Storm Fury 2019
Brian Smith
Author
04/09/2019
Added
9
Plays
Description
This Storm Spotter Training Workshop is the official training session for our Lancaster County Storm Spotters. However, even if you are not one of the county storm spotters, we highly encourage you, your family and your friends to attend and to become better prepared for the severe weather that visits our area. There will be many interesting videos and photos shown by the speaker.
Searchable Transcript
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- [00:00:00.120]It's great to be back here.
- [00:00:02.840]I've got my assistant here, Hallie Bova,
- [00:00:06.590]she's an intern in our office.
- [00:00:08.490]She's passing around the signup sheet
- [00:00:12.640]for you to sign up.
- [00:00:14.910]Then we also have these little signups for spotters.
- [00:00:20.476]If you have signed one of those in the past three years
- [00:00:24.120]and you haven't changed anything,
- [00:00:26.760]your phone numbers or address hasn't changed,
- [00:00:30.000]you don't have to fill it out.
- [00:00:31.850]But if it has changed or you haven't been here before,
- [00:00:35.680]we'd like you to fill one out if you could.
- [00:00:39.790]This is so that we can call you
- [00:00:42.800]if there's a storm in your area
- [00:00:44.700]that we wanna know what's going on with that storm.
- [00:00:50.040]Fill out your name, your address.
- [00:00:52.950]It can't be a PO box,
- [00:00:54.420]it has to be a physical address.
- [00:00:59.010]Your phone numbers, whether it's a cellphone,
- [00:01:01.890]or home phone, or work phone, or whatever
- [00:01:04.870]and times we can call you.
- [00:01:07.100]Sometimes
- [00:01:09.980]we might call you late.
- [00:01:12.850]So, indicate the times that you are available.
- [00:01:17.010]Some people don't mind getting called at two in the morning,
- [00:01:21.740]like Jim David Sailor.
- [00:01:24.000]He's probably used to that.
- [00:01:26.329](laughing)
- [00:01:30.600]But some people, you don't wanna call at two in the morning.
- [00:01:37.440]If you're really weather savvy,
- [00:01:38.780]you're probably up watching the storm anyway.
- [00:01:42.090]If you're like me,
- [00:01:43.000]if there's continuous lightning in the distance,
- [00:01:45.970]the storm isn't even there yet, I somehow wake up.
- [00:01:50.456]I don't know what it is, but that's what it is.
- [00:01:53.300]How many people here
- [00:01:54.430]have never been to a storm spotter class?
- [00:01:59.090]Okay, about one third of you.
- [00:02:01.450]Okay, well that's cool.
- [00:02:03.230]All right.
- [00:02:05.440]Just a little bit about me,
- [00:02:08.280]I've been here for quite some time since '94.
- [00:02:13.670]Prior to that, I was at the Severe Storms Forecast Center
- [00:02:17.300]in Kansas City, which is now the Storm Prediction Center.
- [00:02:20.640]I put out at that time the Convective Outlooks that you see.
- [00:02:24.580]So, I used to do that.
- [00:02:26.860]And then prior to that, I was a grad student
- [00:02:30.420]at the University of Chicago,
- [00:02:33.370]and I was also a researcher under Doctor Ted Fujita
- [00:02:38.460]who's the tornado expert.
- [00:02:41.260]So, tornadoes, actually, I have an interest in them.
- [00:02:43.860]I do not chase tornadoes,
- [00:02:46.310]I chase the damage.
- [00:02:49.680]It's a little safer sometimes.
- [00:02:54.940]If you get anhydrous ammonia tanks that get spilled,
- [00:02:59.386]then it's more dangerous.
- [00:03:01.826]But I tend to go out and do storm surveys
- [00:03:05.950]either from the ground or from the air,
- [00:03:08.710]mostly from the ground now.
- [00:03:11.677]There's a lot of exciting technology now
- [00:03:13.080]in looking at storm damage now,
- [00:03:15.260]especially using drones and so forth.
- [00:03:18.260]And I'm originally from the Chicago area.
- [00:03:22.870]I see a Cub hat here.
- [00:03:24.940]That's all right.
- [00:03:26.510]I mean the season is still young.
- [00:03:31.250]It's funny, I was on Facebook yesterday,
- [00:03:33.350]and I wrote ugh,
- [00:03:37.380]after we were losing eight to nothing.
- [00:03:39.750]Ugh, it's going to be a long season.
- [00:03:44.510]Well, there were some people that interpreted that,
- [00:03:46.820]that I was talking about the weather.
- [00:03:50.930]I had explained later, no, it was the Cubs, okay?
- [00:03:54.944]It was baseball.
- [00:03:55.850]So, anyway.
- [00:03:57.080]So, program is about an hour and a half, roughly.
- [00:04:04.625]So, feel free to ask any questions after the program,
- [00:04:11.750]and I'll try to answer those,
- [00:04:13.950]and we have to be out of here by 4:30 anyway,
- [00:04:16.860]from what I've heard.
- [00:04:18.630]All right, first off, I wanna show you a little video
- [00:04:22.130]and want you to see this,
- [00:04:24.030]this is from a tornado.
- [00:04:27.870]And I want you to see,
- [00:04:29.690]tell me if this was a smart thing for the person to do.
- [00:04:34.150]This is in Ottawa, Ontario.
- [00:04:41.980]And so, we're driving along.
- [00:04:49.390]We're seeing a little bit of debris there.
- [00:05:00.820]And the person stops.
- [00:05:06.560]So, was this a smart thing to do?
- [00:05:10.706]No.
- [00:05:11.539]What were they doing?
- [00:05:14.570]Driving into the tornado.
- [00:05:18.910]And the tornado just passed right past this intersection,
- [00:05:25.793]so they were on the outskirts of the winds of the tornado,
- [00:05:28.120]so it was not a very smart thing to do.
- [00:05:31.210]The thing that I want you to understand,
- [00:05:35.760]if anything, out of this whole class,
- [00:05:37.830]is to have good situational awareness
- [00:05:40.600]when you're out there as a storm spotter.
- [00:05:43.550]Know what's going on.
- [00:05:46.170]Know what's going on with the weather,
- [00:05:50.140]have your radar app available.
- [00:05:52.140]You can look at your trusty radar app.
- [00:05:55.720]Know what the cloud features look like.
- [00:05:58.257]That's what we're gonna talk about here a little bit.
- [00:06:01.490]We're just scratching the surface on that.
- [00:06:05.060]And once you have good situational awareness,
- [00:06:09.330]you'll make smart decisions,
- [00:06:10.720]but once you lose that, then the trouble begins.
- [00:06:16.650]So, it's important to have good situational awareness.
- [00:06:21.170]So, here's what we're gonna cover today.
- [00:06:25.490]Why we need spotters.
- [00:06:28.070]Talk about the severe weather season,
- [00:06:31.630]or lack of it so far,
- [00:06:34.600]except for flooding.
- [00:06:36.620]Severe weather safety, what to report, how to report it
- [00:06:42.050]to us, the weather service.
- [00:06:44.850]Talk a little bit about supercell structure,
- [00:06:48.270]and the different thunderstorm hazards.
- [00:06:50.750]There's five hazards with thunderstorms.
- [00:06:53.320]Can you tell me what those five hazards are?
- [00:06:57.350]Lightning, I heard lightning.
- [00:06:59.570]Hail, wind, flooding,
- [00:07:03.600]tornado.
- [00:07:05.820]Tornado always comes last for some reason.
- [00:07:09.140]It's the most significant event
- [00:07:11.920]that's associated with a tornado.
- [00:07:14.980]But those are the five main hazards
- [00:07:17.010]associated with severe weather,
- [00:07:21.350]with a thunderstorm.
- [00:07:23.020]We're gonna talk about wall clouds and tornadoes
- [00:07:25.100]and radar data.
- [00:07:26.920]We're gonna talk about how you should use radar data,
- [00:07:31.490]not interpret it.
- [00:07:33.660]You have to have a lot of training to interpret radar data,
- [00:07:38.940]and know what's going on.
- [00:07:41.682]We're gonna touch a little bit about fire weather,
- [00:07:42.930]because we're getting into fire weather season right now,
- [00:07:47.010]at least in the spring time.
- [00:07:50.140]And then we're gonna recap everything.
- [00:07:54.477]So, let's move on here.
- [00:07:57.270]Why we need you.
- [00:07:58.560]Bottom line is to save lives.
- [00:08:02.070]Our mission is protection of life and property,
- [00:08:05.940]in the National Weather Service,
- [00:08:09.130]and that's part of your mission, too,
- [00:08:11.060]is to protect life and property by being a storm spotter.
- [00:08:15.760]Going out there volunteering your time,
- [00:08:18.660]going on the outskirts of rural Lancaster County,
- [00:08:23.750]and maybe not so rural parts of Lancaster County,
- [00:08:28.700]and reporting back
- [00:08:31.440]what you see
- [00:08:34.270]visually with a storm.
- [00:08:37.670]And if anything is a threat,
- [00:08:40.870]then it can be acted upon locally
- [00:08:45.940]by the county
- [00:08:47.280]and also by us at the National Weather Service.
- [00:08:51.700]So, it's a National Weather Service meteorologist
- [00:08:54.210]that makes the decision,
- [00:08:56.620]it's not done automatically by a computer algorithm,
- [00:09:02.580]where the radar sees something,
- [00:09:04.620]and then it pops up, warning, warning!
- [00:09:09.090]That's from Lost in Space,
- [00:09:11.390]for you people going back that far like me.
- [00:09:18.850]That is what
- [00:09:20.860]it doesn't do.
- [00:09:21.693]We don't have an automatic algorithm that will
- [00:09:25.580]see something and send out a warning.
- [00:09:27.950]It has to be interpreted by the meteorologist
- [00:09:30.930]because there's a lot of false signatures
- [00:09:36.550]that may look like it might be important,
- [00:09:40.420]but are really not.
- [00:09:42.690]So that's why you need a meteorologist
- [00:09:44.600]to interpret what's going on with the radar,
- [00:09:48.680]and then also taking into account
- [00:09:53.150]the environment that that storm is in.
- [00:09:56.960]Some storms are conducive to producing tornadoes
- [00:10:01.460]and some aren't.
- [00:10:03.390]You can have a supercell thunderstorm,
- [00:10:06.770]but if the environment is such,
- [00:10:10.570]let's say it's what we call an elevated storm
- [00:10:12.590]where the storm is ingesting air from a loft
- [00:10:15.990]and not at the ground level,
- [00:10:17.730]there's no way in heck
- [00:10:20.360]that it's going to produce a tornado.
- [00:10:25.610]So, the environment is key.
- [00:10:27.540]So, we even have somebody that's looking at the environment,
- [00:10:31.310]called a mesoscale analyst in the office,
- [00:10:34.800]that's looking at the environment.
- [00:10:37.560]And then ground truth,
- [00:10:39.250]and that's where you come in as a storm spotter.
- [00:10:42.860]What you see is important to us,
- [00:10:45.860]because you're a part
- [00:10:47.190]of the warning decision-making process.
- [00:10:54.670]Now, radar is invaluable.
- [00:10:56.470]It's done a great job for us.
- [00:10:59.345]The WSR 88-D Doppler radar has been great.
- [00:11:04.100]The add-ons have been great,
- [00:11:05.980]with the dual polarity
- [00:11:09.810]add-on to it has been great
- [00:11:11.510]in interpreting things on the radar,
- [00:11:14.200]but it can't see everything.
- [00:11:17.060]And in this diagram, we have the radar
- [00:11:20.040]that's sending out the pulse of energy
- [00:11:22.140]that gets intercepted by the storm,
- [00:11:24.987]and that signal comes back to the radar.
- [00:11:30.000]It can see that, but
- [00:11:34.750]you start out at the lowest level elevation angle,
- [00:11:37.930]is a half degree.
- [00:11:40.510]That beam width is okay.
- [00:11:45.350]When you're close to the radar,
- [00:11:46.670]it's pretty close to the ground.
- [00:11:49.860]But the further out you go,
- [00:11:51.710]because of the curvature of the earth
- [00:11:55.020]and because of the angle of the radar beam
- [00:11:57.970]is slightly above the ground,
- [00:12:01.530]it gets very high once you get out, way out,
- [00:12:07.140]let's say if you go to Verdigre
- [00:12:10.440]or Creighton in Knox County.
- [00:12:13.050]That beam is like 13,000 feet up in the atmosphere,
- [00:12:17.420]that's the lowest beam.
- [00:12:19.910]So, you're looking up more in the mid levels
- [00:12:22.240]of the thunderstorm,
- [00:12:23.410]or the lower to mid levels of the thunderstorm,
- [00:12:25.720]instead of that real low-level part.
- [00:12:29.100]The other thing that the radar misses
- [00:12:31.050]is what's in the red area there,
- [00:12:34.600]and that's from the cloud base down to the ground,
- [00:12:37.170]and that's where you as the storm spotter comes in
- [00:12:40.410]and gets us the valuable information
- [00:12:43.180]of what you see going on with that storm.
- [00:12:54.870]So, when is the season?
- [00:12:56.840]It's April.
- [00:12:59.490]And by now, by end of April, at average,
- [00:13:04.020]we should have somewhere around
- [00:13:07.830]three tornadoes on average.
- [00:13:12.540]Well, we haven't had any in our area yet,
- [00:13:17.485]and I don't foresee that the next week or so.
- [00:13:22.659]But April, May and June are our peak months
- [00:13:26.620]for tornado activity in Eastern Nebraska and Southwest Iowa.
- [00:13:32.570]It decreases when we get into the summer months,
- [00:13:36.240]because the storm systems, storm tracks,
- [00:13:39.340]and the jet stream shifts northward into the Dakotas,
- [00:13:44.950]and we're left under hot, humid conditions,
- [00:13:49.990]and the thunderstorms can't develop
- [00:13:53.350]because they have what we call a cap,
- [00:13:55.250]which is a warming that takes place above the atmosphere,
- [00:13:59.140]the low levels of the atmosphere.
- [00:14:01.020]The air can't penetrate up and form a thunderstorm.
- [00:14:10.160]Time of day.
- [00:14:11.160]Most of our tornadoes, 80% of them occur between 2:00 p.m.
- [00:14:17.640]and 10:00 p.m. at night.
- [00:14:21.440]Why do you think most of them
- [00:14:22.640]occur late in the afternoon and early evening?
- [00:14:27.680]Heating of the earth, right.
- [00:14:29.360]So, peak heating of the earth takes place.
- [00:14:31.960]The atmosphere becomes the most unstable.
- [00:14:36.000]A couple things you need for thunderstorms,
- [00:14:38.400]two very important ingredients is moisture and warm air.
- [00:14:46.180]You need that so that that parcel of air
- [00:14:48.400]can rise up and form a thunderstorm,
- [00:14:50.167]and the peak heating of the day
- [00:14:51.860]is when the atmosphere is the most unstable.
- [00:14:56.350]It is weird for a tornado to occur at seven in the morning.
- [00:15:02.370]But if the conditions are favorable, it can happen.
- [00:15:08.050]It can happen.
- [00:15:09.740]In fact, even by time of the year,
- [00:15:12.350]a tornado could happen in certain months
- [00:15:15.780]than we normally see tornadoes.
- [00:15:18.920]It could happen in December or January.
- [00:15:24.950]If the conditions are favorable,
- [00:15:26.920]a tornado can occur any time of the year
- [00:15:28.940]or any time of the day.
- [00:15:35.700]Okay, just a word or two.
- [00:15:37.730]Remember good situation awareness.
- [00:15:40.140]Safety is number one out there as a storm spotter,
- [00:15:45.060]so don't do stupid things.
- [00:15:48.400]And look at this person who has a unique way
- [00:15:51.130]of protecting his vehicle from hail.
- [00:16:09.670]I'm sure that was effective.
- [00:16:15.410]People don't do things like that.
- [00:16:18.286]You're not supposed to do things like that.
- [00:16:19.830]I could do a whole program like that, too.
- [00:16:23.010]In fact, I have done it
- [00:16:24.120]for Rotary Clubs, and so forth, and Kiwanis Clubs,
- [00:16:27.990]what not to do during severe weather,
- [00:16:31.198]and then has all kinds of videos kinda like that.
- [00:16:35.000]If you ever want that in your service club, let me know.
- [00:16:39.230]Oop, let me go ahead.
- [00:16:41.630]Didn't want to see him again.
- [00:16:44.040]So, safety is number one.
- [00:16:46.880]And so we have what's called the ACES system.
- [00:16:52.210]And ACES stands for awareness, communicate, escape route,
- [00:16:56.330]and safe shelters.
- [00:16:59.790]Awareness, I already touched on this.
- [00:17:01.690]Good situational awareness.
- [00:17:04.700]If you lose situation awareness, you can get in trouble.
- [00:17:08.580]Communication.
- [00:17:09.600]You wanna communicate your whereabouts on a regular basis.
- [00:17:14.410]And you at Lancaster County, amateur radio,
- [00:17:19.130]people, the ARES people, you guys,
- [00:17:24.760]and I use guys collectively,
- [00:17:28.190]will do a great job
- [00:17:32.350]of communicating during an event.
- [00:17:37.280]Escape routes.
- [00:17:39.320]You wanna make sure you're not down a dead end road
- [00:17:41.910]or a minimum maintenance road for your spotter location.
- [00:17:45.880]Now, luckily, the fixed spotter locations
- [00:17:48.860]you have in Lancaster County are well thought out
- [00:17:52.720]of where they're at,
- [00:17:55.340]of where the safety is for you in that location,
- [00:17:59.310]and whether your visibility is good.
- [00:18:02.550]So, you probably don't have a problem with that,
- [00:18:06.910]it's those that are mobile storm spotters,
- [00:18:09.790]or want to be mobile storm spotters,
- [00:18:13.760]have to be careful of that,
- [00:18:16.343]because there have been some storm chasers
- [00:18:19.270]that have done things like gone down
- [00:18:21.450]minimum maintenance roads
- [00:18:23.570]and have gotten caught or stuck in the muck,
- [00:18:28.090]because there's usually a lot of rain with these storms.
- [00:18:33.350]And then you wanna have a safe zone or shelter
- [00:18:35.500]to go to if danger comes close to you,
- [00:18:39.403]then you could bug out and get to a place of safety.
- [00:18:44.970]And some of your locations that you have in Lancaster County
- [00:18:48.820]you may have homes
- [00:18:51.850]or buildings that you can go to that
- [00:18:56.640]they have been set up ahead of time
- [00:18:59.010]where you can go to for a place of safety
- [00:19:01.690]if a tornado was bearing down on you.
- [00:19:05.860]I'm not too worried about Lancaster County in that regard.
- [00:19:11.440]All right, so let's talk about,
- [00:19:13.550]there are certain hazards,
- [00:19:14.951]we're gonna go into the structure of the supercell
- [00:19:18.020]in a minute here,
- [00:19:19.360]but here is the most common hazard
- [00:19:22.580]you're going to encounter as a storm spotter.
- [00:19:26.520]And that's lightning.
- [00:19:29.570]You wanna stay in your vehicle as much as possible
- [00:19:32.420]when there's a lot of lighting in these storms,
- [00:19:35.420]especially when you're in that
- [00:19:36.860]part of the supercell thunderstorm
- [00:19:39.690]in that rain-free cloud base region,
- [00:19:43.290]you get a lot of wicked lightning,
- [00:19:45.330]sharp cloud-to-ground strikes take place.
- [00:19:51.080]So you wanna be safe, stay in your vehicle.
- [00:19:54.430]Again, it is not the rubber tires that protect you,
- [00:19:59.780]it's the shell of the body of the car,
- [00:20:02.440]what they call a Faraday cage.
- [00:20:05.840]Lightning hits the car, it will flash around the outside
- [00:20:10.480]and go through into the ground.
- [00:20:13.270]So let's look at this lightning, close lighting strike.
- [00:20:27.679]Not sure why this person is doing this.
- [00:20:39.903](lightning crashes) (woman screaming)
- [00:20:46.470]That was shocking.
- [00:20:48.374](audience laughing)
- [00:20:51.340]But the lightning struck in the backyard
- [00:20:54.840]next to her house.
- [00:20:59.510]So you have to be careful with lightning.
- [00:21:03.540]Staying in your vehicle is probably the best thing to do
- [00:21:06.790]when there's a lot of lightning.
- [00:21:09.120]Okay.
- [00:21:11.440]And I've seen ham radio equipment, for example, get fried.
- [00:21:16.280]I used to have an antenna
- [00:21:18.490]that was from Platte County in my office
- [00:21:20.860]that got fried by a direct lightning strike,
- [00:21:23.800]and was splintered and all that,
- [00:21:26.450]but lightning is something you just wanna stay inside
- [00:21:31.340]your vehicle during a storm spotting.
- [00:21:37.490]We want you to report.
- [00:21:40.782]I think that's the right slide.
- [00:21:42.760]Yeah.
- [00:21:44.292]We want you to report the following
- [00:21:46.790]when you are reporting weather.
- [00:21:51.520]One, report who you are, what you saw, when you saw it,
- [00:21:57.170]and where you saw it.
- [00:21:58.360]Okay, the four W's they call it, four W's.
- [00:22:02.060]Who you are, my name is John, Jane Doe.
- [00:22:04.810]I'm a trained spotter.
- [00:22:07.170]There's golf ball-sized hail
- [00:22:08.710]and two large trees have been uprooted
- [00:22:11.900]five miles west of Battle Creek,
- [00:22:13.800]and the hail and winds began about five minutes ago,
- [00:22:16.717]and still ongoing.
- [00:22:20.030]It's giving me all the information that I need
- [00:22:25.350]to do a report and also to add
- [00:22:30.670]to a warning if need be.
- [00:22:34.790]It's not time to call us and ask,
- [00:22:39.310]what's the weather gonna be like
- [00:22:40.750]for the spring game on Saturday?
- [00:22:42.830]Okay.
- [00:22:44.410]That's not the time to do that.
- [00:22:48.331]You wanna be short, concise,
- [00:22:49.640]and to the point with your message.
- [00:22:55.600]Here's examples of good reports,
- [00:22:57.800]first one at the top, Officer Fife.
- [00:23:01.970]Some of you may get that.
- [00:23:06.898]Again, you have to be older like me.
- [00:23:12.780]Baseball-size hail fell in Wahoo at 8:00 p.m.,
- [00:23:16.080]8:08 p.m.
- [00:23:17.110]The hail lasted five minutes
- [00:23:19.310]and damaged, broke windows,
- [00:23:22.180]stripped trees, and damaged cars.
- [00:23:24.340]Okay.
- [00:23:25.173]Straight and to the point, contains the four W's.
- [00:23:29.890]The next one.
- [00:23:31.350]My name is Lucky Jackson.
- [00:23:34.430]I'm a trained spotter.
- [00:23:37.180]a tornado moved through my place,
- [00:23:38.740]three miles northwest of Logan, Iowa on US 30.
- [00:23:42.690]The Tornado hit about 4:25 p.m.
- [00:23:45.380]and lasted about 20 seconds and was moving northeast.
- [00:23:51.970]A couple small sheds and a pole barn were damaged,
- [00:23:54.410]and no one was injured.
- [00:23:55.420]Again, it's giving me everything I need to know.
- [00:23:59.600]And it's important also to give us the information
- [00:24:03.190]not only where you're at,
- [00:24:05.870]but also where
- [00:24:10.608]the tornado was in relation to you.
- [00:24:13.770]You can approximate the distance of where the tornado is.
- [00:24:19.470]You're probably are not gonna be right,
- [00:24:21.370]but it gives you a good,
- [00:24:24.670]give us a good guess of what you've seen
- [00:24:27.900]and where it's moving to.
- [00:24:33.260]How to send reports.
- [00:24:34.480]There's multiple ways to send reports.
- [00:24:39.940]We have on our website
- [00:24:42.040]buried in the upper left-hand corner,
- [00:24:45.915]a little block that says submit a report.
- [00:24:48.680]You can submit a report via the internet.
- [00:24:52.560]It will go into a database, which we call IRIS,
- [00:24:56.300]which will alert us that a report has come in.
- [00:25:03.290]And so, it will actually guide you,
- [00:25:05.870]picking hail sizes and so forth.
- [00:25:08.280]So you can do it that way.
- [00:25:10.090]You can send a report through Facebook.
- [00:25:12.530]You can tweet your reports to us @NWSOmaha.
- [00:25:20.050]Emailing is not a good idea because
- [00:25:24.020]we don't check our email during severe weather
- [00:25:27.210]on a regular basis.
- [00:25:31.060]But then there's also a mobile app out there called mPING.
- [00:25:34.210]How many people have ever used mPING?
- [00:25:36.340]Okay.
- [00:25:37.570]mPING, well, you can put all kinds of different reports.
- [00:25:41.730]Snow, rain, hail.
- [00:25:45.300]It's good for hail.
- [00:25:48.894]And tornado reports in there as well.
- [00:25:52.700]Or, you can call us at 1-800-452-9074.
- [00:25:57.380]It's answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week,
- [00:26:02.110]365 days a year.
- [00:26:05.230]If one line is busy, it rolls over
- [00:26:08.070]to one of three other lines in the office.
- [00:26:13.310]So, that's how you can send a report.
- [00:26:16.527]And of course you can send it to your net, too.
- [00:26:20.240]Because if you have an operating net,
- [00:26:23.650]more than likely we will have
- [00:26:26.320]a ham radio ARES person in our office
- [00:26:31.220]actually intercepting those reports that you have.
- [00:26:38.180]All right, let's talk about supercell structure.
- [00:26:41.980]And I put this in a video to kinda,
- [00:26:47.530]where I could go over all the different parts of the storm.
- [00:26:52.040]So here's a short video on supercell structure.
- [00:26:56.470]This is a diagram of a supercell thunderstorm
- [00:26:59.497]viewed from about 40 miles away
- [00:27:01.350]and looking towards the western quadrant of the sky.
- [00:27:04.600]On the right, or north and east part of the storm,
- [00:27:07.880]we have rain and hail which is associated
- [00:27:10.570]with the downdraft part of the thunderstorm.
- [00:27:13.874]On the left, the south and west part of the storm,
- [00:27:16.880]we have the flanking line and the rain-free cloud base
- [00:27:19.760]which is associated with the updraft.
- [00:27:22.510]And in the middle where the big cloud is,
- [00:27:25.770]is where the main updraft of the storm is.
- [00:27:29.550]Sandwiched between the rain-free cloud base
- [00:27:33.350]to the left of the rain from the right
- [00:27:35.720]is an isolated (muffled) cloud called a wall cloud,
- [00:27:39.430]next to the (muffled) updraft place in the supercell.
- [00:27:43.390]And that's why tornadoes form under them.
- [00:27:47.240]Here we're looking to the southwest,
- [00:27:48.783]at a rain-free cloud base of a supercell thunderstorm.
- [00:27:53.511]And above that rain-free cloud base,
- [00:27:55.246]you see the building towers of the flanking line.
- [00:27:58.370]On the right-hand part of the picture,
- [00:28:00.180]is where the main storm tower is,
- [00:28:02.157]and right underneath its main storm tower,
- [00:28:05.282]is where you would look for the wall cloud
- [00:28:06.870]and possible tornadoes.
- [00:28:09.410]In this picture, we're looking at
- [00:28:12.153]a supercell storm looking to the southwest,
- [00:28:15.360]rain to the right,
- [00:28:16.880]rain-free cloud base to the left,
- [00:28:18.577]and the wall cloud right in the middle,
- [00:28:20.920]down basically the end of the (muffled).
- [00:28:24.930]We also have an inflow band of clouds,
- [00:28:28.210]on the right that's fitting into the wall cloud.
- [00:28:33.491]Okay, that saved me from explaining that.
- [00:28:37.770]But does everybody understand that?
- [00:28:42.542]Is there anyone that doesn't understand that?
- [00:28:44.100]That's a key figure
- [00:28:45.970]of understanding the supercell thunderstorm.
- [00:28:49.909]You know you're positioned right,
- [00:28:52.060]when you have warm air to your back,
- [00:28:56.090]and you're south and east basically of the main storm.
- [00:28:59.710]Generally, if the storm is moving southwest to northeast,
- [00:29:04.460]or west to east,
- [00:29:08.090]and you have rain to your right,
- [00:29:11.410]rain-free cloud base to your left,
- [00:29:13.287]and the wall cloud area,
- [00:29:15.020]or the area where you want to look for a wall cloud,
- [00:29:17.860]would be between the rain area,
- [00:29:21.280]and the rain-free cloud base.
- [00:29:24.640]Does everybody understand that concept?
- [00:29:28.570]Okay, very good.
- [00:29:36.330]All right,
- [00:29:38.920]driving through a hail storm.
- [00:29:41.090]Hail is another hazard you're going to encounter.
- [00:29:45.150]Your biggest hail occurs actually near the wall cloud,
- [00:29:48.250]just north of the wall cloud,
- [00:29:50.540]north and east of that wall cloud,
- [00:29:52.217]and generally where your biggest hail comes,
- [00:29:54.450]an area you don't want to generally go into,
- [00:29:57.720]because your hail will be as big as baseballs sometimes,
- [00:30:01.270]or bigger.
- [00:30:03.990]So here is driving through a hail storm in 2016,
- [00:30:07.950]this is actually in eastern Colorado.
- [00:30:13.190]I didn't know the location until just recently.
- [00:30:29.630](hailstones hitting windshield)
- [00:31:37.000]So that's hail that's golf ball to baseball-size hail.
- [00:31:41.210]Anytime hail gets to about golf ball size,
- [00:31:43.920]it can go through your windshield.
- [00:31:46.160]In fact hail
- [00:31:48.350]that is baseball-size or softball-size hail,
- [00:31:51.880]has a fall speed of about 90 miles an hour.
- [00:31:59.370]And so if it hit you,
- [00:32:01.690]you're outside watching,
- [00:32:04.390]it could hurt you,
- [00:32:06.600]or it could even kill you.
- [00:32:09.370]So you want to be careful when there's hail.
- [00:32:13.610]And again, generally the biggest hail occurs,
- [00:32:17.170]generally where the strongest updraft is,
- [00:32:19.880]where that big tower is.
- [00:32:21.834]And that updraft is very intense, by the way,
- [00:32:24.050]in a supercell thunderstorm.
- [00:32:26.410]The updraft sometimes gets so strong,
- [00:32:29.930]it penetrates into the stratosphere
- [00:32:33.120]and creates what we call an overshooting top,
- [00:32:35.700]or bubble of cloud above the anvil.
- [00:32:39.260]In fact, the updraft can be sometimes,
- [00:32:43.280]90 miles an hour, or more,
- [00:32:46.050]going up into the supercell thunderstorm.
- [00:32:49.670]Years ago, back into the 70's,
- [00:32:52.200]there was a researcher that
- [00:32:57.030]wanted to study tornadoes,
- [00:32:59.740]and wanted to know kind of the structure
- [00:33:02.890]of a tornado vortex,
- [00:33:05.610]and he funded a lot of his research,
- [00:33:09.400]but he got a Cessna aircraft,
- [00:33:14.220]and then slung underneath the wings
- [00:33:17.860]of that aircraft, were rockets.
- [00:33:22.200]Okay?
- [00:33:24.210]And these rockets, in the nosecone
- [00:33:26.550]he had sensors that would gather data from pressure,
- [00:33:32.180]wind data, and temperature data.
- [00:33:39.030]The idea was to shoot the rocket into the tornado.
- [00:33:43.560]And that's really difficult to do.
- [00:33:46.940]Very hard to do.
- [00:33:49.890]So he flew around supercell thunderstorms,
- [00:33:54.070]in a Cessna plane, and tried to launch these rockets,
- [00:33:58.250]and you'd see the movie, film at that time.
- [00:34:02.600]It would get launched and it was just wiggle around,
- [00:34:05.410]and would never get in to the tornado.
- [00:34:08.630]He stopped doing that when he got into
- [00:34:13.020]the updraft part of a supercell thunderstorm.
- [00:34:17.200]And the aircraft started getting pulled up by its tail,
- [00:34:20.890]into the storm.
- [00:34:25.840]Luckily the pilot was able to power out,
- [00:34:31.340]and then he caught in part of the downdraft.
- [00:34:36.556]There's a couple of different downdrafts,
- [00:34:37.650]the rear plane downdraft.
- [00:34:39.602]He got caught in part of the rear plane
- [00:34:40.435]downdraft of the storm,
- [00:34:42.020]and nearly crashed, too,
- [00:34:44.720]came very close to the ground.
- [00:34:46.890]But, that shows you how powerful
- [00:34:49.250]the updraft is in a supercell,
- [00:34:51.871]that it can take a plane and lift it up tail first.
- [00:34:58.210]Okay, the sizes of hail.
- [00:34:59.710]When you report these hailstones,
- [00:35:01.720]you want to give us the largest hailstone
- [00:35:04.850]that you encounter.
- [00:35:07.020]Use a common object to try to describe it.
- [00:35:09.657]You can't always go out and measure it,
- [00:35:12.210]although we have some cards here.
- [00:35:15.610]Thanks, there's a few of them left.
- [00:35:22.887]It has a little ruler on it.
- [00:35:26.010]If you take one of these,
- [00:35:27.320]and you're gonna use it in the field,
- [00:35:28.860]it might be a good idea to laminate it,
- [00:35:32.210]otherwise it'll turn really soggy
- [00:35:34.570]after a few storm spotter events.
- [00:35:40.410]But if you can't do that,
- [00:35:43.070]estimate the size based on these different objects.
- [00:35:47.860]Does anyone know the size of hail,
- [00:35:52.530]that is what a severe thunderstorm
- [00:35:56.630]is issued on?
- [00:36:01.890]I heard it over here.
- [00:36:04.360]Where was it?
- [00:36:11.470]One inch.
- [00:36:12.350]Used to be three quarter inch,
- [00:36:13.980]it's one inch of hail, or greater.
- [00:36:19.010]So one inch or greater of hail,
- [00:36:20.230]is the size of a quarter.
- [00:36:23.600]Avoid to use the term, marbles, okay?
- [00:36:28.380]Because people have a different idea
- [00:36:31.145]of what a marble size is.
- [00:36:33.572]I'll give you an example.
- [00:36:34.405]We had a spotter one time call us,
- [00:36:39.330]one time on the telephone,
- [00:36:40.640]actually it was one of our forecasters,
- [00:36:43.530]Brian Miller,
- [00:36:45.240]and Brian's originally from the Bloomfield area
- [00:36:48.390]of Nebraska.
- [00:36:50.320]And this spotter calls in and says,
- [00:36:53.090]I had hail that's about the size of a dime.
- [00:36:59.537]No, he didn't say dime, he said, size of a marble.
- [00:37:05.120]And so, Brian said,
- [00:37:08.210]well, so was it about three-quarter inch, in diameter,
- [00:37:13.360]about the size of a penny?
- [00:37:16.230]And the person said, oh no it was larger than that.
- [00:37:21.170]And so Brian said, well was it the size of a nickel?
- [00:37:25.190]And the person said, oh no it was larger than that.
- [00:37:30.212]And then Brian asked again,
- [00:37:31.950]well was it the size of a quarter?
- [00:37:34.540]And the person said, yeah that's about right,
- [00:37:38.346]about the size of a quarter, maybe closer to a half dollar.
- [00:37:42.680]So that person's idea of a marble,
- [00:37:46.740]was like a shooter marble which is bigger
- [00:37:51.552]than what a normal marble is,
- [00:37:53.575]which is about a half an inch in diameter.
- [00:37:56.050]But try to avoid that term,
- [00:37:57.880]because people don't know how big a marble is.
- [00:38:04.194]And then there are some people that lose their marbles.
- [00:38:09.030]All right, flooding, what to report.
- [00:38:13.130]You want to report heavy rain,
- [00:38:16.050]rains with fall rates of two inches or more per hour,
- [00:38:19.860]and any significant flooding, not just poor drainage,
- [00:38:25.340]and road closures due to flooding.
- [00:38:28.220]Don't drive around the barricades.
- [00:38:34.908]There's a few stories from this past flood event
- [00:38:37.420]of people doing that.
- [00:38:39.430]I remember we were at our alternate site,
- [00:38:42.190]where I was part public information officer,
- [00:38:46.950]part commander at the natural resources
- [00:38:50.070]district office in Omaha,
- [00:38:51.990]during this time we had to evacuate our office.
- [00:38:56.860]And, I came home late at night,
- [00:38:59.250]and I here this,
- [00:39:03.082]over the house, because I lived
- [00:39:04.430]not far from the Elkhorn River, but up high,
- [00:39:09.710]up on the bluff area.
- [00:39:11.810]And it turns out it was a Black Hawk helicopter,
- [00:39:17.670]and this one guy in a pickup truck
- [00:39:19.690]had went around and crossed the barricade,
- [00:39:21.510]they had closed off going into West Dodge Road,
- [00:39:26.820]which got inundated by the floodwaters,
- [00:39:29.900]and decided to drive down West Dodge.
- [00:39:33.290]Well, guess what happened.
- [00:39:36.117]He got caught in the water,
- [00:39:38.760]and had to be rescued by the National Guard.
- [00:39:42.490]So, make sure you heed road closures.
- [00:39:48.800]Believe me, a lot roads now are really compromised.
- [00:39:54.140]It's gonna make it a lot difficult,
- [00:39:55.850]especially for us now, to do storm surveys this summer,
- [00:39:59.030]because of not only the road damage from the snow,
- [00:40:03.880]but also the flooding that took place.
- [00:40:07.620]It only takes 18 inches to two feet of water
- [00:40:12.180]to make your vehicle float.
- [00:40:16.451]What's funny is when we evacuated our office,
- [00:40:23.670]one of our staff members
- [00:40:25.760]was one of the last ones to cross the Elkhorn River.
- [00:40:31.010]Luckily everybody just got out
- [00:40:34.040]of the office, after we shut down.
- [00:40:38.070]And, it was actually the head of our office.
- [00:40:41.930]She said the water was about 18 inches deep,
- [00:40:47.760]on my car when I was driving through it.
- [00:40:50.470]Well you know what I always say in storm spotter class.
- [00:40:55.362]It's 18 inches to two feet of water makes your car float.
- [00:40:57.680]Luckily her car didn't float,
- [00:41:00.290]and made it out safe.
- [00:41:03.620]But you don't want to do like this next person did,
- [00:41:07.460]during a flood.
- [00:41:09.240]This is in Houston.
- [00:41:34.359](audience laughing)
- [00:41:35.980]Yeah, backing up didn't work.
- [00:41:47.500]Leave your car!
- [00:41:50.779]Leave the car.
- [00:41:52.660]He said, stay in the car?
- [00:42:03.837]Now this is a news reporter.
- [00:42:06.650]It almost looks like he's gonna say,
- [00:42:08.120]well, we're here with.
- [00:42:15.433]Yeah.
- [00:42:16.266](muffled)
- [00:42:17.099]Are you okay sir?
- [00:42:18.497]I'm okay.
- [00:42:19.330]You're wet.
- [00:42:22.620]Watch your step sir.
- [00:42:24.560]Did you just now hit the water?
- [00:42:27.434](audience laughing)
- [00:42:31.873]Be careful of low water crossings,
- [00:42:33.960]you don't know how deep that water is,
- [00:42:36.630]that you're gonna drive through.
- [00:42:38.700]So, what do we tell you?
- [00:42:40.780]What's our phrase?
- [00:42:43.920]Turn around, don't drown.
- [00:42:46.600]All right, you've probably heard that enough, right?
- [00:42:53.710]Fact,
- [00:42:57.630]last year,
- [00:43:00.390]68% of the flood deaths
- [00:43:04.930]were due to people driving through flooded waters,
- [00:43:08.320]just like that person did.
- [00:43:12.280]So that's something you don't want to do.
- [00:43:17.990]If you see water from a creek
- [00:43:19.500]over the bottom of a rural road,
- [00:43:23.580]you don't want to drive through it.
- [00:43:29.640]All right, let's go back to the supercell thunderstorm,
- [00:43:32.450]actually most thunderstorms have this cloud feature.
- [00:43:38.160]Usually at the leading edge of the storm
- [00:43:40.280]where the air is coming out from the downdraft,
- [00:43:43.350]the cold air coming down, arching out of the storm,
- [00:43:46.780]creating what's called the gust front,
- [00:43:51.890]and the gust front creates a cloud feature,
- [00:43:54.260]a horizontal cloud, that looks like
- [00:43:56.500]it's extending from one end of the horizon to another,
- [00:43:59.710]called the shelf cloud.
- [00:44:02.500]So there's several views of a shelf cloud.
- [00:44:06.880]I may use my little pointer here.
- [00:44:14.705]In the lower left, you've got the shelf cloud right here.
- [00:44:18.120]This storm is moving from left to right.
- [00:44:20.820]Right at the leading edge of that storm,
- [00:44:25.370]or that cloud feature, is where you get
- [00:44:29.210]your gust of wind,
- [00:44:31.000]or gust front.
- [00:44:33.420]Now that gust of wind, sometimes will be severe,
- [00:44:37.960]and sometimes it won't.
- [00:44:41.320]A lot of times it may only be 40 miles an hour,
- [00:44:47.040]but this is a feature we do see on radar quite easily.
- [00:44:51.320]We do see the gust fronts quite easily.
- [00:44:55.350]So it's really not necessary for you to tell us about it,
- [00:44:59.170]unless you get damaging winds with it.
- [00:45:04.290]Here's another one that's coming right at you,
- [00:45:06.497]the one on the top here
- [00:45:08.040]that's moving right at you, and the one on the right,
- [00:45:11.500]lower right, here's the leading edge of it,
- [00:45:14.270]it's just passing by your location.
- [00:45:17.250]The arrows show you the air that's coming down and out.
- [00:45:21.380]So let me ask you this,
- [00:45:22.670]what would you do,
- [00:45:25.250]how could you tell if the winds were severe or not,
- [00:45:30.380]after a shelf cloud passes by an area?
- [00:45:36.040]Look at what?
- [00:45:39.040]Damage?
- [00:45:42.280]Tree damage, okay.
- [00:45:46.200]Signs blown over, okay.
- [00:45:50.290]Tiles coming off of roofs.
- [00:45:53.830]Downed power lines, okay.
- [00:45:55.450]So those are all indications that your wind is intense.
- [00:46:01.200]Flying cows.
- [00:46:04.860]It's really intense then.
- [00:46:10.590]Probably not with a gust front.
- [00:46:14.366]But you want to look at the trees,
- [00:46:17.600]the nature of the trees, blowing dust,
- [00:46:21.680]especially we're getting into the season
- [00:46:23.320]where the fields are gonna be worked on.
- [00:46:27.730]And if it dries out enough,
- [00:46:29.400]you'll be able to see that blowing dust.
- [00:46:44.475]Okay.
- [00:46:52.460]It's thinking.
- [00:46:58.480]I probably shouldn't have used the pointer.
- [00:47:06.670]All right, here's a time-lapse of a shelf cloud.
- [00:47:14.920]And I'm gonna turn off the laser pointer here.
- [00:47:18.700]And this is
- [00:47:21.940]near Obert, Nebraska.
- [00:47:26.864]And so here's this cloud feature moving towards you.
- [00:47:31.150]The leading edge of the
- [00:47:35.240]strong winds of the gust front
- [00:47:36.880]are at the leading edge of the clouds.
- [00:47:38.620]So that's the shelf cloud, it's rare for a tornado
- [00:47:42.750]to form at the leading edge of a shelf cloud.
- [00:47:46.990]There are some instances where it can happen,
- [00:47:50.130]but it is rare for that to happen.
- [00:47:59.450]The reason why we show you in time lapse
- [00:48:01.980]is so that you can see the motion.
- [00:48:06.270]All right, wind damage.
- [00:48:07.803]We want you to report wind damage,
- [00:48:11.330]and these type of winds that create damage,
- [00:48:15.470]are what we call downburst winds,
- [00:48:17.200]where it's created by an intense downdraft,
- [00:48:21.050]that goes down and bursts out.
- [00:48:23.710]It's called a downburst.
- [00:48:27.080]Most downburst winds are 60, 80 miles an hour,
- [00:48:31.020]maybe last a few minutes,
- [00:48:32.580]maybe downs trees, some power lines,
- [00:48:36.880]but you can get these high end events sometimes,
- [00:48:40.430]that can create extensive damage
- [00:48:43.090]to trees, power lines,
- [00:48:46.970]building damage, pole barns get blown down,
- [00:48:50.690]roofs on some garages and homes get blown off,
- [00:48:55.380]garage doors get blown in.
- [00:48:58.157]And that can have winds 86 to 135 miles an hour.
- [00:49:02.790]The strongest downburst wind I've ever seen measured,
- [00:49:08.070]was at Andrews Air Force Base back in the mid-1980's,
- [00:49:13.450]when a microburst,
- [00:49:14.540]which is a small scale downburst, occurred,
- [00:49:18.270]and winds were 150 miles an hour,
- [00:49:22.710]measured at Andrews Air Force Base.
- [00:49:27.650]The interesting thing about this, is that that event
- [00:49:30.210]occurred six minutes after Air Force One landed,
- [00:49:34.950]with the President onboard.
- [00:49:36.370]Of course it wouldn't be Air Force One,
- [00:49:38.001]if it wasn't the president onboard.
- [00:49:40.970]So that's the strongest I've ever seen.
- [00:49:45.620]To give you an idea of what it's like
- [00:49:47.070]in these damaging wind storms,
- [00:49:48.630]this is near Sergeant Bluff, Iowa,
- [00:49:50.680]which is just east of Sioux City
- [00:49:54.120]in 2014.
- [00:50:03.269](wind blowing)
- [00:50:06.507]Oh my God!
- [00:50:13.680]Get downstairs, guys.
- [00:50:32.250]I find it interesting that he's saying,
- [00:50:34.290]get downstairs guys,
- [00:50:36.930]and he's filming with the garage door open,
- [00:50:41.780]of this event going on.
- [00:50:44.150]So I don't recommend that you take video like this,
- [00:50:48.620]but if you do, I'll give you my business card,
- [00:50:51.465](audience laughing)
- [00:50:53.500]and you can send it to me.
- [00:51:00.380]All right, what to report for winds,
- [00:51:03.150]anything over 50 miles an hour,
- [00:51:05.930]we'd like to know about.
- [00:51:08.120]Any time you have down branches, or down trees,
- [00:51:11.178]we want to know the size of those branches, too.
- [00:51:16.501]Is it the size of your arm?
- [00:51:17.720]Is it three inches in diameter?
- [00:51:21.281]We want to know any impacts,
- [00:51:22.530]like trees blocking roads, and power outages.
- [00:51:26.040]And don't assume it's a tornado, because everybody does.
- [00:51:32.410]I don't know how many people
- [00:51:33.440]I've disappointed doing storm surveys.
- [00:51:38.300]I've learned now, not to say anything
- [00:51:39.990]to the public when I'm out there,
- [00:51:42.560]of what I think it is.
- [00:51:45.137]Because they get upset.
- [00:51:48.240]That had to be a tornado!
- [00:51:52.120]'Cause the wind had a roar to it.
- [00:51:57.100]Well anytime the wind has a roar to it,
- [00:52:03.976]or the wind gets high enough, it's gonna have a roar to it.
- [00:52:07.500]Tim Marshal always says, Tim, who has been here,
- [00:52:11.140]giving talks, storm chaser engineer, wind engineer.
- [00:52:15.970]Wind is wind.
- [00:52:18.390]Tornado wind is rotary, and has uplifting force.
- [00:52:22.710]Downburst wind is basically straight line force.
- [00:52:27.240]But anytime it gets high enough it's gonna have a roar.
- [00:52:31.940]Don't think that twisting trees indicates also,
- [00:52:36.120]my tree was twisted, it had to be a tornado.
- [00:52:41.530]Not really.
- [00:52:43.230]Not really, it didn't have to be a tornado.
- [00:52:46.440]Ever watch those logging shows?
- [00:52:50.920]Not too many of them on anymore,
- [00:52:52.460]but they used to have that one that we used to watch.
- [00:52:56.340]But do trees always fall the way they think it's gonna fall?
- [00:53:01.670]No, you don't know what the internal structure
- [00:53:03.520]of that tree is,
- [00:53:05.030]whether it is rotting,
- [00:53:07.345]or other parts of it,
- [00:53:10.680]the canopy of it,
- [00:53:11.730]how it's gonna affect the fall of that tree.
- [00:53:13.810]You can try to predict that,
- [00:53:16.230]but it's not always gonna fall in a straight line.
- [00:53:23.930]All right, now let's move,
- [00:53:26.245]the shelf cloud is generally on that,
- [00:53:27.270]so it's with the rain, okay, rain and hail.
- [00:53:30.700]Okay, so you'll get sequence events,
- [00:53:33.060]you'll get the shelf cloud going over you,
- [00:53:35.470]gust of wind, rain, hail,
- [00:53:40.398]and maybe more wind.
- [00:53:42.920]And that's kind of on the north and east
- [00:53:44.480]side of the supercell.
- [00:53:46.620]Or on a multi-cell storm,
- [00:53:48.300]or a line of storms right in front of you.
- [00:53:51.710]But, the wall cloud is a different animal.
- [00:53:55.610]Wall clouds shows you the updraft
- [00:53:57.810]part of the storm.
- [00:54:03.878]And, it generally is rotating.
- [00:54:05.270]Now this picture is of a wall cloud,
- [00:54:07.719]it's an area of extreme updraft,
- [00:54:10.980]it's underneath the rain-free cloud base,
- [00:54:14.930]right underneath the updraft tower.
- [00:54:18.950]It's generally where the wall cloud is.
- [00:54:21.837]It's where the strongest updraft is taking place.
- [00:54:25.010]It's isolated, it's one to three miles in diameter.
- [00:54:28.950]It kind of sits there with the storm as it's moving along.
- [00:54:32.910]So it's not necessarily coming at you.
- [00:54:35.040]If you can see it coming at you, get out of the way please,
- [00:54:39.110]'cause you're in the wrong position.
- [00:54:42.490]But it gently moves along with the storm.
- [00:54:47.910]This lower picture is taken by Jeremy,
- [00:54:51.110]with his photography here.
- [00:54:53.500]This is up near Fremont,
- [00:54:54.890]this big picture here.
- [00:54:57.290]So you can see,
- [00:54:58.210]sometimes these wall clouds will form a tail.
- [00:55:01.440]That tail generally points toward the rain,
- [00:55:04.033]because it's ingesting rain-cooled air into it,
- [00:55:07.540]so you have a tail.
- [00:55:08.630]The rain is the right,
- [00:55:11.260]the rest of the rain-free cloud base is to the left.
- [00:55:14.800]This other picture inserted in here
- [00:55:17.230]is a isolated wall cloud again.
- [00:55:19.700]Notice the rain-free cloud base surrounding it.
- [00:55:23.000]And it's rotating.
- [00:55:24.820]So you want to look for persistence,
- [00:55:27.520]that that cloud is there for a long period of time,
- [00:55:31.158]and you want to look for rotation.
- [00:55:35.230]So let's look at a video of a wall cloud.
- [00:55:40.200]This is near Louisville, Nebraska, last year,
- [00:55:44.750]and ignore the audio because they are dead wrong,
- [00:55:51.080]thinking that this is a giant tornado.
- [00:56:00.787](muffled voices)
- [00:56:36.050]See,
- [00:56:38.273]and that's just misinterpreting what they're seeing.
- [00:56:42.180]A lot of times, especially in tornado cases,
- [00:56:44.470]the wall clouds may be real low.
- [00:56:49.780]I know in Hallam,
- [00:56:51.000]when you were out by Wilbur,
- [00:56:53.825]the wall cloud was really low.
- [00:57:00.300]Of course, then not too long,
- [00:57:01.850]the tornado got very big,
- [00:57:04.300]when it came east out of Wilbur,
- [00:57:07.510]but still, from a distance, you gotta be careful
- [00:57:11.050]because you can have hills and other objects
- [00:57:13.350]that may obscure your vision,
- [00:57:16.190]of what you're looking at.
- [00:57:22.050]So let's look at a funnel cloud versus a tornado.
- [00:57:27.621]A funnel cloud has to be rotating,
- [00:57:29.390]they both have to be rotating, okay?
- [00:57:33.385]A funnel cloud isn't touching the ground,
- [00:57:36.477]a tornado actually has debris getting picked up,
- [00:57:41.600]and especially in the early stages of tornado development,
- [00:57:44.800]you may have debris that forms on the ground,
- [00:57:49.940]and then the funnel may form a little bit later.
- [00:57:52.950]Sometimes it happens automatically.
- [00:57:54.850]Or at the same time, instantaneously, I should say.
- [00:57:58.660]The funnel forms with the debris cloud, not always.
- [00:58:03.610]Sometimes debris starts forming first,
- [00:58:06.160]and then the funnel forms.
- [00:58:07.670]The funnel forms due to lowering pressure,
- [00:58:10.140]in that column of air.
- [00:58:15.590]So the distinction is, either funnel in the air,
- [00:58:19.560]or funnel on the ground,
- [00:58:21.287]and you guys use here, your terminology here.
- [00:58:26.730]All right, so let's look at a wall cloud and funnel cloud,
- [00:58:29.777]and this is near Beardstown,
- [00:58:31.516]this is in west central Illinois,
- [00:58:33.880]and this is occurring not during tornado season.
- [00:58:38.340]December 1st of last year.
- [00:58:51.780]Now we're going, anyone guess
- [00:58:53.210]which direction we're looking at here?
- [00:59:01.020]Well, we're looking into the rain so,
- [00:59:05.530]the rain would be what direction?
- [00:59:08.800]To your right, or to the north?
- [00:59:11.010]Okay, so you're going
- [00:59:13.090]from south to north on this road.
- [00:59:27.420]This whole area right here,
- [00:59:31.579]I don't think you can see my cursor, but,
- [00:59:33.530]I'll put my laser pointer on here again,
- [00:59:36.270]and just stop my video.
- [00:59:37.600]But there, this is the wall cloud,
- [00:59:40.390]and here, there's the funnel
- [00:59:44.330]right there.
- [00:59:46.440]That's quite obvious.
- [00:59:48.500]Eventually this did produce a tornado.
- [00:59:57.460]All right, so let's move forward,
- [01:00:00.700]and look at another developing tornado.
- [01:00:03.120]Again, this is Louisville,
- [01:00:06.110]and this isn't a big wedge tornado,
- [01:00:09.480]but this is the development of a tornado, near Louisville.
- [01:00:13.580]Last year on June 11th.
- [01:00:57.470]Please, nobody say it sounded like a freight train.
- [01:01:07.180]But there was a freight train going through.
- [01:01:10.730]But, I don't know if you could see the circulation
- [01:01:13.970]in the water on the Platte River,
- [01:01:16.800]but there was actually circulation you could see,
- [01:01:19.230]a whirlpool right there,
- [01:01:21.030]from the developing tornado,
- [01:01:22.680]so there was a short-lived tornado
- [01:01:25.330]down in Louisville.
- [01:01:30.513]Okay, so tornadoes go through life,
- [01:01:32.140]the developing of the tornado,
- [01:01:33.970]the mature state of the tornado is the strongest,
- [01:01:38.530]the most destructive part.
- [01:01:42.420]So this is in Havana,
- [01:01:44.770]which is about 45 miles southwest of Peoria,
- [01:01:47.990]on the Illinois River,
- [01:01:49.900]and this is on the same day.
- [01:01:51.578]That other funnel cloud was on December 1st of last year.
- [01:02:19.132]Then you'll see here,
- [01:02:21.440]the camera will pan out.
- [01:02:23.474]You'll get a good idea of what the structure
- [01:02:25.023]of that storm looked like,
- [01:02:31.340]above the tornado area.
- [01:02:59.740]Those spiral bands are part of the updraft
- [01:03:02.500]part of the storm,
- [01:03:04.480]what's called the mesocyclone.
- [01:03:07.620]It's the part of the rotating updraft
- [01:03:09.790]portion of the mesocyclone, that is rotating up,
- [01:03:15.490]with that storm.
- [01:03:17.631]The wall cloud is just below it there,
- [01:03:20.640]and then, it's kind of a ragged-looking wall cloud,
- [01:03:24.440]but then the rest of it
- [01:03:26.080]is the tornado obviously.
- [01:03:30.270]Okay, a tornado, when it gets to a dissipating stage,
- [01:03:33.510]this isn't always the case,
- [01:03:35.710]though a lot of times it will turn into a rope.
- [01:03:39.630]And even though it turns into a rope,
- [01:03:41.210]it's still destructive, can produce a lot of damage,
- [01:03:44.900]when a tornado hits an area.
- [01:03:48.170]In fact, I surveyed a tornado
- [01:03:50.760]back in the late 80's, that roped out,
- [01:03:54.330]in Edmonton, Canada, and hit a mobile home park,
- [01:03:58.790]and killed three people,
- [01:04:01.920]in that mobile home park,
- [01:04:03.350]because it went through, so it's still destructive,
- [01:04:05.550]even in the rope stage.
- [01:04:06.780]So let's look at this tornado in Pfeifer, Kansas,
- [01:04:12.180]from about six years ago.
- [01:04:31.812](windshield wipers beating)
- [01:04:49.440]So the tornado is roping out,
- [01:04:51.620]now what do you want to do,
- [01:04:55.250]when you're watching that roped out tornado,
- [01:04:57.250]what else do you want to do?
- [01:05:01.390]You want to look around,
- [01:05:02.800]and watch for another one developing,
- [01:05:04.650]because a lot of times these storms become cyclic,
- [01:05:08.010]where they cycle,
- [01:05:10.240]or cyclic, I guess is the proper term, cyclic in nature.
- [01:05:15.340]When one is roping out another one will form.
- [01:05:20.320]Somewhat like Pilger, but Pilger was a weird case where
- [01:05:25.250]the one tornado didn't rope out yet,
- [01:05:27.180]and another one formed.
- [01:05:29.120]So you had two mature tornadoes
- [01:05:30.920]on the ground at the same time.
- [01:05:36.070]All right, then we have what's called
- [01:05:37.560]a non-supercell tornado, or land spout,
- [01:05:40.370]as a lot of storm chasers call it.
- [01:05:43.862]They're not as violent or as destructive as a supercell,
- [01:05:48.760]they still can produce tornadoes.
- [01:05:51.350]They're difficult, or nearly impossible, to see on radar.
- [01:05:56.400]We would not see a land spout tornado on radar,
- [01:06:00.400]in Lancaster County.
- [01:06:02.966]We just wouldn't.
- [01:06:04.570]Because what we're looking at is mainly
- [01:06:07.037]the mesocyclone or parent circulation of the storm.
- [01:06:12.280]Because of the high cloud base,
- [01:06:14.380]you can see land spouts for a long distance away.
- [01:06:19.790]This is Lake Manawa, Iowa.
- [01:06:22.860]This was actually on the water,
- [01:06:24.840]so technically a water spout.
- [01:06:28.320]But, there were other reports of land spouts,
- [01:06:34.332]I think down in Cass County on the same day.
- [01:06:39.360]So frequent spotter reports are important to us,
- [01:06:42.700]because we can't detect these things very well.
- [01:06:46.170]We need frequent spotter reports,
- [01:06:48.670]to determine whether we would need
- [01:06:50.270]to issue a warning or not.
- [01:06:54.700]And people a lot of times in this case,
- [01:06:57.840]there are people back in west Omaha
- [01:07:00.810]that were seeing the Lake Manawa event,
- [01:07:03.310]and thought it was like in downtown Omaha.
- [01:07:06.560]So the sirens were blowing in Omaha,
- [01:07:10.950]or Douglas County,
- [01:07:13.000]but the tornado was actually in Pottawattamie County,
- [01:07:16.680]and pretty much stationary, it was moving slowly,
- [01:07:20.360]along the lake.
- [01:07:24.260]So it's difficult to judge how far away it is.
- [01:07:27.420]We had a case one time, quite a few years ago,
- [01:07:31.560]where we had a land spout type tornado,
- [01:07:33.860]or a high base tornado,
- [01:07:36.020]that occurred in southern Lancaster County,
- [01:07:40.200]and somebody on Pine Lake Road,
- [01:07:41.763]there's a storm spotter located there,
- [01:07:45.300]was reporting it, but was thinking
- [01:07:47.570]that it was a lot closer to Lincoln than it really was,
- [01:07:50.523]when it was down near
- [01:07:53.160]the Gage County-Lancaster County border.
- [01:07:57.700]So it's difficult in these high-based land spout situations
- [01:08:02.540]to figure out how far away that tornado is away from you.
- [01:08:10.750]If you contact us in the weather service,
- [01:08:13.200]we can probably give you an idea of where it may be,
- [01:08:15.673]because we can see probably where the thunderstorm is,
- [01:08:20.460]associated with that,
- [01:08:22.630]and where the land spout is probably located at.
- [01:08:28.900]So, reporting funnel cloud and tornado reports,
- [01:08:31.667]you want to report the location of the feature,
- [01:08:34.970]the direction where the funnel or tornado is moving,
- [01:08:39.430]and any tornadic damage, and again,
- [01:08:41.530]report it as soon as possible.
- [01:08:45.790]What drives a forecaster batty,
- [01:08:51.320]is when we issue a warning and we hear crickets.
- [01:08:59.360]Either somebody, sometimes there's a mentality thinking,
- [01:09:02.720]well, the weather service knows about what's going on.
- [01:09:07.570]We may not know what the spotter is seeing, okay,
- [01:09:10.670]but we want to know that information.
- [01:09:14.260]So the forecaster is wondering,
- [01:09:18.680]should I continue this warning?
- [01:09:21.380]I haven't heard anything.
- [01:09:24.590]I haven't heard any reports.
- [01:09:26.950]It's still looking good on radar.
- [01:09:29.350]Should I continue then to the next county?
- [01:09:34.140]So, it's important for you to give us
- [01:09:36.690]reports and feedback as soon as possible, in real time,
- [01:09:40.500]because you are part of the warning process.
- [01:09:47.700]All right, let's look at this,
- [01:09:49.230]and I'm gonna ask you, if you would report this.
- [01:09:55.230]There's no audio to this.
- [01:10:00.010]We're in York, Nebraska.
- [01:10:13.380]All right.
- [01:10:17.270](muffled) you don't see in that video?
- [01:10:21.340]Rotation.
- [01:10:23.880]If you don't see any rotation,
- [01:10:26.430]you don't see any debris,
- [01:10:28.940]it's probably harmless.
- [01:10:31.420]So what we're looking at is,
- [01:10:34.581]what we call SCUD, okay?
- [01:10:39.509]Or fractis is another term for it, okay.
- [01:10:45.640]SCUD, ragged clouds, you see them
- [01:10:48.990]at the leading edge of the shelf cloud a lot of times,
- [01:10:52.800]and that's why when something goes through
- [01:10:55.180]the metro Lincoln area,
- [01:10:57.690]somebody sees it and says, that's a tornado!
- [01:11:02.010]It's hanging down.
- [01:11:04.980]Calls the 9-1-1 center.
- [01:11:08.622]911 center gets on NAWAS,
- [01:11:11.340]which is the national warning system phone,
- [01:11:13.940]and says, National Weather Service Omaha,
- [01:11:17.070]we have a report of a tornado.
- [01:11:23.580]Well, then we're looking at it,
- [01:11:26.864]and we're trying to decipher,
- [01:11:27.920]and a lot times it's just a shelf cloud,
- [01:11:30.490]you can see the outflow,
- [01:11:32.560]so we don't see any rotation with it,
- [01:11:34.630]so we'd say it's gotta be SCUD that they're looking at.
- [01:11:40.520]If you're not sure, watch it over a period of time,
- [01:11:44.835]of what you're looking at.
- [01:11:46.470]Again, you see no rotation, you don't see any debris,
- [01:11:48.470]it's probably harmless.
- [01:11:49.880]And if you're really unsure,
- [01:11:52.220]call the weather office and find out.
- [01:11:55.170]Tell them what you're looking at,
- [01:11:56.550]and they can give you feedback.
- [01:11:59.510]So, probably the best thing to do.
- [01:12:08.180]Let's look at other look-alikes.
- [01:12:12.240]I have this in video this year.
- [01:12:15.300]So, first thing is mammatus clouds.
- [01:12:19.960]Mammatus clouds underneath what's called
- [01:12:23.220]the anvil of the thunderstorm,
- [01:12:25.630]which is way up high,
- [01:12:28.180]the top of the thunderstorm, the lid of the thunderstorm.
- [01:12:31.640]These are pouches of cloud underneath it,
- [01:12:34.170]they're harmless,
- [01:12:36.750]and tornadoes don't form on them.
- [01:12:38.680]Okay here's smoke and SCUD.
- [01:12:41.370]Okay, we've got smokestacks underneath thunderstorms,
- [01:12:46.160]including SCUD, and also SCUD up there, too.
- [01:12:49.150]Here's virga, virga's evaporating rain.
- [01:12:53.820]Sometimes takes on a funnel-like shape, again,
- [01:12:57.760]you don't see any rotation,
- [01:12:59.760]you don't see any debris.
- [01:13:09.350]Using radar data.
- [01:13:13.310]Radar data is very accessible now,
- [01:13:15.930]to people in the field.
- [01:13:18.670]Everybody has their favorite apps,
- [01:13:21.800]whether it be Radar Scope, Pickle Three,
- [01:13:26.150]GR Analyst, whatever,
- [01:13:29.190]that you use.
- [01:13:33.340]And really, for a storm spotter,
- [01:13:36.040]and emergency managers,
- [01:13:37.580]it should be used for planning purposes.
- [01:13:41.390]Where are you gonna deploy spotters?
- [01:13:44.980]Where is the worst storm?
- [01:13:47.070]Where is it gonna occur?
- [01:13:53.182]You should use caution in interpreting what's going on,
- [01:13:57.040]especially the velocity part of it.
- [01:14:00.820]You really have to go through a lot of training
- [01:14:03.820]to determine what's going on
- [01:14:06.530]in the structure of a storm.
- [01:14:10.490]You have to know the environment, what's going on.
- [01:14:13.000]You have to know
- [01:14:14.460]the kind of model the storm structure,
- [01:14:19.280]and look at the rotation
- [01:14:21.150]and different sections of the storm,
- [01:14:24.590]to figure out what's going on.
- [01:14:27.260]So I caution anyone from trying to interpret
- [01:14:30.550]the velocity or other data on it.
- [01:14:34.410]Leave that to the trained professionals.
- [01:14:40.120]However, there are some radar signatures
- [01:14:42.530]that you should know.
- [01:14:47.000]This is a supercell thunderstorm.
- [01:14:51.540]All right, and you've probably seen this
- [01:14:53.860]kind of thing before.
- [01:14:56.000]I'm gonna get my cursor up again,
- [01:14:58.130]or my pointer,
- [01:15:00.780]laser pointer up here.
- [01:15:03.510]And if you can see this,
- [01:15:04.870]this big blob here is where the rain is,
- [01:15:08.450]in the north and east side of the storm,
- [01:15:10.397]the storm is moving northeast.
- [01:15:15.120]So this is where your downdraft is taking place.
- [01:15:19.798]Your gust front would occur right up in this region
- [01:15:22.530]right up here where my cursor is,
- [01:15:25.070]surrounding like that.
- [01:15:28.780]The air in this supercell is coming in from the southeast,
- [01:15:34.640]and from the south, into this storm here.
- [01:15:37.990]And there's some being ingested from the north, as well.
- [01:15:40.780]But it's getting ingested
- [01:15:42.460]into the updraft portion of the storm,
- [01:15:45.300]which is right where I'm circling my cursor here.
- [01:15:49.010]And it's spiraling upward,
- [01:15:53.080]and that's where the big tower in the supercell storm is,
- [01:15:56.600]what we call the mesocyclone updraft part of the storm.
- [01:16:03.183]Because this all rotates,
- [01:16:05.360]you start getting a downdraft
- [01:16:06.930]that curls around the backside,
- [01:16:08.540]and then you get this what's called the hook echo, or hook.
- [01:16:14.190]You've heard that term on TV,
- [01:16:17.270]plenty of times,
- [01:16:18.103]whether you watch Weather Channel, WeatherNation,
- [01:16:21.230]or the local TV meteorologists,
- [01:16:23.970]they talk about hook echo.
- [01:16:26.900]The tornado develops usually on the tip of the hook echo,
- [01:16:32.000]and eventually this hook will curl around into the storm,
- [01:16:36.140]as it's moving northeast.
- [01:16:39.490]The warning area is,
- [01:16:47.016]the greatest threats of tornadoes is where that hook is,
- [01:16:50.370]and east and northeast of that.
- [01:16:54.900]And we sometimes actually,
- [01:16:56.270]since supercells drift a little bit to the south,
- [01:16:59.900]kind of are right-moving,
- [01:17:02.830]we will actually angle that warning box to the south.
- [01:17:07.690]Your greatest hail threat is in the precipitation area,
- [01:17:12.750]to the north, is your greatest threat for large hail,
- [01:17:16.700]is up in that region there.
- [01:17:21.030]So it's important for you to know that
- [01:17:23.300]as a storm spotter.
- [01:17:30.160]And we're looking at the base velocity
- [01:17:32.300]of about half a degree, to 0.9 degrees.
- [01:17:37.220]All right, another important radar echo
- [01:17:39.750]is called the bow echo.
- [01:17:41.950]This is associated with damaging winds.
- [01:17:45.600]And where that radar is bowing out,
- [01:17:49.130]right in here,
- [01:17:51.400]is where your damaging wind threat is taking place.
- [01:17:57.770]And bow echos are very fast,
- [01:17:59.790]sometimes 50 miles an hour or greater,
- [01:18:02.400]moving across the ground.
- [01:18:05.640]So there's your threat area for damaging winds,
- [01:18:10.900]and maybe even isolated tornadoes,
- [01:18:13.268]because that can happen too, in a bow echo type storm.
- [01:18:21.910]All right, just a quick mention about fire weather.
- [01:18:25.450]There is a website that you can go to,
- [01:18:29.311]to get information on fire weather, www.weather.gov/fire.
- [01:18:36.610]We actually, you can go on there and click,
- [01:18:40.080]and if you're like a fire department,
- [01:18:44.470]or if you're doing a prescribed burn,
- [01:18:50.460]we can provide weather conditions for you,
- [01:18:54.463]or what we call a spot forecast for that fire.
- [01:19:00.250]You can also get information about the fire danger
- [01:19:04.970]that's taking place, too.
- [01:19:07.670]Because we're getting into fire,
- [01:19:11.260]this window here,
- [01:19:12.607]in the early spring of fire danger,
- [01:19:15.950]and it occurs again, a bigger window of it in the fall.
- [01:19:20.770]So for the hourly forecast, just go to weather.gov,
- [01:19:23.840]you can click on your location,
- [01:19:26.250]and then click on the hourly weather forecast,
- [01:19:28.620]and you can get like a whole graph,
- [01:19:31.683]with time of the temperature, humidity, that sort of thing.
- [01:19:36.210]So that's just a quick mention about the fire weather.
- [01:19:40.890]All right, to recap.
- [01:19:43.320]What you should report, you want to report hail,
- [01:19:46.080]compared to a common object.
- [01:19:50.290]Like beach ball sized hail, right?
- [01:19:57.570]Wind speeds over 50,
- [01:19:59.330]wall clouds, and whether it's rotating,
- [01:20:02.220]tornadoes and funnel clouds,
- [01:20:04.000]wind or tornado damage, and flooding.
- [01:20:08.170]Don't forget the four W's,
- [01:20:10.590]who, what, where, and when.
- [01:20:18.450]And again,
- [01:20:20.680]never assume
- [01:20:24.370]that we know what's going on, in your location.
- [01:20:31.830]Call it in.
- [01:20:34.610]Don't think you're bothering us.
- [01:20:37.440]Your report is used in the weather warning
- [01:20:41.420]decision-making process,
- [01:20:44.290]and your report can help save lives.
- [01:20:50.270]And with that, I thank you,
- [01:20:52.970]and I will answer any questions that you may have.
- [01:21:09.330]The question was, did we have any damage
- [01:21:11.470]due to the flooding at our facility?
- [01:21:13.670]We lucked out.
- [01:21:16.240]Water came to within six inches of our building.
- [01:21:21.540]Six inches, and we have a sub-floor, okay,
- [01:21:25.390]where all of our communication lines,
- [01:21:27.940]computer lines, power,
- [01:21:32.150]that was perfectly dry,
- [01:21:35.060]when we came back in.
- [01:21:37.240]Things that were compromised were
- [01:21:40.180]the entrance to our office,
- [01:21:42.080]the road goes over a ditch or culvert.
- [01:21:48.340]Part of that had washed out,
- [01:21:50.870]but within a day we had that filled back in,
- [01:21:54.870]and new concrete poured,
- [01:22:01.128]that got that back in shape again.
- [01:22:04.250]And then there was, if you went
- [01:22:06.720]east of our office a little bit,
- [01:22:08.840]just east of our upper air shelter building,
- [01:22:12.120]there's these big ruts where the water
- [01:22:14.580]had streamed through from that, but we lucked out.
- [01:22:19.810]We all lucked out, and we were dry,
- [01:22:22.130]able to get back up again.
- [01:22:23.960]Yes?
- [01:22:25.168](muffled)
- [01:22:42.480]The question is, nothing is stated
- [01:22:44.160]when a storm spotter should leave.
- [01:22:47.670]Now, if you're involved with the ARES,
- [01:22:52.481]the Lancaster County spotters,
- [01:22:56.570]they will let you know when you can leave your location,
- [01:22:59.700]but if you're not involved with that,
- [01:23:01.630]you have to watch the statements that we issue,
- [01:23:07.260]to see if we've canceled warnings,
- [01:23:10.870]or let's say the watch is canceled.
- [01:23:16.910]There's no alert, telling you,
- [01:23:18.720]or alarm that tells you that the warning is over with.
- [01:23:24.750]Does that answer your question?
- [01:23:26.310]Okay.
- [01:23:28.090]Yes?
- [01:23:29.650](muffled)
- [01:23:33.150]Let's see, I don't have a quarter on me.
- [01:23:35.971](audience laughing)
- [01:23:39.710]The question was, what is my outlook
- [01:23:42.140]for the severe weather season?
- [01:23:45.850]Unlike Ken Dewey, I don't go out on a limb and answer that,
- [01:23:50.230]because it really depends on how active you are
- [01:23:54.460]in a storm path.
- [01:23:57.100]I'll give you an example, 2008.
- [01:24:00.670]Most active severe weather season I've ever went through.
- [01:24:05.360]We had wave after wave of thunderstorms that came through,
- [01:24:08.940]because we were in an active
- [01:24:10.620]jet stream pattern going through us,
- [01:24:13.350]storm systems that were going through us.
- [01:24:15.470]So if you get in that pattern,
- [01:24:19.080]where you get in that favorable pattern,
- [01:24:22.500]where you get storm systems coming through us,
- [01:24:27.200]the higher likelihood that you're gonna have
- [01:24:30.370]severe weather and tornadoes.
- [01:24:34.420]I know that's a compound,
- [01:24:36.290]but that's the reality of it.
- [01:24:38.320]It is really difficult to forecast way ahead of time.
- [01:24:42.670]There's been some research that has been done
- [01:24:45.080]at College of DuPage, for example,
- [01:24:47.490]where they've looked ahead,
- [01:24:49.310]and tried to get an idea of when that may occur.
- [01:24:54.020]But at least in the near term,
- [01:24:57.280]it doesn't look very favorable for severe weather,
- [01:25:00.380]at least in the near term.
- [01:25:04.120]Sorry for the answer like that.
- [01:25:07.670]Yes?
- [01:25:09.257](muffled)
- [01:25:49.654]Will the storm spotter become obsolete
- [01:25:51.300]like the ham radio spotters?
- [01:25:54.220]More or less?
- [01:25:56.460]I know there's some forecasters think that it is already.
- [01:26:00.850]But it really isn't.
- [01:26:03.551]It really isn't.
- [01:26:05.250]Because, social media,
- [01:26:09.900]some of those people aren't trained.
- [01:26:13.460]They're not necessarily storm spotters,
- [01:26:15.110]some of them give us reports of things,
- [01:26:17.680]and they're not trained,
- [01:26:20.340]and during big events like some of them
- [01:26:22.570]we look at streaming video from storm chasers.
- [01:26:27.240]Where do the storm chasers tend to go?
- [01:26:31.150]They try to intercept the big storms,
- [01:26:34.486]where the most favorable areas could be,
- [01:26:37.710]like saying it's in Kansas, okay?
- [01:26:41.060]So they're intercepting down there but,
- [01:26:43.440]we're still having storms up here,
- [01:26:46.277]and they produce tornadoes, but not maybe
- [01:26:53.031]big storms that would produce a mammoth tornado.
- [01:27:00.150]So we don't have the streaming video from,
- [01:27:04.470]and reports from that,
- [01:27:06.633]or the number of social media reports.
- [01:27:10.700]So you still need the storm spotter,
- [01:27:12.967]you still need the amateur radio reports, as well.
- [01:27:15.503]It's part of the process.
- [01:27:19.500]The fact we have social media now,
- [01:27:22.940]just adds another element to the process.
- [01:27:26.680]We found out, too, it's become an effective way
- [01:27:29.850]to send out warnings, as well.
- [01:27:32.540]Especially through Twitter,
- [01:27:36.640]where people get those reports.
- [01:27:39.220]And another effective means is through
- [01:27:42.740]getting warnings from, using cell phone alerts,
- [01:27:46.010]we call wireless emergency alerts.
- [01:27:50.060]I always say, like 15 years ago,
- [01:27:52.540]when I surveyed tornado damage, I usually asked people,
- [01:27:57.700]how they got their reports?
- [01:28:00.248]How did they find out about the warning?
- [01:28:02.730]And they would say, well, I watched it on the TV,
- [01:28:08.250]or you might hear somebody say,
- [01:28:09.660]well my Aunt Mildred,
- [01:28:13.520]who lives two miles down the road from me,
- [01:28:16.180]called me, told me there was a tornado coming.
- [01:28:21.580]Well, everything's changed now.
- [01:28:23.647]And I saw this,
- [01:28:25.290]especially during Pilger, after Pilger.
- [01:28:27.940]I asked those people,
- [01:28:29.150]how did you find out about your warnings?
- [01:28:32.710]The vast majority of them said, I heard it on my cell phone.
- [01:28:37.070]So the cell phone's becoming a powerful tool.
- [01:28:39.290]Social media's becoming a powerful tool,
- [01:28:42.790]but it's only one part of the cog, okay, of a gear.
- [01:28:48.570]It's only one part of that cog of that gear.
- [01:28:51.620]Amateur radio, and other means of reporting
- [01:28:54.620]from official sources,
- [01:28:56.670]because you guys are trained, okay,
- [01:29:00.270]is still gonna be important for us
- [01:29:04.120]in getting reports to us.
- [01:29:08.580]Does that answer your question?
- [01:29:10.853]Okay, yes?
- [01:29:13.204](muffled)
- [01:29:25.330]The question was,
- [01:29:27.750]during the flood event,
- [01:29:29.120]when we evacuated the office and shut off the power,
- [01:29:33.040]the weather radio was gone he said for several hours,
- [01:29:35.770]it was more than several hours.
- [01:29:39.020]It was like several days,
- [01:29:41.560]or more than several days.
- [01:29:45.770]I think it got turned off on Friday,
- [01:29:49.090]and came back late Wednesday or something like that.
- [01:29:52.110]So it's like,
- [01:29:54.042]that's a problem with the system that we have now,
- [01:29:58.003]because we have dedicated phone lines,
- [01:30:01.370]that come from a single source,
- [01:30:04.990]at the valley office.
- [01:30:08.750]Now hopefully they're gonna look at that.
- [01:30:12.093]And I was talking to Ed Holloway about that, too,
- [01:30:15.140]about this kind of stuff,
- [01:30:17.030]and he had kind of a solution that might work,
- [01:30:20.350]with microwave, of what we could do
- [01:30:24.120]if that were to happen again.
- [01:30:26.670]But it is a big problem because
- [01:30:29.050]nine transmitters had dead air.
- [01:30:33.110]Now what if we had a tornado event during that time period?
- [01:30:37.900]How would people have heard it on their weather radio?
- [01:30:40.300]They would not have heard it.
- [01:30:44.160]So it is a problem with that system,
- [01:30:47.962]because of dedicated phone lines.
- [01:30:51.400]Hastings does back us up.
- [01:30:53.600]But even though they will issue the warning,
- [01:30:57.120]and we sent our own people to Hastings,
- [01:30:59.500]they were using work stations there.
- [01:31:01.900]Even though they would be, could issue the warning,
- [01:31:06.570]it still has to come from the dedicated phone lines
- [01:31:12.340]from the valley office,
- [01:31:14.360]that go out to these transmitter sites.
- [01:31:20.840]Yes?
- [01:31:22.244](muffled)
- [01:31:27.140]That's a good question.
- [01:31:28.530]The question was, can you offer any tips for after dark?
- [01:31:32.040]And I used to include that,
- [01:31:34.000]we've kind of streamlined the storm spotter training
- [01:31:36.914]here in the last few years,
- [01:31:38.002]but after dark,
- [01:31:40.960]one, it's very difficult after dark.
- [01:31:45.450]Some storm spotters in some counties
- [01:31:48.150]don't even go out after dark, because it's so dangerous.
- [01:31:50.860]It is dangerous after dark.
- [01:31:53.300]You have to rely on lightning flashes
- [01:31:55.390]illuminating your cloud features,
- [01:31:59.219]and that can be difficult.
- [01:32:00.730]And then you have to look for things like power flashes,
- [01:32:04.690]from power lines,
- [01:32:06.770]and that's gonna indicate
- [01:32:07.603]if there are damaging winds
- [01:32:09.140]or a tornado that's taking place.
- [01:32:15.290]If you hear the roar, it's too close.
- [01:32:22.420]Or a freight train.
- [01:32:28.860]Any other questions?
- [01:32:30.960]Yes?
- [01:32:32.161](muffled)
- [01:32:39.620]Well, you're part of the Skywarn Network, yeah.
- [01:32:42.082](muffled)
- [01:32:50.990]Usually, you're activated,
- [01:32:52.330]if you're affiliated with the county,
- [01:32:55.680]and you'd want to talk to Ed if you wanted to do that.
- [01:33:00.130]If you're a ham operator, you could do it,
- [01:33:02.890]but if you're on your own,
- [01:33:05.340]and you're providing reports to us,
- [01:33:07.453]it's kind of up to you,
- [01:33:08.490]we can't call every individual storm spotter.
- [01:33:11.590]Okay, so you have to have awareness of what's going on.
- [01:33:18.260]But the official network in Lancaster County
- [01:33:20.690]is the ARES people.
- [01:33:24.680]Lancaster County.
- [01:33:28.340]Anything else?
- [01:33:32.510]Okay.
- [01:33:34.130]Thank you very much!
- [01:33:36.039](audience applauding)
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