Aug. 12 chaselog

dean · #1 08-13-2006, 05:08 AM

boy, was this a weird bust! drove up to the Wahpeton, ND area to get data. ended up with nothing but heavy rain pretty much all day. Normally you hear people complain about too strong of a cap, well today there was too weak of a cap. everything and anything that wanted to fire did, causing an unbelievable mess of rain showers taking away energy for what was supposed to be for the supercells later in the afternoon. Second thing is any storms that did fire went linear almost instantly (for whatever reason, shear looked to be too good for that to happen, but it did anyway) and became part of a growing area of showers and imbedded thunderstorms. The only real storms that were worth chasing were the tor warned cells in northeast ND early in the afternoon, or the line of storms in central SD, and just my luck i was caught right in the middle between those two areas. Decided to head north towards Grand Forks because those cells were tor warned. New cells started to form, we thought our luck had finally arrived, but they quickly became linear and joined the big swath of thundershowers. Anyways, to sum it up, too little cap lead to too much small convection meaning not enough room for the big boys to come in later. Saw some awesome CC and CG lightning on the way back but that's about it. BUST!!

Josh Richardson · #2 08-13-2006, 06:57 PM

Sorry to hear about that Dean, at least your getting out there aways now instead of those local chases.* Anyway my last two chases have been pretty much busts so you tend to have that happen sometimes.

dean · #3 08-13-2006, 07:01 PM

yep, lots of busts for a lot of people this year, but yesterday was kind of the other side of a bust, too weak of a cap lead to a bust instead of too strong a cap. BTW, do you think the SPC should've issued that second tornado watch last night? i was ranting about it over in the forecast thread but noone responded to it.

Josh Richardson · #4 08-13-2006, 07:27 PM

Quote:

yep, lots of busts for a lot of people this year, but yesterday was kind of the other side of a bust, too weak of a cap lead to a bust instead of too strong a cap. BTW, do you think the SPC should've issued that second tornado watch last night? i was ranting about it over in the forecast thread but noone responded to it.[/b]

Yeah I seen that but I didnt say anything as I kind of jumped into looking at the storms pretty late and didnt want to give any incorrect input.* Still I would say there must have been some ingredients still out there for isolated TOR within that line or else they would never have done it.* I did see numerous shear markers at that time so thats what I assume but I see where your coming from as well since there wasnt even a single SVR warned cell left by then.

dean · #5 08-13-2006, 07:46 PM

and i could see the reasoning for another tornado watch for the southern 1/3 or 1/2 of the line, but they made a really dumb call extending the watch all the way up in to central MN, where the only convection was a large of rain. i could see maybe a tail end charlie, but there was NO chance and NO reason for the SPC to put a watch out for central MN.

Josh Richardson · #6 08-13-2006, 08:19 PM

Quote:

and i could see the reasoning for another tornado watch for the southern 1/3 or 1/2 of the line, but they made a really dumb call extending the watch all the way up in to central MN, where the only convection was a large of rain. i could see maybe a tail end charlie, but there was NO chance and NO reason for the SPC to put a watch out for central MN.[/b]

hmmmm.... ok I didnt know you meant the northern half.* It wasnt already in effect before the rain got there?* If not then maybe it was a mistake of some sort, i dont know.

NWIASpotter · #7 08-13-2006, 09:32 PM

What they were looking at was the possibility of embedded supercells or spinups just ahead of a damaging wind line.* As this was a line of embedded supercells when the watch was initially issued.* They were expecting, with good intentions, that as the low level jet increases into the evening/night that that should have increased low level shear and therefore tornado threat as well.* Also with lowering LCL's thanks to the sunset...

The reason it was so far north was also that individual cells were moving northeast at the time, therefore the northern extent of the watch.

Josh Richardson · #8 08-13-2006, 11:14 PM

Sounds about right Jayson.* As I said before I didnt want to say too much about the whole situation as I had not been watching it all the entire day and didnt want to give wrong info.