, so I think we're going to be game, with SPC mesoanalysis showing 150-200 m2/s2 0-1km helicity with 1500-2000 j/kg sb CAPE currrently across the region.

We actually have a tag-along now... Some random guy just came up as we were at Love's here in Ardmore... guess he has a day or two to spare, so he's following us. I see this as a pretty severe problem since he's completely weather/chasing-ignorant... "What's a dryline?" yada yada yada... Oi...

Quick question Jeff. Are you guys using the wifi there at the Love's in Ardmore? Just wondering since the TruckStop.net fiasco and all of those are supposed to be free now. Be nice to hear from someone actually using that.

 

[JHadorn]

Things are completely uninteresting here in Nebraska. I was really hoping the sudden cloud cover that rolled in early this morning would burn off, but it hasn't.

They might burn off later this evening, but I don't know.

Things just went to crap today.

 

[JHadorn]

I take that back to a point. The last sounding from OAX says that if we can get around a 30C inversion we could tap into the instability that is present.

Current dew point is around 60.

*crosses fingers*

 

[David Drummond]

Been some persistant rotation for about 3 scans now NE of Ardmore near Wapanucka (hwy 7 and 48 ) no warnings as of yet

 

[David Drummond]

Been some persistant rotation for about 3 scans now NE of Ardmore near Wapanucka (hwy 7 and 48 ) no warnings as of yet

Interesting that the "cell" I was watching has moved off to the NE and the one to the SW of it now is showing persistant rotation in almost exactly the same location.

What I want to know is, what the hell happened in SW KS? 5 tornado reports of of what looked like a small junk line of cells WEST of the LOW.

 

[Glen Romine]

What I want to know is, what the hell happened in SW KS? 5 tornado reports of of what looked like a small junk line of cells WEST of the LOW.

Looked like persistent convergence along a boundary where the dryline and warm front met - with very strong northerlies to the west of the front, aided in very strong cyclonic shear along the boundary - which was stretched by persisitent convection that was firing along it at the time - perfect landspout conditions despite the cool and relative dry air. Cold front undercut this convergent band and nothing has come from it since.

Glen

 

[David Drummond]

What I want to know is, what the hell happened in SW KS? 5 tornado reports of of what looked like a small junk line of cells WEST of the LOW.

Looked like persistent convergence along a boundary where the dryline and warm front met - with very strong northerlies to the west of the front, aided in very strong cyclonic shear along the boundary - which was stretched by persisitent convection that was firing along it at the time - perfect landspout conditions despite the cool and relative dry air. Cold front undercut this convergent band and nothing has come from it since.

Glen

heh, I was telling Graham via IM I bet it was some sort of landspout.

 

[nickgrillo]

What I want to know is, what happened in SW KS? 5 tornado reports of of what looked like a small junk line of cells WEST of the LOW.

Yeah, I know ... pretty intresting ... these cells formed BEHIND the dryline! Were these tornadoes landspouts?

Here's a cool link to JR's chasing webcam ... he's currently on I-40 about 25 miles west of the storms: http://www2.okstorms.com:8080/cgi-bin/GPSlive.cgi

..Nick..