VORTEX 2 - Year 1

U.S. Plains


MAP

Well, Year 1 of VORTEX 2 has come and gone, and we experienced an abysmal pattern for most of the duration of the project that resulted in marginal and submarginal supercell conditions across the entirety of the VORTEX 2 domain. Our best (and really only) substantial tornado intercept took place on the extreme western fringe of the domain, and the most substantial non-tornadic supercell we intercepted occurred on the extreme eastern fringe of the domain. We spent more than half of a week outside the domain, and we only had a couple of official intercepts and deployments in the state of Kansas through the entire project (which is absolutely remarkable to me). Despite May being almost a total loss (aside from a neat anticyclonic supercell across north-central Texas), conditions favorable for supercells did return during June, and we had some successful intercepts during that time.

Below are primarily non-storm pictures, but I included my favorite storm-relative pictures as well. For more storm pictures, please see the respective pages for each chase day as well. In particular, below are what I consider to be my favorite VORTEX 2 storm chase cases:

Pictures

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