Scattered Rissa

I know it’s been a while since I posted, but I wanted to wait until I had more to talk about.

Monday night & Tuesday (May 18 and 19):

View Larger Map

We arrived in Ogallala (try saying it… ’tis quite fun) Nebraska and stayed in a single hotel with the whole V2 armada. The rooms were actually super nice with very comfy pillows (much to my liking) and the hotel itself was really pretty quaint. We didn’t have to leave on Ops on Tuesday until around 2pm CDT, so we decided to go in search of some adventures. We drove north about 20 miles to Lake McConaughy. It was an absolutely gorgeous lake with tons of natural sandy beaches and ice cold water. There were actually waves crashing on shore!

That afternoon, we went out in search of convection, but only really expecting some very high based storms with possible microbursts. We went about an hour west to Sidney, NE and waited for convection to form. It did eventually form, but it was super high based (~650-700mb or 3km) and all we got out of it was lots of microbursts (really strong winds and rain). We eventually gave up without getting a good deployment and headed back to Ogallala again for the night.

Wednesday (May 20):

View Larger Map

Wednesday appeared to be much more promising with 50kts of 0-6km shear and 1000-1500 J/Kg of CAPE ahead of a cold front draped over western Nebraska, as well as a marginal slight risk issued by SPC. The only remaining issue was moisture availability, which was the same issue as the day before. Being desperate, we still went out in search of a meteorological miracle. We headed about 2 hours northeast of Ogallala to Alliance, NE where we were to wait for further instruction from Field Command (FC). Before we arrived in Alliance, the SASSI chat (our main method of communication) of FC informed us to continue NEward to Hemingford, NE. Once we got to Hemingford, we attempted a preliminary practice deployment on a developing updraft off to our north, and that was the only deployment we got all day. The whole day was just a mess: we went all the way up to Hay Springs, NE in chase of the best looking convection, but ended up deciding that it was too abysmal too chase, we turned around south and decided to call it a day and go back to Alliance for the night. Meanwhile, once we drove through the storm we were originally chasing, it began to intensify and actually became the most intense storm of the day. However, it was too late to turn

Thursday (May 21):There was a complete lack of any opportunity for a chase, so lead scientist Josh Wurman and the PI team decided that it would be a down day / travel day. They designated Hot Springs, SD as the target for the night. Before heading out, we decided to make a stop at the local attraction carhenge. They basically took a bunch of junky old cars and put them in to the shape of cars, as well as strew some other fun structures around in other places. Neat!

We also decided to make a pit stop at the Rest Area down the road. It’s on the side of the road and I think it is pretty self-explanatory.

That being very close to Mount Rushmore (only an hour away) we decided that it would be a good idea to head over that way. I’m ashamed to say that this day was indeed the most fun I’ve had so far. I’ll try to get video of prairie dogs and bison up tomorrow sometime!

We are now somewhere in western SD preparing for an Ops day somewhere tomorrow.

Trackback URL