FORWARN founder and President, Patrick Marsh, has been involved in running the VORTEX II Operations Center (VOC) in support of the field aspect of the VORTEX II.  On Friday, 5 June 2009, the VORTEX II crew observed their first tornado of the season.  It occurred in southeast Wyoming and was preliminarily rated an EF-1 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale.

For more information about this storm / intercept, please visit http://www.patricktmarsh.com.  Pictures of the radar data from the National Weather Service Doppler radar are included.

Tomorrow is the first day of operations for the second Verification Of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment, or VORTEX II for short.  This goal of this project is to help scientists understand why some thunderstorms with rotation produce tornadoes and others do not.  The original VORTEX in 1994-1995 was a great first step in understanding this, but a lot of advancements in technology since then should allow scientists to get even better information.

I am involved in VORTEX II as a forecaster / nowcaster.  I’ll remain in Norman, OK at the VORTEX II Operations Center (VOC) and relay information to scientists in the field.  Since I’ll be involved in a lot of the behind the scenes decision making and information gathering, I’ve decided to blog about my experience in hopes that someone finds it interesting.  You can keep up with this at http://www.patricktmarsh.com.

A lot has been happening behind the scenes with FORWARN. One of the more interesting things is that FORWARN is hosting a blog for the National Weather Center’s Hazardous Weather Center’s Map Discussion (http://map.forwarn.org). Here you can find blog posts that are ported over from either email exchanges about weather events or summaries of actual map discussions. Feel free to check it out!

Also, I am currently in the process of writing several programs to generate model output graphics. These graphics will be used by VORTEX II in real-time for the experiments, however, after the program, these scripts will be used to create model graphics for FORWARN’s website. Stay tuned!

It appears that there might be a quick shot at a minor icing event across the southern plains tonight.  Presently, an upper-level low / vorticiy maximum continues to dig across southern California into northern Mexico.  This feature is helping to draw moisture from the subtropical jet, northward into the southern plains over a cold dome in-place across most of the central United States.  Evening soundings from both Norman and Fort Worth (both below) capture a considerable warm nose aloft and dry low-levels.  As moisture continues to be advected northward, combined with weak isentropic ascent, precipitation should develop across the southern plains.  While temperatures at the surface (combined with the warm air aloft) would initially support rain, temperatures should fall to below 32F as a result of the wet-bulb affect.  Precipitation should remain relatively light across north Texas, southern Oklahoma, and northwest Arkansas keeping this a short-lived, minor icing event.

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Welcome to FORWARN’s new website.  Over the next few days more and more content will be added to the site.  If there is something specific you want to see added, please let us know in the comments!