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ryanalliss.com

April 9th Highlight Video

Severe July Continues

Hello everyone,

Another severe day passes in July and surprisingly another presents itself only a few days later. The storm prediction center in Norman has issued a Day 3 slight risk for the northern half of Iowa into Minnesota. The probability is a 30% hatched risk. This is significant as day 3 outlooks rarely have such high probabilities. This means SPC is very confident in a severe weather outbreak in this area.

Currently the threat looks marginal to me. The upper level winds are just passed borderline, low level wind shear is not all that great, a strong cap appears to dominate, and high lcl heights look to be present. At this moment I would say the tornado threat looks poor. Large hail and damaging winds from higher based supercells and a squall line are much more likely.

Tomorrow's model runs will clear things up, I am happy to see SPC did not upgrade the day 2 risk to moderate as the models do not support this.

Another post will come late tomorrow night.

Strong Tornadoes in July?

Greetings,

An unusually strong system has dug into the northern United States today bringing with it a good chance for organized supercells capable of producing tornadoes. The main threat for tornadoes appears to be in SE MN into SW WI where a good combination of strong instability and high low level wind shear exists.

July normally is a quite month for tornadoes as the warm summer heat helps push storm systems north into Canada where less juice is present which suppresses any large tornado threat. Occasionally, large, deep systems will form that may dig far enough south that may bring organization. This is exactly what is happening today. In order for supercells to be present winds at around 30,000 ft need to be at least 35 kts, otherwise it has been shown that multicell storms with a lack of organization are favored. When these storm systems dig far enough south, winds aloft speed up and help generate the threat.

The storm prediction center currently has a moderate risk for severe weather for the region I mentioned. The tornado probabilities are high with a 15% hatched, meaning that you are 15% likely to see a EF2 or higher end tornado within 25 miles of a point in that region. Rumors are out saying that SPC will upgrade their risk to high by 1pm today.

I think the moderate is warranted as parameters are lining up, but my main concern is whether or not these storms will stay discrete, or separate and alone from each other long enough to give a storm the chance to spin something up. Being as this chase would send me further east from home as I chased and that the target is already far to my north I have decided to sit this one out as I do not think this setup is good enough. The parameters are good, but not $60 worth of gas good.

My friends from Minneapolis will be chasing today and will be streaming live for WeatherNation on ustream here:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/chase-weathernation



0-1km EHI, Tornado Potential.

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Severe Weather Season Over?

The end of June is approaching and with that the official season for storm chasing ends. It appears the last few days of June will be sunny and warm throughout all of tornado alley with only weak thunderstorms being a risk. With that being said I figure I would reflect on this years chases as a whole.

The beginning of the season was a rough one with most chases being cap busts in and around Iowa with only one exciting day with a supercell that went north of Cedar Rapids. At the time, I feared that either Iowa or myself was cursed not to see tornadoes. I had been on nearly my 12th chase and not see anything.

All this changed as I with three other friends, drove all the way down to Oklahoma to chase my first high risk where I saw my first "maybe" tornado. It was quite a day and well worth the trip.

A month later I joined TWISTEX and saw three tornadoes in Texas and a number of other Supercells in Colorado. Also I got to experience some insane lightning shows as well as holding a hailstone that was around 4 inches in diameter.

My time with TWISTEX expired on June 15th, and two days later the chase of my life happened. On June 17th I witnessed over 10 tornadoes in northern Iowa and Southern Minnesota. One of those tornadoes was rated EF-4 and a few others rated EF-3. It certainly was an amazing day and counts as the first chase that I had no professional guidance where I saw a bonified tornado. It was truly a surreal day and scary to see how powerful storms can be when the right conditions line up.

I chased at least two more days after this chase and witnessed some squall lines and crappy storms, even though SPC had at least a 5% tor prob on each day.

My impressions and thoughts that go into a chase have changed dramatically. Forecasting seems to be somewhat easy anymore, the problem is will the weather cooperate and do I have the resources (mainly money) to get to where I need to go. Not to say I get my forecasts right all the time, as many cap busts have proven that, but it appears that from what information I'm given, from models and spc, we go to where we need to when the risk is warranted. I can thank TWISTEX, upperclassmen, and my friends for building my forecast skills while chasing.

My wish list for next year would be to fix my car, get a hd camcorder, and work on saving up money this winter for chasing expenses beforehand. Next year I hope to be able to expand my chase domain as Iowa seems to really screw us all over. I also hope to bring along more people other than chasing buddies so they too can experience chasing, as what I am doing is just as good as what the tour groups do, I am just a lot cheaper ;-).

With the big outbreak in Minnesota I found an avenue to make some money off of chasing. My youtube video was quite a hit and I was offered to put ads on my channel and from that make money. Currently this money is very little and will not pay for chasing, but if I can get quality video at a close range and often, my channel may take off. I am considering this, but not taking it too seriously as I do not want to turn into a pro chaser, nor do I have an interest to do so. Easy money is just hard to turn away.

Enough reflections, let me talk about discuss the next few weeks for weather.
It appears that Iowa will be under a ridge of high pressure until the beginning of July which means warm sunny conditions with temps in the 80s. The humidity will be tolerable and hopefully we will not be seeing 70 degree dewpoints for the next few weeks.

The next chance for some showers and thunderstorms appears to be around the 4th where the models indicate both a trough and current tropical storm to approach our area. Any severe weather most likely will be confined to the Dakotas, especially if Iowa is affected by the tropical system. This could mean heavy rains in Iowa if this pans out, certainly something to watch since it will be near the 4th.

Thanks for reading!

Will begin posting again

Hello everyone, I will be posting to my blog more often now, I have been distracted from a few things, but to help me with my forecasting and to inform all of you I will continue posting.

Thanks!