Weather Gabe

May 3, 1999. 

To those outside of Oklahoma, this date means very little.  But to those Okies who survived the largest tornado outbreak in state history, “May 3^rd” is forever branded into our collective conscious. 

That day over 60 tornadoes swept across the Southern Plains, with the vast majority in central Oklahoma.  Many of the tornadoes were strong, and at least 4 were violent (F4/F5).

Most people remember the Bridge Creek / Moore tornado, which until 2013 held the world record for highest wind speed on Earth (~300 mph).   That tornado lasted well over an hour, and claimed the lives of over 30 people.  Interestingly, that tornado was really only the beginning of the outbreak, as many more tornadoes occurred well after dark. 

The most impressive of these was the Mulhall tornado, which was well over a mile in diameter; based on mobile radar data, it may have been more intense than the Moore tornado.  The...

Sometimes, it's hard to remember how you began.

And that's definitely true for long-time chasers. We sometimes forget how hard it was for us in the beginning. And when I started, I was really bad at it.  So I thought it might be helpful to tell how I became a chaser

For me, it all began in 1990. On May 15th, a powerful F3 tornado struck my hometown, Stillwater, OK.

After the tornado hit, I became fascinated with tornadoes. Trouble was, I didn't know where to find information about them. My mom suggested that I write the local weatherman, Gary England,  to see if he might be taking his tornado safety talk to town.

To my surprise, Gary wrote back. His letter arrived 3 weeks after I sent mine. He said that, sadly, he wouldn't be coming to Stillwater that year. But he gave me a copy of his book "Those Terrible Twisters and the Weather of Oklahoma"

That was when my obsession truly began. The book that Gary gave me had it all: tornado pics, dates, locations -- everything. I...

Introduction

Welcome to my new blog. Periodically, I will be posting about weather events I find interesting.  I'll also be adding chaser-relevant bits I learn from science articles.  Hope you enjoy!

Basic Meteorology for Storm Chasers

I recorded a new version of the beginner's meteorology presentation I gave at NSCS.  In it, I cover:

• Surface maps
• Upper air maps
• Skew-T Log-p charts
• Hodographs

You can find it on Youtube here.

And if you find it useful, please like and subscribe!  I'll be posting more content like this soon.

Storm Mergers

Also, I've been reading quite a bit of research on storm mergers and their relationship to tornadogenesis.  It turns out that mergers matter -- a lot.

Did you know that 50% of tornadoes form within a few minutes of a merger?  This is not an accident. It turns that mergers are important because they increase stretching. 

(Y'all remember the ice skater analogy, right?  Spin...