PROGRAM END: TWISTEX Field operations
July 1, 2010 – 9:35 amAs of today, TWISTEX operations have concluded operations for the year.
The crew had one last trip last Friday/Saturday (June 25, 26) where they intercepted a rain-wrapped tornado that wasn’t visible near Courtland, Minnesota on 25 June.
TWISTEX had a very successful 2010 with several in-situ deployments and numerous mobile mesonet datasets collected. Some in-site hail data was also collected.
The new 450 pound in-situ instrument was deployed once in the path of a developing EF4 tornado near Bowdle, South Dakota on June 22. We’ve collected the first-ever wind speed data at two different heights (.7 and 2 meters).
Several abstracts have been submitted for approval to be presented at the upcoming Severe Local Storm Conference to be held the week of October 11-15 of this year as a result of TWISTEX operations. Topics include:
‘Recent In Situ and Very Close Proximity Tornado Observations (Karstens, et. al.).’
‘Surface Observations of the Rear-Flank Downdraft Evolution Associated with a Violent Tornado near Bowdle, SD on 22 May 2010(Finley, et. al.).’
‘Surface Observations of the Rear-Flank Downdraft Evolution Associated with the Aurora, NE Tornado of 17 June 2009 (Lee, et. al.).’
‘Wind Measurements Within a Tornado Core (Samaras, et. al).’
We wish to thank all of the TWISTEX participants for their tireless efforts as we logged nearly 28,000 miles traveling from Montana to Arkansas-from southern Texas to Minnesota from the middle of April until the end of June. Crews had to endure hardships of being away from their families, and having to deal with hotels and food of varying qualities on the road.
With five to six vehicles within the TWISTEX armada, there was not one safety/traffic incident the entire 11 weeks being on the road.
Everybody’s efforts have been rewarded with some of the richest datasets ever collected from Supercells and tornado cores/environments to date.
I also wish to thank all of the supporters of TWISTEX both in funding and vehicle support hardware. Without all of your support, the TWISTEX research mission would not have been possible.
TWISTEX investigators are currently planning TWISTEX 2011 for next season with hopes to have mobile Doppler RADAR aboard. RADAR is the research tool that TWISTEX needs to help provide kinematic descriptions of tornadoes and supercells.
Continued improvements to current tornado in-situ technology are also planned for more accurate wind and pressure measurements in the future.
In a few months, my attention will turn towards lightning research, and a similar email dissemination will begin around the first of August.
Please let me know if you wish to be REMOVED from the lightning research list.
Until next year!
Tim Samaras