March 28, 2003
Allen County, Indiana
Friday did not come unexpected as the previous
chase (11/10/02) had. The SPC had
given us reasonable hope that there would be something chasable. We had
been discussing the situation for a day and a half when we met in the
atmospheric science computing lab on Friday morning. Grad student Kevin
Viner had offered to handle the nowcasting for us. Due to the constraints
of classes and our need to leave immediately, Joe and Joel had to be left
behind.
The vertical shear was very impressive, but the
horizontal shear left something to be desired. Still, we felt that there
was a good chance that our efforts would not be in vain. The low
dewpoints were also of concern, but the strong low-level jet looked as if
it would give us a helping hand in that matter.
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| Left: 16Z Td contours. Right: 12Z 850mb wind vectors. Click for larger images.
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Shortly after 11 A.M. EST, Mike, Mel, and I got in Mike's car and headed east. After a few hours on the road, we arrived in our target area -- southeast Allen County, Indiana (near Ft. Wayne). Since we were still well ahead of the storms, we stopped to review the situation. The information Kevin was giving us suggested that we were indeed in a very good location. We decided that we might need to head a little to the north, and so we did. Moments later, a SVR went out for Allen County. The storm that was warned on was in the northwest corner of the county and heading northeast very rapidly. Kevin called as we raced northward. He had known
about the bow echo for approximately 15 minutes, but was unable to call us due to cell phone issues. He told us that the first line of storms was falling apart and that a second line was coming up behind it on the same track. We decided to let the first cell go by.
As we repositioned ourselves to the south, we were met up with by Kyle Harmon. Kevin had recently told us about seeing MESOs and TVSs in the area around Indianapolis, and since Kyle has a cellular data connection, we were able to take a look at things for ourselves. Although the MESOs and TVSs Kevin had reported were no longer visible, we saw a nice cell headed or way and decided to go south to get in position.
Before long, we had the postion we wanted. The cameras clicked away as a beautiful shelf cloud rolled in from the southwest. Meanwhile, the clouds to the north and east were also posing for us. Soon however, the storm was right on top of us and we had to leave.
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The storm approacheth. View is to the northwest. Click for larger images.
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| Left: View to the northeast. Right: View to the southeast. Click for larger images.
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Once that storm was overhead, we knew our chase had come to a rather unfruitful end. There were no more storms coming. The ride back was quiet for the most part was we tried to figure out what went wrong. We had seen nothing that would justify a report to the NWS. In fact, only 16 reliminary reports appeared on the SPC website, all for wind damage. That was understandable, considering the persistently strong winds throughout the day. Still, we had seen nothing ourselves, and the shelf cloud was about the only thing worth showing. It was little consolation that we were in the right place if the storms had developed more intensely as it was originally thought they would. Granted, it's early in the season, but the disappointment was
pretty hard to take.
Links
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