Sharknado! Just released yesterday! I only knew of its existence from seeing a headline about it this morning.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2724064/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
2013-07-11 REPORTS: CA
After looking at the 12z run of the NAM and the shark initiation parameter of several HRRR runs, I started the day near Santa Monica. I was initially buoyed by SPC’s morning decision to upgrade nearly all of southern California to a moderate risk with a 15% hatched area for significant sharks. Like most chasers, I figured that the northern approach of freakishly strong Hurricane David from Baja California would probably lead to enhanced vorticity in its outer bands somewhere over Los Angeles County. By midday conditions were mixed – dewpoints were in mid-60s, but oddly, there were flooding rains at times, followed immediately by sunny, cloudless conditions. The show ramped up in the late afternoon, though, and I was just able to catch a glimpse of the three initial waterspouts that came down near the Civic Center. All three were shark-infested; the southern-most funnel in particular was brimming with many great whites and a handful of tiger sharks. I toyed with the idea of blasting east on surface streets to avoid the rush-hour traffic on I-10, but I then noticed the area of rotation to my south that was headed directly towards LAX. Spotter Network showed that most chasers were making a play on this storm as well, so off I went. As I got near the airport I saw Reed and the TVN crew dumping buckets of chum along Sepulveda Blvd, so I can only assume that they were able to intercept the storm – which is good, because although we know quite a bit about the behavior of sharks in the upper parts of tornadoes, we still don’t have a good grip on why they fly around with their mouths open eating people in the lowest 150 ft of the atmosphere.
Around this time I saw on NWSChat that KVTX’s radar had been knocked out after it was hit by a massive whale shark, so I switched over on GR3 to KSOX’s radar, which for some reason was still in VCP 32 mode! By this point the sharknado near the airport was moving toward downtown, and I was surprised that the NWS Los Angeles/Oxnard office didn’t pull the trigger and issue a sharknado emergency. The storm itself consisted of a well-defined cone, with violent motions near the ground and the occasional horizontal hammerhead wrapping around the main circulation – in fact, it sort of reminded me of Bowdle. Lots of nurse sharks, bull sharks, and mako sharks were moving through the debris cloud, and I think that there might have been a loan shark in there as well. Intense cloud-to-ground sharks and remoras up to six inches kept me in my car for most of the chase. Suddenly, though, several helicopters appeared, and the storm – which by now was looking pretty HPish - seemed to almost blow itself apart and dissipate. I’m not sure why this happened, but my knowledge of the intersection between meteorology and ichthyology is admittedly pretty limited. I then opted to end the chase and got a hotel room in Van Nuys, celebrating my good luck with a nice sushi dinner. I’ll post some video later.
