Tornado Central

I've been busy with school, but I have made a couple additions to the website in the past couple of days:

• New videos! April 24th, 2006 (El Reno tornado) and March 30th, 2006 (Strong rotation west of Pauls Valley)


• Annual chase tracks maps for 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, and 2002

I'm going to work on Annual chase tracks maps for the past few years through the coming week. I don't know why I never thought of doing that before, but it's kind of a neat idea. At any rate, that's the latest.

I've added several new chase logs and pictures in the past few days...

• Now online: Wedding pictures taken by Kim's mom! (I have 1200 more, including the ones from the photographer, that I'm still working on!)


• Chase logs from September 15th, September 16th, and September 21st.


• A bunch of lightning pictures from September 1st, 2006.

Gabe and I are heading out to far nw OK soon. I'm more impressed with today than I am tomorrow, with a pretty classic "day-before-THE-day" event possible. Moisture return is much better than models were suggesting it would be a few days, with upper-60s to low-70s in southern OK. Strong shear profiles characterize most of the area betweeen AMA and OMA (with NAM forecasting 50-55kt 0-6km shear be evening). Abundant insolation and the decent moisture should yield moderate-strong CAPE, though warm mid-level temperatures will limit lapse rates and CAPE. Best low-level shear should be located the farther north we drive (max in NE near 50kt LLJ axis), but I have serious doubts about moisture recovery the farther north we go. So, for now, the favorable juxtaposition of moisture/CAPE and low-level shear is leading us to far nw OK (or adjacent portions of the ne TX panhandle and sw/sc KS). I'll probably sit out tomorrow, since it looks like the winds will veer ahead of the front. Farther north (into IA) looks good, but storm motions will be fast. The NAM has FINALLY come on board with the rest of the operational models, showing much better agreement with the positing and timing of the cold front. The latest forecast even opens the possibility of a chase on Sunday.

Been busy with school (and turning 24! LOL), so I haven't written much here (obviously).

I have finally processed and uploaded a slew of honeymoon pictures! Our honeymoon adventures can be read and viewed on the Honeymoon page . Between the two of us, we took several hundred pictures, and I tried to narrow down the number I'm putting online as much as possible, so as to avoid making people look through hundreds of pictures (or having people not look at all).

Next project -- wedding pictures! As I've said, we have more than 1000 pictures (and likely nearing 1500), so I doubt I'll be able to post-process them beyond running my simple resize and watermark script. I'm aiming for having those up and ready by next weekend.