Tornado Central

Been busy with some marginal chasing since mid-May, as we've had both radars in town since early May. I've added a bunch of pictures to various chases I've been on this year, most notably from 4-23-2007, on which I saw at least 7 tornadoes over the course of about 45 minutes. I've been able to add pictures from several other chases before mid-May as well, all of which can be seen on the 2007 Chase Logs page. I still have a few more chases worth of pictures to upload, but at least most of the logs are current.

Speaking of the radars, we were able to use two mobile Doppler radar this year -- the dual-polarized, X-band radar built by UMass, and a new X-band mobile phased array radar (MWR-05XP) developed largely by ProSensing, Inc. Below is a picture of the two radars in operation (from a late May chase in the TX panhandle):
** CLICK ANY PICTURE BELOW TO SEE A LARGER IMAGE **



One interesting event that occurred while I was out of town -- we apparently lost a tree near the side of our house to a lightning strike! It missed the corner of the roof by about 10 feet, so it was a fortunate miss. The "branch" was the lowest to the ground, and it was one of the largest on the tree. The "rip" in the trip is about 8 feet long, so, given it's location near the ground, I'm not sure if the tree is going to survive. I've been able to chop up most of the branch, but a 20 foot section nearest to the trunk of the tree is still attached. Below are a few pics of the tree:




KFOR (Channel 4) in OKC did a little story on our research group a few weeks back as well. My time on camera isn't much (they cut my answer to one of the reporter's questions), but Robin and Howie (obviously) get some time. Click here --> KFOR Story <-- to read the story. Click the video icon beneath the title of the article to view the video.

On a non-weather note, I posted a bunch of pictures from Lauren and Billy's wedding in early May. See here --> Lauren and Billy's Wedding <-- for pictures.

Oh yeah, before I finish up... I'll update the Pets webpage sometime in the next week. We have finished our animal expansion, as we're at max capacity when it comes to pets. Windy, Hailey, Rainy, Vorty, Doppler, Squirt, and Madison -- two rabbits, one hedgehog, one guinea pig, one dog, and two cats. Whew. The new kitten stands about 7 inches tall; he's a tiny little guy!