Monday, July 25, 2011

July 19th severe weather write up part one.

A very special thanks to Todd K. From the NWS for letting me show him the areas of damage that I knew about...I sure did learn more from that storm assessment!Was a fun afternoon more on that later.
Though I was not chasing this storm per say. I have some of the same info on here as I do in part two…..

Here is my chase log….

So why did I decided to chase in Douglas and Washburn Counties? Well the warm was just North of Barron County. Was like in Central Washburn County over into Northern Burnett County. Plus there were outflow boundaries from all the morning storms laying around…..So decided I would chase a few strong cells that morning…. By mid afternoon radar was showing strong/severe thunderstorms in North Central/Northeast MN…. So I decided to head to Oliver and play them storms… Once there I was looking at the radar data and SFC OBS wondering if Lake Superior would kill these storms…Thought about heading in MN Southwest of Duluth, however the gut was telling to stay in WI but head more South than were I was at….So I ran with that plan…. To make a long story short it was the best move of the day….Got on different lines of storms….With each passing line the warm front was pushed South a little more. I kept moving South with the warm front….I did notice a storm that blew up in Burnett County… I really was not paying much attention to this storm when it was in Burnett County, I knew there was a tornado warning on it, however the storm I was on had a tornado warning on it..So I decided to stay where I was at…Had to get lightning video, and waited to see if the possible tornado would pass just to my North….To say the least if there would have been a tornado it would have been wrapped in rain by time it got to the area I was sitting at….Decided to make a play on the cell in Polk County….. I did get on it but it was too late by then so I called that chase off before it really started. I more les went and say hello and goodbye to the storm. Was a very long, but fun day of chasing…

The day afterwards.
The morning of the 20th I went back and looked at the radar on this cell and downloaded the data…I have the loops of the Reflectivity and the Radial Velocity below … I also have stills will post them if needed…I used level 2 data has it is more detailed than level 3….I decided to run with a time from 7:00 PM through 8:10 PM, as this shows the rotation moving through Northeastern Polk County into Western Barron County….See the Radial Velocity loop for that…

First off I would like to say l thanks to a friend of mine, Derek from NW Wisconsin Weather(blog) for tagging along on the 20th and showing me his area of Clayton and areas to the Southwest/South/Southeast of Turtle Lake… Though we saw some damage I saw nothing that would indicate tornado damage in those areas, as I was heading to Derek’s place I did see some damage along HWY 63, nothing to indicate tornado damage wasn’t a lot of damage… When we were South of Turtle Lake didn’t really see much damage I decided it was time to get on HWY T in Polk County and head for the Pipe Lake area….When we got to the corner of HWY T and 190th large trees downed in a yard …. We also found a place on HWY G that had large tress down and a garage damaged, some of the corn in this areas was damaged…We headed for the Pipe Lake area… We did find damage along the Southeast side and East side of the lake that had damage, this damage did look like tornado damage….We ended up driving around the lake and came upon more damage along Pipe Lake road and Pipe Lake Lane…. This area was really hard to tell what many have happened here….Many large tress blown downed/snapped off…Power lines were downed…Some cabins/homes had tress fall onto their roofs…The few people I was able to talk to said they were not home at the time of the event…(which may have been a very good thing) I called the NWS was able to talk to Todd and they did have a survey planed for the 21st I sent the pictures I took to them guys when I got back home later that evening.

The morning of the 21st.
 I gave Todd a call to see if he was still heading up, he was….Long story short we met in Turtle Lake and we headed out on HWY T towards the damage areas….I took Todd to the areas that Derek and I saw the day before…Then we also checked others areas. I will have the link to the NWS write up down below…(as of the time of this writing the NWS writ up on this storm has not been posted so keep checking back on their site).

Ok time for some strange and yet funny things….For those who know me know the strangest and funniest things happen to me… Well of course yesterday would prove that once again not only once but twice….. Without getting into all the details on the first one…..Let’s just say the very first place we stopped at, well I have never seen what we saw… Though the person was interesting to listen to it was hard not to laugh, but I didn’t…..Well we left that area, went up the road a little, well then I thought I heard a bear or something…Didn’t sound right….Well finally we heard the chainsaw running thank God for that….Well Todd and I were talking he said something and that mental image stuck in my head the rest of the day..(Not one I wanted either lol )…Well the second funny part was at the end of the day I decided it was time to go home, we were talking and Todd said something like maybe I should turn around…Then it hit me I was going to be heading home with Todd in the truck, yeah I felt like a heal on that one….I’m sure this damage survey will be talked about a lot at the NWS, after that I’m thinking them guys will never want to come back to WI, well least not have me around lol……Only in WI and only to me……I just had to share that with everyone…..

Ok back to the matter at hand…

I will not disclose the information on what we found or what the NWS thinks, Not until they post it on their site.

Here are some damage pictures taken on the 20th and 21st …..







Below is the Reflectivity loop showing the supercellular storm plowing across Northeast Polk County and Western Barron County.


Below is the Radial Velocity loop Showing the rotation moving across Northeast Polk County and into Western Barron County.

You will have to click on the two images above to get the loop to play...
Without reposting all the info here is the link to the NWS write up, along with the setup for the severe weather threat for the 19th ..
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=mpx&storyid=71082&source=2
Here are some pictures of the storm and flooding rain...All taken in Barron County.