April 2006

While 2″+ diameter hail pelted NE Lawrence and 0.82″ of rain fell over KTGX, we were treated to a spectacular light show for several hours on Sunday evening. All shots: 18mm, f/5.6 for 5 seconds. Click the first image for larger view (apparently only the first image of each post is able to be enlarged via clicking - I just realized this tonight after checking some older posts) (corrected 02/09/07).

Maybe at least one other country is finally coming around to realizing that the Kyoto Protocol (see also wikipedia) is nothing more than an economic disaster.

There is no scientific consensus on the extent to which anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions impact global climate change. There is a consensus, however, that the Kyoto Protocol has already cost the world billions of dollars. By one estimate, it has cost the world $176,247,622,865 as of this evening, while the potential temperature saving by the year 2050 so far achieved by Kyoto is 0.001827759 °C. Yes, that’s less than two thousandths of a degree, the decimal is in the right place.

As a group of scientists wrote in a letter urging Canada’s new Prime Minister to review that country’s participation in the treaty:

If, back in the mid 1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.” Despite claims to the contrary, there is no consensus among climate scientists on the relative importance of the various causes of global climate change, they wrote.
‘Climate change is real’ is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified.
Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural ‘noise’.

Now if we can just get this chorus to pipe up a bit louder. Maybe then the global warming books will out of print, left to languish on the dusty shelves of a used bookstore, much like the 1970s chronicle of global cooling that I tracked down online the other day: Lowell Ponte’s The Cooling. It just arrived in the mail…I’m anticipating a great read. It’s subtitle has already grabbed me:

Has the next ice age already begun? Can we survive it?

My target for yesterday verified nicely even in my absence, with a number of tornado reports from just south of Beatrice, Nebraska in the late afternoon. Per the SPC Storm Reports for this date, there were three tornado reports between 2133 and 2152Z (4:33-4:52pm CDT) in Gage County, NE. Several chasers were on these storms and captured nice photographs and video that have already appeared on several media outlets. I would expect the Omaha/Valley NWS WFO to be putting out a preliminary storm assessment sometime Monday.
Here in KS, the show came a bit later. We spent the afternoon tree-shopping at a local greenhouse/nursery. After making our selections, we waited while the owners loaded our purchases into a truck for immediate delivery and it was then that I began to get a bit restless, observing a growing cell to our southwest(!). Upon arriving at home around 6pm, I immediately checked radar and confirmed that storms were now firing ahead of the dryline, forming a broken line along I-335 from Topeka SW to Emporia around 6:30pm. At this time, the storms were still 30-40 miles (and 1-1.5 hours) away from KTGX, yet a gorgeous anvil and its mammatus hung over KTGX for much of the early evening hours. Below is a photo of a swarm of gnats hanging out over the weather station…and oh yeah, some mammatus in the background at 6:25pm CDT:

One highlight of the pre-storm environment was the significant inflow from the SSE. Winds were blowing all afternoon, regularly sustained into the upper-20s to 30s, with gusts I’d estimate to the mid-40s. Similar conditions were observed from Topeka to Lawrence, with the Lawrence ASOS reporting a 51mph gust at 6:52pm CDT.

The storm finally pushed into Leavenworth county just before 8pm. KTGX was impacted by the storm at the southern end of a small sequence of cells. At 8:05pm, the only tornado report to come from the area was logged on the SPC storm reports, a brief touchdown 4 miles south of Tonganoxie at 8:05pm as reported by “broadcast media”. By this time, the rain was falling at rates easily exceeding 2″/hour here in KTGX and I dared not venture out of the house. Some minor hail was also included, although the headline was really the wind and the rain. A neighborhood weather station located on a rooftop just a few houses to our south that reports conditions online recorded a 69 mph wind gust during this time.

At 8:15pm, just as the wind and rain were beginning to subside as the cell slid to our NE, the KC NWS office issued a tornado warning for Wyandotte and southern Leavenworth counties (including KTGX). Since the sirens have not been fully functional this spring, the local police drove through local neighborhoods with sirens blaring while repeating the tornado warning text over their loudspeakers. At 8:16pm, I captured this image of a suspicious lowering of the cloud base directly to the south of our location:

No rapid rotation was evident, although upward motion and movement from W to E was apparent. I do not consider this feature to be any sort of funnel and whether or not it was the feature that was part of the tornado report from 11 minutes prior is unknown.

A total of 1.05″ of much-needed rain was recorded and a temp drop from near-80 to 56 degrees occurred during the storm, with temps rebounding into the mid 60s immediately following the storm’s passage as the southerly flow returned nearly immediately - the frontal passage had not yet occurred. Around 8:20pm, the core of the cell passed to our NE and was still growing (as shown in the photo at the top of this post).

By around 8:25pm, clear blue sky was visible to the west and south and a spectacular light show was in progress to the N and E with frequent anvil crawlers extending directly overhead. I played with the manual exposure settings on the new camera but wasn’t able to zero in on the appropriate settings until it was too late. But I know now for next time…

2 m Td; 12 hour NAM valid 00Z SUN … Will this moisture verify?

Today’s shear profiles and instability parameters are looking good as today’s system sets up, although much of KS will be under the CAP, keeping the best of the show on the N and E fringes of the instability. I’m hoping a few nice cells can get rooted and push through the cap in extreme SE NE in the late afternoon, by which time the cap erodes nicely ~00Z throughout much of NW MO so the show should be underway by then.

I’m not sold on the northern tier of the SPC’s MDT risk…there is just no moisture there. The NAM is still out to lunch when it comes to Td’s. Current readings in the upper-50s throughout much of NE KS … even as low as the low-40s in SE NE - the heart of today’s MDT risk as targetted by the SPC. Evapotranspiration isn’t going to do the trick this early in the season, nor is advection. If there is to be a show today, it is going to hug the edge of the cap just north of the KS/NE border and fire into NW MO and the IA/MO border.

I’m not holding my breath for this show, nor am I packing up and heading out quite yet. We’ve got several errands to run and other work to get done around here, so I’ll wait this one out for now and see how things are lookign in a few hours.

Canon 30D 18-55mm kit lens at ~45mm, f/5.6 25 sec
Click image for larger size

I’ve been contemplating the purchase of a digital SLR for some time and have finally pulled the trigger.After spending several weeks researching my options online, I narrowed the search down to two candidates: the Nikon D70s and the Canon 20D. I was leaning in the direction of the Nikon from the start since I have used an older Nikon 35mm SLR for several years and love the feel of it. Additionally, I have a couple of great lenses for that camera that would work on the D70s body. I visited a couple of stores and was able to get my hands on both cameras and play with them a bit. I first was able to check out the Canon and liked the feel of it the first moment I picked it up. Several days later, I was able to play with the Nikon at another store and immediately felt a difference in the build and the feel - I liked the Canon much more. In completing more research online, I found the overall reviews for the Canon to be more solid all around, particularly in the imaging sensor type (CMOS on the Canon versus the older and slightly less efficient CCD on the Nikon). Additionally, Canon just released the new incarnation of the 20D - the 30D. The newer model sports a significantly larger LCD screen (2.5″ vs 1.8″) and is said to also have a more intuitive menu naviagation tree after Canon took into account the input from users of the 20D. It quickly became clear that the Canon would be the way to go.

In reviewing opinions of both online, it seems as though one reviewer put it best when he said the Nikon was the Hummer of the Digital SLRs, while the Canon was the Lexus.

I haven’t put the new camera through any chases or other significant tests yet, although I’ve had the opportunity to take a couple hundred shots around the neighborhood and love the results. I’m already getting antsy for more now though and am looking into snagging the Canon 70-300mm IS USM lens.

Will Saturday be the next best shot around here, or will the action stay to our north?

The photo at the top of this post was shot last night as a nice little garden-variety thunderstorm passed about 20 miles north of KTGX. The image is as it came off the camera - no cropping or other post-processing.