Missed Bradshaw

I know the Bradshaw area like the back of my hand so I was more than a little irratated that I was on the way to Creston, IA when that EF3 appeared at Bradshaw.

So what's in Creston?

Well, my day job is hauling Burlington Railroad crews around and Creston is a major destination. (Bradshaw is also a place I often go.  In fact, one of my favorite conductors was out there so I was kind of concerned when I heard a tornado took out a train. Fortunately, the train that got hit was not his but he did see a funnel.)

There is another big story going between Creston and Bradshaw and points East and West. That's the main line of the Burlington Railroad. The Missouri is on the rampage and could be a big problem all summer. Each day, we find out another crossing is out. Nebraska City. Brownsville. Rulo.

Burlington has alreay lost their South tracks to the flood. Those tracks link Kansas City to Omaha, Lincoln, and Sioux City and other places North and West.

The Creston line, which is their main line East and West is the Battle for Burlington. Amtrack also uses those tracks for the California Zepher. They suspended service a couple of weeks ago because of the flooding problem.

The Creston line crosses the river at Plattsmouth, Nebraska. Before a train gets to the Missouri, it must come through a little Iowa town called Pacific Junction. Burlington has built a dike almost seven miles long from Pacific Junction to the Missouri bridge and again on the Plattsmouth side to keep the trains above water and moving. This is a picture of that dike. (The white parts are sandbags stacked on pallets.)

The media isn't talking much about this flood but they will be if Burlington and Union Pacific get washed out. Trust me, stopped corn shipments and ruined corn crops will show up at the pump price by this fall. The oil companies wouldn't miss a chance to raise pump prices and blame the flood for a lower supply for corn for ethanol.

There are a lot of jobs at stake as Burlington challenges the Missouri. Hopefully, Burlington will win but I wouldn't bet the soggy farm on it. Times are interesting,

Small funnel West of Lincoln 5/12

Chasing on the cheap

Let's face it. Storm chasing is an expensive hobby-especially if you go on multi-day hunts and have gas, hotels, and food involved.

But one thing doesn't have to be that expensive--a good radar image. Sure, you can go out and get a nice, new iPhone and hook it up to a nice radar service. But why spend all of that money for something that only happens a few days a year?  There is another alternative.

In Nebraska, you have to use Verizon if you want to zoom around the state and expect to have a good signal. They, in my opinion, offer the best reliability. They also have a "pay by the day" plan where you can get access for only $15 a day. All you need is one of their USB modems and a nice laptop. (You can find used modems on ebay.)

Once you have a modem, take it to your local Verizon store and get it activated. You will pay your first charge at that time and you'll be all set.

Instead of looking at a small cellphone image of an approaching storm, you can have a nice big look at your laptop screen. And best of all, you will be saving yourself a lot of big bucks.

Which you may need for gas, food, and hotels!

News from the fronts

Cold. Warm. Stationary. Occluded. :o)

Spotter training day was interesting and very informative and lots of folks showed up to hear what Brian Smith and Dr. Ken Dewey had to offer.

Smith is a very interesting guy and a big asset to area weather needs. He is THE trainer for the National Weather Service in Omaha and is a former student of Dr. Tetsuya Theodore Fujita--yes that one--at the University of Chicago. He is also the one that goes out to damage sites and when he is done, the news media starts talking about "straight line" wind damage or there was a tornado with EF2 strength. So, the right teacher did appear and the students were ready.

The spotter program in Lancaster County, Nebraska is one of the best in the country.  It relies on the Lincoln Amateur Radio Club (LARC) for manpower and ham radio contacts at some thirty plus sites around the county. When a storm moves through the county, eyes from these designated points track it and if clouds start rotating or dropping hail, these folks are on the front line to tell you. (You can hear some of these "nets" live on dark and stormy nights by going to http://146760.net.)

So much for that side of things. Dr. Ken Dewey is a very interesting guy, too. He is the patient and guiding force behind UNL's meteorology and climatology programs. He also developed the Central Plains Severe Weather Symposium and Family Weatherfest.
 
With those two presenters available, I finally had a chance to ask my two puzzling questions. Why do we not have those killer overnight tornadoes in Nebraska like they do in the Southern States?  Has the tornado pattern shifted in Nebraska from Central Nebraska to the East?

Smith made quick work of the first one. The reason there are more severe overnight events in the South is they are much closer to Gulf moisture. Storms need fuel to keep going and those folks have more of it close by. Dr. Dewey chimed in that there have been overnight storms but as a general rule, he agreed most systems fizzle out in late evening. According to Dewey, the 7:00 am hour is the only hour with no historical storm.

Dewey also confirmed that Nebraska's tornado alley has shifted from the 1970-80's track that was common in Central Nebraska to a track that is more between Hastings and Beatrice with a little more emphasis on Northern Kansas as a breeding ground for trouble.

One last item.  What is the severe weather outlook for this year? According to the two men, we could have a busier year this year. The battleground is over Nebraska and should stay there long range for most of the spring but the problem is the drought in Texas. There may not be enough moisture to support severe storms and tornado outbreaks.

Strange as it sounds, Minnesota had the most tornadoes last year with  a whopping 145. Compare that to usual hot spots*:

105-Texas

94-Kansas

74-Oklahoma

66-Colorado

52-Iowa

46-Nebraska

*National Weather Service Data

Will the trend continue or is it a trend at all?  Could Nebraska's move to the Big 10 be a stormy one? We'll have to wait and see!

Need something to do on April 9th?  Check out Dr. Dewey's masterpiece-the Central Plain Severe Weather Symposium. It's a great event.

Spotter training today

Want to become a "certified" storm spotter for Lancaster County?  Well today is your day! (Saturday, March 26).   Just show up at Hardin Hall on the University of Nebraska East Campus at noon or so. The training will be conducted by Brian Smith of the National Weather Service in Valley, NE. He's very entertaining and approachable on weather subjects. You will also find a lot of local hams there. No, not funny men. Ham radio operators. They are the backbone of the spotter network around Lincoln and Lancaster County.

I am a ham and I think it is a great license to have. It's easy to get. The radio is pretty cheap when you compare costs to smart phones, laptops, and pads. Plus, it will still work when a tornado turns a cell tower into a figure 8 piece of junk. (That's about all that worked when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and I am sure they are getting a workout in Japan right now.)

Put the two together and you could find yourself on top of a hill outside of town when some of the rock and roll clouds blow over the Nebraska countryside.

One thing though, if you go through all of this, don't push the push-to-talk switch on your new ham radio and say you see a "lightning and a bunch of gray clouds."  That just doesn't make it in the storm spotting business. So. pay attention to Brian if you go today. He'll tell you what to look for.

Hopefully, the big flakes of snow now falling won't prevent you from getting there!  Ain't Nebraska weather great!

The first outbreak

Tuesday. March 22. 3:00 PM

I will admit, it's a little early in the season to start looking (and feeling) like this could be the day but it was...the day!  I was fooling around with my models on F5 last night and it pointed me toward the usual place. But the best area was looking like just NE of Omaha.  Duh.  Where else?

Sure enough, it wasn't long before Radar Lab HD was starting to  flash. Since I couldn't go, I thought it might be a good time to try some of my other "trys" and see which one worked the best on my aging laptop. I recently doubled the ram and am running Vista. My goal, like every other chaser, was to get down to something easy to  tote around in the field and still get the best results for the lowest cost. Barons was not in the list because it is to expensive for me. I wanted to compare HD and Weather Defender.

Weather Defender is much prettier, I must admit. It also shows railroads. HD does not. But HD isn't as clunky. It takes WD longer to get up to speed than it does HD on my laptop. I am not a fan of the background choices of HD. They have several but I would like something a little more tan than what they offer. Anyway, when the tornado popped up on HD in Burt County, I got excited. HD had it instantly. WD not far behind. I animated HD and all was fine. (I like to watch things move.)  WD opens another window. I don't like that. The big window had the pretty stuff but you had to pull up the little window to get it to do something.

For $7 or so a month versus $20 or so a month, HD won the first battle of the first outbreak of the 2011 tornado season. Hooked up to Verizon Wireless, I am confident you will have great information in the field. (I like the Verizon mifi idea because it can connect five devices at once so it your laptop gets clunked by hail, you can whip out your iPod touch and still be on the chase.

It was a great afternoon for watchers like me and the 15 or so chasers HD tracks with GPS. That's helpful, too. With gas at almost $3.60 a gallon, it's nice to see where the other guys are betting will be the best supercell to follow. They were right! I'll bet Creston, Iowa hasn't see that many vehicles with dash mounted cams since the last state sheriff's convention. They are probably still wondering why "those people" suddenly pull off the road and run to the ditch with a tripod in one hand and a camera in the other.

But we know. It's exciting. Not like the weather that was behind this boiling mess of March Madness. The weather is back to normal right. Cold. Chance of snow. Gloomy. But it was fun while it lasted.

We're fans of...

If you go storm chasing, there are some things that can be very helpful. Here are some of our favorites:

Tornadoes are RARE events.  I don't care what you see on The Weather Channel, they're rare. When you consider the number of thunderstorms in the US every year is in the tens of thousands, while the the number of tornadoes is in the low 1,000, your chances of seeing one before your gas and hotel budget runs out, is not all that great. And if one does pop out of that magical wall cloud, it will likely be the EF-1 and EF-2 variety and not that monster that ate up half of the movie Twister's running time. Plus, most are often only on the ground for seconds.

Clearly, with those kind of numbers, you need a little help to pick out the best places to go. The National Severe Storms Center in Norman, Oklahoma (A hard town for a Husker to type out) posts their best guess every day. They usually identify an area and that area may include several states.  That's a bit broad for most storm chasers with a limited gas budget. So where do you go to tighten things up a little?

One of our favorite places is f5 data. This is a top-notch site for the really weather nuts. But, if you follow some of the tutorials and do what Andy says, your maps with pop out an area of interest that can narrow the big states area down to a few counties. There is a small fee to use his predictive stuff but he also offers a free version if you just want to sniff around. With gas going through the clouds, f5 not a bad investment.

Once you are in the neighborhood, you may want to watch stuff on your computer. If you can't afford the several thousand dollar set up for your own radar system, you can get good radar using your laptop, a reliable connection like Verizon, and a good software program. We like a couple of them. Weather Tap is one of our favorites and it's not that expensive.  One of the newer entries is Weather Defender. It's a little pricey an requires a good bit of memory but it really is pretty slick and has all of the bells and whistles.

The big boys also use Barons. Very cool. Bring money.

You can also get good weather information from the locals.  In Nebraska, a good source is Lincoln's 10-11 television. Their radar is really pretty up to the minute. You will find similar good ones in every state. The National Weather Service Doppler site is also good but spend some time learning before your go.

You can have expensive pretty looking stuff in your mobile command center but nothing beats a good pair of eyes looking outside of the car. Remember, some of these beasts of nature are only on the ground for a few seconds so if you are glued to radar a couple of minute old, you are going to miss the show!

Good luck and stay safe and of course, stay out of the way!