Get Val On The Getner

[Tony]

Those are the words that I heard all the time when I was growing up during severe weather season. And it was always Gary England that I remember saying it. Today, Kansas had some absolutely massive tornadoes and even though it was out of their viewing area, Val and Amy Castor were out chasing these storms.

Below is one of the tornadoes they chased and were filming as it directly hit a mobile home in rural Kansas. This was not the only tornado where he had to check for survivors, there was another one that blew over a semi when the tornado crossed over the road.

This is how I can live in Oklahoma. Knowing people are out there keeping people informed as it is happening. And Val and Amy are pretty much the best in the business.

 

[Tony]

Here is the video of the truck getting blown over today. Hit space to pause and the period and comma to step frame by frame to see it. They are panning right when he flips over, but them come back to the truck after it is in the ditch. Simply amazing what this team does.

 

[RandyDSok]

I missed seeing any of the streams yesterday ( tonight )... other things kept me busy and then once I did get set down for a bit, went to lay down and rest for a little and ended up taking a 2 hour nap instead.

I'm likely to make up for it some once the storms start firing up later on today ( Saturday ) if they threaten central Okla. If I get everything done that I should take care of, I may watch some streams out of that area also.

 

[Tony]

Yea, just need to see what the first round of storms do before the heating of the day fires up more powerful storms. I know when I step outside tonight (this morning lol), it's perfect weather for large storms. Very warm and very humid. Dry line just to the west and the perfect jet stream from the Gulf.

 

[RandyDSok]

I slept through most of the morning action. I finally got up around 9:30a after everything major had already moved to the east.

I've taken the time to work on my base and storm relative velocity color tables so that the lower speed rotation areas stand out a little more. So far, I like the changes I've made but the storms are now getting too far out ( from the OKC radar ) for me to continue testing the changes. I could switch to the Tulsa radar since the storms are now reaching that area but the storms are starting to bow out indicating it may be weakening. There can still be some small spin ups, so I may keep an eye on things.

 

[Tony]

You know as well as I do that a bow echo is almost as dangerous as a tornadic storm. But like you, I slept through every bit of it... had a pretty late night last night...

 

[RandyDSok]

You know as well as I do that a bow echo is almost as dangerous as a tornadic storm.

I did mention that there could be ( and have been actually ) some small spin up tornadoes once a line of storms bows out like that. At the same time, they are smaller and typically not as strong. At that point the discussion would be is a few strong tornadoes worse or a bunch of smaller ones that may not even be noticeable on radar and I wouldn't want to take either side of that talk.

Looks as if Monday will be another active day here in the plains... I'm prepped for it. I've made a completely new set of velocity color tables that so far are looking like they will work well at highlighting areas of spin, even the smaller low velocity ones. It also supports tropical ( aka hurricane force winds ) up to +- 200mph. This is the 6th set I've made, not to mention the numerous tweaks in between the sets. I'm sort of tired of making new ones and tweaking on them but in the end it will make reading the radar easier.

 

[Tony]

Yea, I couldn't express that last statement the way I wanted to. It was supposed to be in a tone where we were talking with each other and I was saying it out of agreeance or the like. Not that I was trying to say you didn't know that. lol. And all this morning they had tornadoes on the front of the lines of a squall and they are still having them now at 2100.

And yea, I saw that about monday as well. Life in Oklahoma, gotta love it lol.

 

[Rob Lancaster]

You guys impress me with your meteoritical (I hope I got that big word right) knowledge. Even though I live in Hawaii I use radar and satellite data everyday. The Pacific is a very active place. Especially near the doldrums. And in the winter months the jet stream dips way south creating cold fronts. As these cold fronts approach the state from the north/north west it pushes the pacific high pressure that gives us the nice trade winds away to the east.

That lets the warm moist air from the doldrums to be draw up toward the cold front/state. I don't need to tell you guys what happens when cold dry air envelopes warm moist air. Sometimes the contrast is pretty good and right on the convergence line they boil up and explode... I'm always watching the radar for the latest image as the thunder storms pass over. It's times like that I'm glad I have a good UPS. Nice clean steady power for the computer while the arks are fly'n...

You guys mentioned something about the storm velocity tables? I know the very basics of how the radar actually works. But I would love to learn more about this topic. From the soft ware to the hard ware. And more about the deferent images that are available. They all must be there for a reason... Anyway, I just had a look at the Norman Ok. radar and all is quiet, for now!!

 

[RandyDSok]

It's times like that I'm glad I have a good UPS. Nice clean steady power for the computer while the arks are fly'n...

I'm going to start by addressing this statement because it's one that many people just don't understand. Surge pads and battery backups ( UPS's ) can not fully protect against an electrical surge. At best all they will do in those cases is limit the amount of damage. While they do respond within nano seconds, electricity moves at the speed of light so by the time they've "tripped", some of the surge will still get past and potentially damage the electronics. An analogy I often use is how a seat belt in a car won't stop a person from being hurt but it will limit the amount of damage.

What a UPS is good for is providing you some extra time to power down the equipment that is hooked up to it... such as your computer data that could get corrupted or lost if it were shut off instantly. So if it's a "sparkin" outside... turn off your electronics and possibly even disconnect them from the wall socket if you want to avoid electrical damage.

 

[RandyDSok]

Radar stuff... I think a link to the NWS basic info is warranted here since this is a really big subject to cover .... see Using and Understanding Doppler Radar

I will touch a little on the two radar velocity products... Base and storm relative velocity indicates the speed and general direction of the particles ( insects, birds, ground clutter, moisture etc ) in the air that are seen by the radar. The base velocity ( BV ) is the speed/direction relative to the radar site itself and storm relative velocity ( SRV ) is actually the same data but the speed/direction is relative to the storm cells themselves.

Velocity color tables are often shown using red and green colors but they can be anything that are assigned to them by the person making the color table and can use multiple colors to help delineate the different speeds. When using the more standard red/green colors... red usually indicates winds moving away ( positive numbers ) from the radar site and green is used for winds moving towards ( negative numbers ) the radar site.

On my own color tables that I use ( and made myself ), I begin with the standard red/green and then add additional colors to help delineate between the various EF scale speeds. The following info is the EF scale used to rate tornadoes...

; Tornado EF Scale
; 65-85 mph => EF0
; 86-110 mph => EF1
; 111-135 mph => EF2
; 136-165 mph => EF3
; 166-200 mph => EF4
; 201 + => EF5
;

The tornado wind speeds are giving in what is referred to as "gate to gate" speeds since we are discussing rotating winds. As an example, an EF1 with wind speeds of 100mph... on one side of the tornado the wind is traveling 50mph in one direction and on the other side it's going 50mph in the other direction. Because each side of the tornado is moving in different directions, the velocity colors will be both red and green creating what is called a "couplet" on the radar image. My velocity tables actually go up to +-200mph which is overkill if just used for tornadoes... but I can also use it for tropical storms ( hurricanes etc ) since they have much higher winds. I also have a special set just for hurricanes that is scaled for the CAT wind scale just in case that is what I'm looking at.

Here is a screenshot of one of my radar programs that has 4 panels, each panel having a separate type of radar. The top left panel has a typical base reflectivity ( BR ) showing, the top right has the base velocity ( BV ), the lower left has correlation coefficient ( CC - useful for detecting debris from a tornado ) and the lower right having the storm relative velocity ( SRV ).

This example of a tornado on May 19th, 2013 taken at 6:18pm.

The tornado couplet is seen just NW from Pink, Ok and ESE of the KTLX radar site. Also note there is a lot of "noise" just east of Pink within the large green area, this is caused by the radar having trouble reading the real values in that area due to the density of the tornado itself. The tornado at this point is likely an EF3 or EF4.

( please note that the background color I'm using in this screenshot is a dark gray )



In a couple of the earlier posts, I mentioned that I was making and tweaking on new color tables for my BV and SRV radar. The following screenshot, take earlier in the day from the above shot... shows the same mesocyclone ( aka meso - the type of rotating storm cell that can produce a tornado ) much earlier in it's development. If you locate Blanchard, Ok ( lower left corner of each panel ) and look just to it's NW... you should see a really weak couplet that is shown as dark red and green in the BV panel but in the SRV panel it's seen as dark red to almost an orange.

While it is possible that there may be a funnel ( a tornado that hasn't touched the ground ), it's unlikely and more than likely it's just the rotation in the meso itself starting to show on radar. About 30 minutes later it actually passed over where I was located ( the little red cross on the screen ) and then later developed into the tornado mentioned above. None of the weather news people I was watching mentioned it at all until after it already developed on the east side of Norman, they were busy looking at other areas of rotation that never developed into anything but were closer to Moore and OKC. Luckily, I was paying attention and had managed to get to where I go in times like this... with about 20 minutes to spare.

 

[RandyDSok]

Radar stuff... continued... hardware & software. The following only applies to locations in the USA or it's territories since most other countries don't provide free access to their general populous.

As for the hardware needed... pretty much just a computer or smartphone is all that is required for the basics. Then you just need the software to access the data.

For a Windows based computer there are several paid softwares available. I primarily use GRLevel3 made by Gibson Ridge. It's very customizable and provides good basic level 3 radar products and costs about $65. They also have more pro versions such as GR2Analyst that uses level 2 radar and has a few other nice features not available for level 3, it runs about $250. In addition, they also have GREarth that has Continental radar ( a composited radar of all the radar sites ), weather and satellite info as well as weather model maps to assist in forecasting. GREarth is free but requires a $180 a year subscription for the data feeds it requires.

Radarscope is a very popular program but it doesn't allow customizations like GR products. It's available for Windows 10 or Mac for about $30, Android smartphones, tablets, Apple iPhone or iPads for about $10. It also provides some radar for Canada.

Another nice free program is called MyRadar which provides a continental USA composite reflectivity and has other nice features like satellite, winds and other weather related info. It's available on Windows 10 in the MS Store as well as Android and iPhone versions ( I'm uncertain if it's available for Mac's or not ).

 

[Tony]

The UPS that I use on my router, switch and moden (fiber to copper converter) is an "always on" UPS. Meaning it is always feeding voltage going into it (until it goes out lol), it is always converting it to DC, it is always charging the batteries, and the batteries are always being converted to AC. A true always on UPS. Mine doesn't switch. Of course, out of the 8 outlets, only 4 of them are backup, the other 4 are just suppression and I have nothing plugged into those lol.

There was a time way back when that Randy posted something like what he posted above. Dude is awesome with the radar.

 

[Admiral]

In Australia the Bureau of Meteorology provides a free service that anybody can access, may not be quite as detailed as the US one but still handy especially in the loop mode.

I've shown Perth at the moment as the rest of the country is pretty clear.

On the National map the Red triangles are Lo Def and the black diamonds are Hi Def

 

[RandyDSok]

There was a time way back when that Randy posted something like what he posted above.

I quit posting notices about bad weather here ( and other places for that matter ) because I didn't feel it was timely enough... so I just call those I think may be in the line of fire. It's faster and more likely they'll get the info in time.

I appreciate the "awesome" comment but... I only know enough to try to keep myself safe during storms.

 

[Tony]

I meant you had explained what you posted above in another thread. I remember you talking about the radar and playing with the colors, just don't remember where it is on the forum.

And yea, if I have a bad storm coming my way, no matter what time it is, he will call me lol. I remember one time he called very late at night or early in the morning, but I was asleep when he called. I looked, saw it was him, and rolled back over. Not out of disrespect, but to try to get the energy to move my arms to grab my phone lmao. I had fallen back asleep and remembered we had pretty bad storms that were supposed to hit. Then, lightning hit and gave me the energy to look at the radar I use on the phone. And there it was, some circulation close to where I live. I stayed up for a while (20 minutes or so) and watched where it was going and where it was coming from and calculated where it was going to go, mentally of course lol. I saw that the circulation was going to miss me by about 1/2 mile so I rolled back over and went back to sleep lol. I do think I called Randy the next day to chat about it lol.

And I consider myself one that "only knows enough to try to keep myself safe during storms". You are way deeper into this than I am lmao. You actually pay for your radar programs. I have paid for RadarScope, but that is it. I have thought about getting what you have but can't remember what it is, and don't think it would benefit me as much as radarscope.

 

[murankar]

Yalls area is definitely an anomaly. I don't know of any other place on earth that has these kinds of weather patterns.

What's crazy is I see the allure in chasing down the storms. Like the move twister. I know chasing and f5 (ef5) would be stupid but to actually watch one would have its nuance.

 

[RandyDSok]

I have paid for RadarScope

Radarscope is a fine radar app, it's just not as customizable but still has the various radar modes that my GrLevel3 has. I've also got Radarscope on my Windows systems and my smartphone. I use it anytime I'm not by the computer or as a 2nd source on the PC.

 

[RandyDSok]

What's crazy is I see the allure in chasing down the storms.

Around here... the storms chase you...

While I do spot and report weather, I usually avoid chasing as a rule. I think there are already too many chasers out there just chasing for a photo op or a thrill. If I happen to be in the right place, with my camera, I'd certainly take the shot but that's about it. I may follow a storm in rare cases when I'm already in the right place... but I'm not going to make a special trip to get to that spot.

 

[RandyDSok]

I see on FB that a bunch of chasers are already in town for the weather event that is expected tomorrow. Mike Olbinski from AZ and Daniel Shaw from down under are two that I've followed often on their live streams and several others I don't know their names. They are in Moore, Ok at the Warren Theater taking a little break from the chasing before the big day... apparently they got a whole row of seats for everyone ( chasers and other friends ).

Mike actually uses some of my color tables that I created, specifically my reflectivity, an earlier versions of my velocity tables and my echo tops colortable ( used to see what altitude the tops of the storm clouds reach which gives an indication of the storms strength ). I'd sent him copies of all of the custom tables I'd made but only know he uses those specific ones since they appear on stream from time to time.