Virtual Chase Case #2

[Karen Politte]

Well -

Considering we were targeting southwestern/southern NE, the southern warm front, it's highly unlikely that we could have recovered sufficiently to get on the Columbus storm in east-central NE. On the up-side, from the data we had to go on I can't really say in retrospect that we would have played today any differently no matter how many times we looked at that forecast. Seeing the feed of upper-60 dewpoints along that warm front gave me that warm, fuzzy feeling......

The Columbus event was tryly amazing. I've never really seen how it earned its name "crazy farmer video", though - maybe that's just me. The whole unedited video from this farmer at his ranch makes for very sobering viewing. There's something imminently terrifying about his situation. He watches incredulously as this bizarre-looking cloud on the ground lumbers over the horizon - and all the time there is an ongoing knell in the form of baseball and grapefruit-sized hail that occasionally crashes to earth onto one of his roofs. So the scene is almost completely quiet - but for the peace being shattered every 20 seconds or so by the sound of these huge hailstones making their mark on the farmer's property. Quite creepy......those sort of sounds aren't ones you want to be hearing if you're not a chaser.

Oh well - thanks again to Jason for posting all this!!!!!

KR

 

[Bill Tabor]

Originally posted by Karen Rhoden
The Columbus event was tryly amazing. I've never really seen how it earned its name \"crazy farmer video\", though - maybe that's just me. The whole unedited video from this farmer at his ranch makes for very sobering viewing. There's something imminently terrifying about his situation.

I've never seen the "crazy farmer" video though I have often heard people talk about it. A couple of years ago Graham Butler was going to let me see it, but we never got around to it. Sounds like it's a wonder that the guy didn't get whacked by one of the large hail which of course would be devastating if it hit you in the head.

I also would like to thank Jason for putting this together...'Thanks Jason!'. I'm surprised there weren't more people participating.

I'm actually surprised I got anywhere close on this. I mean sure if you take a typical setup this is kind of what happens, but so often Ma Nature throws a curve. You could have easily picked one of those days that most everyone followed the general rules and the weather did something that threw almost everyone off. I'd have to think of some examples.

In my opinion the forecast is only about 50% anyway. You then have to execute in the field and make the right choices in picking which storm. Often one storm will drop hail while another nearby may be a prolific tornado producer. Sometimes visibility can obscure where storms are going up, or their features, and that is one of the benefits of Threatnet.

As mentioned previously, this is not how I forecast. I use a whole lot more. Sure the day of I watch many of these things, but I use models extensively (various ones) and bounce them off each other to hone into a particular area. I also use maps and tools that give me better resolution of surface and upper air features and winds than we were provided. Also the fairly new SPC Mesoscale Analysis tool is a really big help in the field to identify a trend that is about to take place with regard to severe weather. I find it interesting that years ago I envisioned a similar tool and chatted with Gene Moore about it. I think I even mentioned it on wx-chase. Perhaps my thoughts put a 'bug' in the ear of some of the SPC folks who occasionally monitored the list - even though it might not have been conscious. It was a tool that combined model and real time data along with some to be developed tornado indices. I think this was actually before SPC released things like Sig Tor, Supercell Comp, and Craven. Additionally I wanted to be able to model boundary interactions such as actual surface fronts, outflow boundaries, etc to try and calculate an enhanced risk for severe in that area. To my knowledge no tool yet combines that feature into it's results. I think if it did it would be going through a similar forecast procedure that actual forecasters use. If you think about it, it makes sense. We may look at model data to get an idea of where things such as Cape / Helicity are, but the decision of where to go is based on actual synoptic / meso / micro scale features. I suppose that will be the new 'holy grail' in forecast tools.