Friday, August 5, 2011

Thursday - we REALLY get rained on !!!



No doubt about it - today was spectacular! In the previous two years we had noted storms forming preferentially in the Prescott area, so we decided to make that our destination for a day of - hopefully - good storm chasing and measuring. The other choice was the Winslow-Holbrook-Show Low triangle. Anyhoo, off we went to Prescott. Conveniently (!), Sedona is on the way, so we were forced to have lunch there, and then headed southwest towards Prescott. But we never got there on account of as we had driven through Cottonwood and were heading uphill out of town, some wonderful storm clouds hove up before our eyes. And so we thought - why not? - let's just pull over here.

Which explains why some/all of us spent the next 2-3 hours at the roadside just west of Cottonwood. Several good cells came overhead moving in a generally WSW-ENE direction. One featured heavy rain and pea-sized hail, our first hail of the trip. All featured lightning which caused much excitement. We set off a radiosonde, and apparently got a good sounding (I haven't had time to look).

There was a schism in the ranks between driving on towards Prescott (idea quickly dropped since our location was just fine!), staying roadside, or heading back into Cottonwood which was clearly under a downpour. So 1/2 the students and I jumped into one van and shot downhill into town. There, we encountered signs of a just-completed cloudburst, namely widespread street flooding - see the video above! - and culverts awash with floodwater - video to come! It was intense!! We did manage to catch up with the rear side of the receding storm, but it's actually hard to "chase" a storm. Much better to get out ahead of it, sit and let it roll over you. This is where the students' forecasting skills are coming into play!

After this, we were like little kids at the fair running around with excitement. We found a strip mall with an overhang, and spent the next two hours standing under it during intense downpours, watching lightning, and venturing out to see flooding afterwards. Which is why we got back to the hotel with soaked shoes :-(

Meanwhile, the other team back on the roadside released another balloon (we got in trouble for too much watching and not enough measuring!). And apparently they had some sort of comedy action when lightning struck VERY close, and they almost broke the world record for getting back in the van! Except that Neil kept failing at the ancient art of jumping into a van door before it closed. Apparently there was also some sort of rain dance after a successful launch, but I haven't seen the video yet!

It was a great day! We successfully forecast the location of convective activity (well, roughly), and managed to launch balloons into the storms. We also measured large variations in winds, and air and dew point temperatures as each cell approached and passed. And of course we saw the flash flooding!

Despite being pooped (post-excitement adrenaline crash), we had another forecast session which again ran 'till about 10:30 - long day! Hard work! But it's paying off!

I'll be creating a separate post with just videos - look for it!

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