Tracking a Tornado

[concoures]

Hello John,

First off I just read your journal and it is great to hear you are felling much better.

I live in SE Michigan and as you probably know we had a very interesting night weather wise to say the least last night. In fact an F2 tornado touched down within a couple miles of my house and destroyed many buildings. This event intrigued me to the point that I spent the rest of the morning finding out as much as I could about hook echoes and velocity couplets. The frustrating part of trying to locate the tornado vortex signatures myself was how long it takes for the NWS to update the radar scans. Five minuets is an eternity when you have a storm with a possible tornado in it bearing down on you at 60mph. I noticed even the local news Meteorologist had to wait several minutes to get a fresh scan also. Do you know of a radar site that you can get real time radar scans from? Thanks

PS you could probably devise a safe RF shield for your chain saw spark plug. May be something to look in to.

Carl I

 

[frnash]

The frustrating part of trying to locate the tornado vortex signatures myself was how long it takes for the NWS to update the radar scans. Five minuets is an eternity when you have a storm with a possible tornado in it bearing down on you at 60mph. I noticed even the local news Meteorologist had to wait several minutes to get a fresh scan also.

I'm sure that's why the serious storm chasers bring their own mobile Doppler radar!

 

[jd]

Hi Carl.

Sorry, but I do not know of any source where you can get real time or near real time radar data. Looks like the 5 minute delay is about as good as it can get unless you want to connect to the NWS data network yourself (lots of bucks!). Or perhaps pick up a radar unit that is used in private and commercial aircraft (FRNash- surprised you did not offer up that one). But those too are quite spendy and I am not sure how well they would work at ground level.

Usually 5 minutes is not that big of a deal in the world of weather, but with severe weather going on, it is a long time and can seem like an eternity. Sorry I could not be of more help!

-John

 

[frnash]

Or perhaps pick up a radar unit that is used in private and commercial aircraft (FRNash- surprised you did not offer up that one). But those too are quite spendy and I am not sure how well they would work at ground level.

Aircraft weather radar?

John, I agree on both counts, very spendy, and not particularly suitable for ground operation. An impractical alternative, I'd say.

On board weather radar is typically used to navigate between storm cells, typically in IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) conditions; in my flying experience (VFR — Visual Flight Rules) I never even considered tangling with storm cells that intimately. (Although I once did pass between a number of small isolated cells in southern NM, none closer than 20 miles from my route of flight, on a trip one evening from El Paso to Phoenix. Even then I did get to see an interesting display of St Elmo's fire in the arc of the prop tips. Close enuf for me!)

 

[favoritos]

frnash, do those plane radar systems work while the plane is on the ground? There are always IFR equipped planes sitting around the airports when a storm is approaching.

I had to look up St Elmo's fire. Not something I would want to experience in the air.

 

[frnash]

do those plane radar systems work while the plane is on the ground? There are always IFR equipped planes sitting around the airports when a storm is approaching.

I wouldn't count on aircraft weather radar being very useful on the ground. They are probably not even turned on until the aircraft is airborne. I expect most of those IFR equipped aircraft are on the ground when a storm is approaching is unrelated to their on-board radar, more due to ground based pre-flight weather briefings.

I had to look up St Elmo's fire. Not something I would want to experience in the air.

The St Elmo's fire is a really awesome visual experience, but it's really quite harmless. It appeared as a neon blue halo around the arc of the propeller tips.

 

[rocky367]

I do stormspotting during the summer for my county (ham operator) and have started using a radar system in the field to allow me to avoid any potential danger. The best time you can get currently on a radar sweep is 3-5 minutes depending on what the NWS has the radar mode in. That is the time it takes to complete all the scans in the radius, and then send the data out. There is are several options to gather that data, one is GRLevel3 software (I use that) or WeatherTap would be my two recommendations. Weathertap has a variety of tools, but it needs a subscription. Free, would be WeatherUnderground as I found they seem to update within 8 minutes. Now, to use GrLevel3 you tap into the NWS weather feed, but the other evening it was down more than up to heavy usage.
You can purchase a data package for the feed through places like AllisonHouse and they are up 99% of the time and have great packages. The other best thing to do to watch out for storms? Join the local Skywarn group! Not only do you get the latest updates but you learn about weather at the same time.