Since the target for the next day is only a few hours away and it looks like storms will develop later afternoon, we start the day with a Weather 101 class in which Roger explains the four key ingredients necessary for a supercell that is capable of producing a tornado: SLIM
Shear - Lift - Instability - Moisture. Moisture here doesn't mean the humidity, but the dew points. We learn more theory about how a storm develops, what makes it grow to a supercell, how it can sustain itself on warm, moist air, how important it is to have a tilted updraft and also - what will kill a supercell incredibly fast: cold air.
We head for central Texas and spent some time in Albany, waiting for a storm to develop. When that finally happens, the storm looks interesting for about fifteen minutes - developing and darkening quickly - before it does exactly what Roger told us this morning: it moves into cold air and dies on us. Since it seems that no storms will really fire this day after an initial positive start, we head all the way back to Oklahoma City to stay in the Wyndham Garden hotel once again. Kyle is on a roll and keeps throwing Twister quotes around - I swear he can quote the entire movie from beginning to end! Once we get to the hotel we have a few whiskeys and time flies - because of our late arrival (due to the long trip from central Texas) it's around 2AM when I go to bed.
On the pictures below you can see the development of this supercell and how quickly it turned interesting - the last three pictures were taken within five minutes as the storm rolled in and over our heads.
Shear - Lift - Instability - Moisture. Moisture here doesn't mean the humidity, but the dew points. We learn more theory about how a storm develops, what makes it grow to a supercell, how it can sustain itself on warm, moist air, how important it is to have a tilted updraft and also - what will kill a supercell incredibly fast: cold air.
We head for central Texas and spent some time in Albany, waiting for a storm to develop. When that finally happens, the storm looks interesting for about fifteen minutes - developing and darkening quickly - before it does exactly what Roger told us this morning: it moves into cold air and dies on us. Since it seems that no storms will really fire this day after an initial positive start, we head all the way back to Oklahoma City to stay in the Wyndham Garden hotel once again. Kyle is on a roll and keeps throwing Twister quotes around - I swear he can quote the entire movie from beginning to end! Once we get to the hotel we have a few whiskeys and time flies - because of our late arrival (due to the long trip from central Texas) it's around 2AM when I go to bed.
On the pictures below you can see the development of this supercell and how quickly it turned interesting - the last three pictures were taken within five minutes as the storm rolled in and over our heads.
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