Hokie stormchase team leads to VT meteorology program

This article shows the correlation between the Hokie stormchase team and the new meteorology major at Virginia Tech that formally begins with the upcoming spring semester. The planning stages for the 2012 stormchase are already underway, and yours truly is excited to be a part of it.

October surprises all over!

This radar representation from 10:22 a.m. today show an indicated area of rotation during our October surprise nor'easter, a fabrication just as trustworthy as the hail markers that were shown earlier in the morning. At least I can explain the "hail" as sleet or graupel reflections; not sure what this area of "rotation" was unless it was a localized low pressure area (cold air mesolow?) within the overall surface low area.

NWS Sterling tornado survey from Oct 13 storms

This link provides the final data from the official storm survey conducted by the NWS Sterling team. It appears that the tornado in Fauquier county that occurred around 5:00 pm Oct. 13th was from the same portion of the storm that produced the northern wall cloud I photographed roughly 30 minutes beforehand. As recorded in a prior post I later retraced this storm's path via radar and found that it was likely the same cell that caused a mini-panic on the University of Maryland's College Park campus later that afternoon.

When I started out from home that day I had two alternatives to intercept the tornado-warned cell that was heading north from Louisa county. I chose the southern route (State Route 3) to Culpeper, but if I had chosen the northern route (U.S. Route 17) toward Bealeton I may have seen this tornado...but then again, maybe not as I didn't have mobile radar access to alert me to the development of this particular cell. I might have wound up too far west to see it!

Can we say "wedge" and "coastal front"?

With the shear in place and a nearby surface low pressure all I'm waiting on is some sunshine to fire off storms and provide the impetus for me to scoot out the driveway for a chase. Hopefully the cold air wedge over the Piedmont will give way to the warmer and moister conditions represented to the east of the coastal front (black line above) soon enough to fire off some daytime storms.

Reflections on the 13 October severe weather

After a good night's sleep my frustration at missing yesterday's tornadic storms has quieted. I've realized that no one expected the magnitude of the outbreak so I'm not the only one caught unprepared for a wild October chase day in northern Virginia. Frankly I only expected one or two good cells to pop, so when I saw the tornado warned cell charging northward from Louisa county toward Culpeper I figured that was the storm of the day. I didn't make arrangements for having mobile internet capability because I didn't think I needed it...I just needed to get my tail to the Culpeper vicinity as fast as I could drive there through the afternoon traffic.

As it turned out, of course, there were a myriad of interesting storms yesterday afternoon. I found that out when I struggled through traffic to get west of Fredericksburg and noticed the wall cloud south of Route 3 that stopped me from my pursuit of the Culpeper storm. At the same time I was watching that cell I also noticed a wall cloud to my north that I now believe was the storm that provided the excitement on the University of Maryland campus later on. Here's my evidence:

Photo of northern wall cloud at 2029Z

2030Z radar velocities

The orange star is my location, the yellow circle is the wall cloud circulation to my north, and the green circle is the tornadic portion of the Culpeper storm I was originally trying to get to.

2116Z radar velocities

The yellow circle is the same wall cloud circulation now in the Manassas vicinity (tornado warning issued at 5:07 pm included a mention of this storm). I tracked the circulation via a radar loop.

2233Z radar velocities

The yellow circle indicates the circulation near the University of Maryland campus at about the same time the University warnings were issued. Again I tracked the feature via radar loop which showed this cyclic cell continuing to develop new circulations on its right flank, thus providing the northeastern trajectory of the rotating area of the storm.

So now I feel a bit better about having witnessed one of yesterday's possibly tornadic storms, even if I didn't get any cool video of a tornado. But stormchasing to me is more than just catching tornadoes, and I still enjoyed the storm structures and the multiple wall clouds that I did intercept yesterday.

Video of first 13 Oct wall cloud

This is the feature that distracted me from intercepting the tornadic storm near Culpeper.

The title of this post? Aaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!

The reason? I missed every possible tornadic storm this afternoon. My original target was east of Culpeper to intercept a tornado warned cell that was cruising northward from Louisa county where a tornado with damage was reported in Mineral. This same cell received tornado warnings all the way northward past Manassas, but did I get to it in time? Nooooooo....I had to stop and photo/video a wall cloud just west of Fredericksburg and call it in to the National Weather Service office in my capacity as a Skywarn spotter.
There was even another wall cloud to the north of this one, under a different updraft:

After these escaped from view I continued my way west toward the original storm but it had moved north. I did consider heading into Fauquier county to catch up with it, but the back road I tried had a lot of water ponding on it and the rain was still coming down in buckets. Thus, I headed back east to hear yet another tornado warning on a different cell north of Fredericksburg - where I don't chase because of the traffic - and have since seen video of a definite tornado that crossed I-95 near Quantico.
Rather frustrated I continued east of Fredericksburg and came across this probable wall cloud that was vacuuming up scud underneath another vigorously growing updraft:

Note the geese formation in the upper right; they didn't seem too concerned over the whole thing.
When this dissipated I headed for home to grab a radar update as this chase featured only the Mk 1 eyeball (my biggest error of the day). Radar at home showed another tornado warned cell stomping northward from Louisa county toward Fredericksburg, so I dutifully rolled back down the driveway to try a dusk intercept of said storm. Alas, I couldn't see much even with the lightning from this weakening cell so I finally trudged homeward for the final time. And as of this writing yet another storm is headed in our direction... but this one will be a front porch intercept.

Hope dwindles for a mid-October chase

The upcoming coastal low pressure originally appeared to have a chance of tracking west of Virginia, which would have situated the Old Dominion firmly in the warm sector (or in the right front quadrant of a tropical system) and providing impetus for some convection. Per the above forecast graphic it now seems that next week's event will be strictly rain - and lots of it - from an autumn nor'easter.
I still won't declare an end to the Virginia chase season until my empirically derived Veterans' Day cutoff, but the potential for another 2011 chase is dwindling.