Just made the south turn enroute to Wichita at 430 miles. Arkansas City is the preliminary Target.

Very nice to be out on a real chase even if it was based on a more reactionary reason, but nice to smell the country air and be on the road with friends.  Gonna be a fun day regardless of what comes out of it, so I am just thrilled to be out.

Stay tuned throughout the day as we move on.  Also worth a mention that my partner Scott has a streaming account and may open it up later on if we get some something.  The link is posted on my live chase page which is linked on the alert banner below the navbar.

More updates later!

Not much else to add right now!  Tom was generous enough to supply some morning breakfast to get us going, and once Scott arrives, we’ll head out.  I have the sleeping bag stretched out in the back of the van so we can rotate driving shifts coming home as I’m sure we’ll be deliriously silly by the time we cross back into Colorado sometime tonight.  One of the upshots to pre-Daylight Savings Time chasing, if you quit after dark, you get an extra hour to drive home.  And we’ll be happy to have it!

More from the road!

Again, I don’t have any real target right now, but figure we have til Salina to make that call.  I’ll have a boatload of updates tomorrow.  Also, Scott has a streaming account and will be running it, so I’ll link that from my site and you can follow along with us.  He’ll be running it from his computer, so I’ll post all that info tomorrow.

I’m off to gather my stuff and get it ready for an early morning departure.  This is a purely knee-jerk chase, but from the chatter and discussions I’ve heard, it holds some decent potential.  Guess we will find out!

Yesterday wasn’t all that bad… I mean, the sting of missing an event you easily could’ve been down there for is a sharp one, but there are a very few upsides to not chasing yesterday..

• As much as I hate it in those circumstances, my morning analysis proved pretty accurate in terms of the extra optimism I pointed out.  Now granted, my observations likely didn’t directly contribute to a long-track tornado, but I noticed something in there that made me feel better (or worse in that case) about the setup down there and ultimately it panned out with something good.  So while my prechase forecasting obviously needs a bit of work, my day-of analysis proved to be okay.
• No matter what I saw, I still saved a ton of money.  Granted, I would’ve been absolutely fine with the outcome of that day had I spent the hundred dollars in gas plus whatever else happened to dig into my wallet.  But the fact of the matter is that it is STILL March 8 (or 9 today) and there is a lot of time left.  The models keep things quiet for I’d say the next 10 days, so when the end of March and early April rolls around, I’ll still have a loaded chase bank account.  And given the video I’ve seen coming out of that event, I would’ve been scooped to the moon and back, so I feel pretty safe to say I would not have offset the costs of that particular trip.
• As with the case with everything, I truly do not know if I would’ve seen that tornado even had I chased the event.  Its impossible to note what decisions would’ve been made, whether the van had some catastrophic breakdown, whether we would’ve settled for the panhandle play, whatever.  And assuming we were in the area, whether we would’ve seen the tornado or not.  The truth is I just don’t know.  So while I guaranteed that I would see nothing by staying home, I cannot guarantee I would’ve seen it had I gone out.  It was the ONE AND ONLY show of the day, so there is an element of right-place-right-time that you don’t know unless you’re there.
• I did get in the work hours that I needed to make up for the ones I will miss late this week and this weekend as I’ll be in Dallas for TESSA.  Again, back to money, but assuming I chased and stayed out overnight and drove back today, I’d have one day to try and do that on Wednesday instead of a quiet mid-week I have now.
• As a result of work, I also uploaded some old content to my website… really old.  I knocked out the 2002 and 2003 seasons as well as cleaned up the three logs I have online from 2004.  Again, not a huge perk, but one none-the-less.
• I held off on activating my month-to-month Verizon data plan.  Given my target and Verizon’s lack of coverage up there, I’m not sure I would’ve done it anyway, but alas, I have given myself an extra 10 days (at least) on the backend of chase season to enjoy the Verizon network in addition to my Sprint network.
• I wasn’t the only one who was sitting at home for this event, and misery LOVES company.
• This adds yet another reason why I hope that everything falls into place for my graduate school choice in Hays.  Had I lived there, this would’ve been a no-brainer!
• I had three different people tell me that my entry title for yesterday was the best of the day!  Couldn’t have done that had I seen a tornado!

So yeah, none of that really makes up for missing that tornado, but it at least offers some consolation for not going out.  You could scratch most of that had we gone out and missed that tornado, so it definitely could’ve been worse.  I mean, I could’ve REALLY spiced up yesterday’s blog title had we gone out and missed the tornado, so perhaps I could’ve improved on that!  Hahaha… but alas, this too, shall pass.

A final note on this and I will put it to bed… last week, I wrote my entry regarding my March climatology of chasing.  I think the bottom line to it was how much I hate chasing in March.  I do… I truly hate chasing (or not chasing) March.  Yesterday will get thrown into the category with March 28 (although that still ranks as the most painful no-go), but its addition adds another tick-mark to why I hate March!   I remember the early days when it was April I didn’t like… well, I hate March even more!

So yeah, interesting how things are shaping up.  Obviously won’t start regretting til everything happens, but if I were down there, I’d be a bit more optimistic given what I am seeing right now.

My optimism was warranted apparently, cause just after 4:30 my time, I watched my day fall apart as I watched 30 minutes of streaming of a tornado in my target area.  A tornado that was long-track, damaging, and very photogenic given the cold core environment.  I’m not sure I would’ve gone as far to say I was THAT optimistic, but I did mention a few things that perked my ears up and gave me an uneasy feeling that I should’ve gone down there.  Unfortunately it clipped the small Oklahoma town of Hammon, but as far as I know, everyone is safe and accounted for, so very good news.

Obviously its not known whether I would’ve seen it or not, but it doesn’t take away the sting of missing an event that you really didn’t need to miss.  I had no work, no class, no obligations keeping me here.  I stayed by choice… high risk, high reward… not enough to toss out 600 miles one-way.  Well,unfortunately the effects of something like this will weigh heavily on the next event that rolls through.  We won’t be so quick to say no.

So yeah, going to have to shrug this one off.  I’m getting a lot of “don’t take it so hard”, “its early”, blah blah blah… its a tough pill to swallow when you miss something you had every opportunity to go.  This is regret, and I regret not taking that chance.  Oh well, live and learn.

Oh yeah, I uploaded my chase logs from 2002 and 2003… the what I was doing instead of chasing that beautiful tornado.  LOL

With that said, I picked up some hours at work through about lunchtime where I can evaluate the potential for anything worth going out for closer to home.  As mentioned last night, the 4km WRF offered up a nugget or two along the Palmer Divide and points east, but given the ongoing cloud cover and cool temperatures, I’d pretty well write that off as of now.  If it clears over the next couple of hours, it’ll demand some attention, but right now, it feels like a cool Ohio autumn day.

The RUC does hint at some convective precip on the west side of the CO/KS border, but no CAPE to support anything pretty much anywhere in the state.  If you’re in western Oklahoma, you should be happy to see the ribbon of 1000-1500J/kg being forecastedbetween 21z and 0z.  This is about where SPC extended its risk area, so they saw the same thing I did.  Its not very eager to break out a lot of convective precip in these areas, so we’ll see what exactly happens with all that.  Still a lot of cloud cover, but visible sat showing the dry slot moving into the Texas Panhandle, so I’m wondering if the RUC isn’t picking up on that a bit better in terms of its CAPE resulting from higher temperatures if that slot moves in quick.  Given the rate its moving, I figure in 3-4 hours, you’ll start seeing those skies clear in that area.

So yeah, interesting how things are shaping up.  Obviously won’t start regretting til everything happens, but if I were down there, I’d be a bit more optimistic given what I am seeing right now.

The header comes with the SPC graphics, full image, chase location stats, and a Google Ad.  The footer includes a few of my weather stats for that chase, SPC’s report graphic, my YouTube banner, and a vertical Google Ad that runs along the side of those.

The trick with the coding was making the one file (or two in this case) work for all my chase logs.  With that, I had to write out some code that would correctly pull the right SPC graphics to the page for that date.  Since I organize my images in a year folder with a default name on the images, it was a pretty easy fix.  This way, it would take the date of the chasing log, format it in the way I name the images, and then slap the rest of the file name on the end.  This would basically allow this one file to be read in each log and correctly pull the right images for the log.  The rest of the stats are entered in custom fields I created and pulled directly into the log.  Lastly, I liked the SPC-color code so much, I included it by coloring the border of the SPC graphics in the color assigned to the particular risk for that log.  They’re the same colors as the log listing page.

I also included Google Ads on the log listing pages.  If you go to 2010’s page, you’ll see a banner at the top and bottom of the chase log.  Don’t worry, this will not happen for each log listing.  The banner at the bottom will remain at the bottom and will move further down the page as the listing page grows.  You’ll see this on the 2009 page.

As for the video pages, not a lot of change to those since I worked on them last week.  I did tweak the front page to even it out a bit, but also included some Google Ad codes there as well.  Each video page includes a Google Ad between the video and the rate card.

A couple other site-wide items include the addition of ratings and a share icon which appear at the bottom of the logs.  I did this a while ago but had some template issues.  Those aren’t an issue anymore, so they’re fine now.

So a few things knocked out today!  That was nice!  Beyond that, not much else to add.  May do some work tomorrow, but I am pretty content for now in terms of the site’s technical stuff.  Content remains my bigger priority for the time being.

Even sadder shape is that Dann has pointed out the 4km WRF is showing some convection, possibly some marginal hail producers, right here in Colorado tomorrow afternoon.  I don’t know how much stock to take into that, but within being well within the state on an afternoon I’m free, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and at least keep tabs on it.  If it warms up enough, get some kind of moisture around, and a few towers try to go, I may go sit under one and enjoy my afternoon off.

But yeah, two weeks, tons of emails, many hours of forecasting, and we get a ‘See Text’… yeah, its early March!  Remember my post earlier this week regarding my March chase climatology.  Well add one more bust to that list from Friday, and I think its pretty to say I would be adding another one after tomorrow if I venture out to Oklahoma.  Not to say if I weren’t closer I’d be all over it (which I would – see Friday’s NW Kansas chase trip).  But from here, just not worth it.

So that said, I’ll let this closed low barrel on through and see what it does in Oklahoma.  It was brought up that we have steak tomorrow night if nothing happens in Oklahoma to celebrate our choice of staying behind.  Then again, it could be BBQ’d crow, too.  We’ll see in 24 hours.

The setup is too marginal, plain and simple.  I could dissect the models til I’m blue in the face, and I’m not so sure I haven’t done that beyond blue already.  Bottom line, it just doesn’t seem like its worth it.  I introduced the cost of the trip into the equation and it did knock the excitement down a few levels.  If we took my van, figure about 4 tanks of gas round trip and it would equate to a lot.  Split that up between (right now) two of us and you’re still talking over $100 a piece if you add various other possible expenses.  At this point in the season, its hard to justify that kind of wager for what’s now a ‘See Text’, maybe upgraded to a low-end slight by tomorrow.

Because we can, we’ll await the 0z runs and see exactly what they say, but I feel pretty confident that it won’t be enough to push us out the door.  I think if you introduce a decent target somewhere in southwest Kansas, then I may not be as quick to dismiss it, but western Oklahoma and points south and east, not in early March.  At least not driving out from Denver anyway.  Friday’s drive to northwest Kansas and back, no biggie.  Gimme something that close with this setup, I’d be all over it.  This is just too marginal and too far to blow off time and money for so early in the season.

So with that said, there is an inkling of hope still left that something in the next 12 hours will change our minds and send us out.  I figure tonight’s runs are going to seal the deal as I don’t think enough of this setup to wake up for the 6z runs and charge out the door at 5am.  But it still could happen.

I’ll update again tonight after the 0z’s come out and I discuss the potential one more time with Dann before closing the door on this system.  I feel already as if I have dedicated too much time on this thing.  Fortunately it hasn’t reached for the wallet yet and chances are good she’ll cold-core her way by with only a handful of hours of mine in her grasp as she rolls her way across the country.