Not really expecting much in the way of tornadoes, but looking for enough chance of hailers around sunset that it’s worth taking a few hour drive. The trip is as much to work the bugs out of the new setup as anything.

PYKL3 Reflectivity

I tried out the PYKL3 radar app on my Droid Incredible a few weeks ago. The free version is locked to a single radar site, and at the time the app was fairly early in its development. I planned to put it aside for a while and look closer to season to see whether it was worth the (pretty expensive, as Apps go) cost to go to the paid version.

I was trolling the Equipment threads on StormTrack this morning and happened across this one: New radar app for Droid

I was quite impressed that Joe Jurecka, the developer, has become an active member of StormTrack, at least in that he’s been responding frequently to feature requests and offering explanations and updates about the software (it was about 5 pages into the thread when his membership was approved) . That’s tip-top customer service in my book, and I couldn’t get to the Market to download the paid app quickly enough — for that one reason.

And to say I’m heartily impressed with the app in its current state would be an understatement. It’s missing only a very little of what I use GRLevel3 to monitor in the field — storm-relative velocity, for example — but Joe says it’s coming. And based on where he’s come from, I believe him

Will it replace the laptop and GRLevel3? Not in a heartbeat. As I’ve said before, I prefer to have as many information sources as I can when I’m in the field. This is one more…not something that will replace anything I have. However — given the number of “unplanned” chases last year, I can see PYKL3 coming in very handy should I get into that situation again!  (Note: he’s developing for the Android pad, too.)

First new item this year is what I’ve taken to calling the “baby computer.” It’s what will handle my live streaming and GPS this season, replacing the Dell tower PC that was seat-belted next to the second row seat in the old van. That PC gave up the ghost late in the season last year (actually, all that’s bad about it is the CMOS battery, but the 8-year jump in technology in the PC that’s replacing it was just too good to pass up).

The new streaming PC gets the name “baby computer” because it’s so small. Completed, it’s just a little larger than two reams of copier paper stacked on one another.

This is the view in the top of the PC. For a size reference, look at the 1-quart cup just to its left.

This is the view in the right side. As it will be installed in the van, this will be the top.

I’m still waiting on the wi-fi card, which plugs in the center of the motherboard, then I’ll be ready to put the operating system and other software on it.

I’ll be able to do about anything media-wise from this machine. It has a multi-card reader, so I can pull the SD card from my video camera, the MemoryStick Pro from my still camera, and pretty much any other format. The reader also supports a SATA hard drive, and has a USB port. But with six USB ports on the PC itself, I have more of those than I need. A bit of overkill on the FireWire card, too, though I could conceivably plug in and stream two cameras using it. The FireWire port on my older video camera died a couple of years ago, so I doubt I’ll be doing that. With a 500 GB hard drive, I’ll be trying to stream my Flash video to the drive as well as live, giving me a backup to the Mini-DV tape in the camera.

But the most exciting thing is that it can run directly off the van’s 12-volt power. No more inverter! (Actually, I’ll probably drop 2 of the 3 inverters).  I’m going to mount it to a platform that connects to the well that’s between the second-row captains chairs in the van, put some power filtering and surge protection in the package, and run the PC, the wi-fi router, the cell booster, and maybe one or more AA battery chargers all directly from the 12V plug that’s right there in the well. Eliminating the heavy-duty PC power supply and staying at 12V will have a huge impact on my battery and alternator drain/wear.

Add to it the DC-to-DC power converter I got for the laptop, and we’re just about AC-free. I haven’t decided whether to try and run the camera battery charger and the video camera off 12V or to leave them on an inverter this year.

That may be it for new stuff this year — we’ll see. But I’m pretty stoked about not needing all those inverters and wires running all over the place . . . just a module that can go in and out of the van at will. Chasing setup ought to go from over an hour to 10 minutes or less. That’ll be motivation to not leave the stuff in the van all season, reducing road-related jarring of the equipment. What’s not to like?!

I’ll have an update in a few weeks, when it comes time to make the mods to the van . . . I’m planning to run some power to both sides of the windshield where we can power the scanner and our phones. Looking forward to it!

It took a few miles to decide to at least try and get closer to confirm or deny my initial impression. These are a few shots taken when we got stopped, at the corner where K-42 meets the Cairo-Isabel Road (100th East in Pratt county).

Looking NW about 3 miles.

This has a somewhat wall cloud appearance to it. But a careful look shows it’s an optical illusion…this cloud is not attached to the could behind it. It’s a tail cloud, the moisture being pulled into the storm. The rain is to the left out of the photo.

Looking West Toward Sawyer

This view is about 45 degrees counter-clockwise from the one above. I’m looking due West. Now the rain shaft is to my right. You can also see the moisture being pulled into the southernmost part of the storm.

Looking due South

The grain elevator on the left is Isabel. We left just a couple of minutes after this photo. As we drove north, we experienced peak winds of about 45 miles an hour, maybe 50.

An interesting phenomenon — as the rain was blown across the road it was being pushed fast enough that it appeared to be clearing the east ditch and going directly into the adjacent corn field. I’ve never seen that before, so far as I remember. Unfortunately, there was too much water being blown across the windshield at the moment to take a photo, and I wasn’t about to stop in essentially zero visibility.

Not bad results for a chase decision made only 40 minutes earlier, and with no other data than my eyes and the radar on the cell phone. The camera in my HTC Incredible — wow…I can’t believe these are cell phone photos.

Good news: no one was seriously hurt. Bad news: a “new” (to me) chase ride is probably in the not-so-distant future. Story later…my sore self is headed to bed.

I haven’t looked at it in detail, but my feel is that overnight will bring us some borderline-severe hail in the Wichita area, off storms moving in from Oklahoma along with the front.

Tomorrow looks to me like a warm-front play. Those situations have been good to Matt and me in the past year – most of the activity we recorded last year was related to north-moving fronts. Some of the parameters look pretty impressive around Wichita in the mid to late afternoon – nothing like yesterday, but still nice, from a chasing point of view.

I am not planning to go into any more detail on the setup at this point – 20 minutes of glancing at a couple of models is just not enough for me to hang my hat on. I won’t be surprised to see us hanging around Wichita, give or take 50 miles, tomorrow.

Hopefully the models, especially the RUC, will have the same kind of handle on tomorrow they had on yesterday, as I don’t think Matt or I will have the time to do the detailed forecasting we did for yesterday’s event. Between the two of us, I know of at least 7 hours’ forecasting work over the weekend and yesterday that went into our decision-making process.

Speaking of which, a big thanks to ICT Lead Forecaster Brad Ketcham, who talked with us multiple times while home caring for a sick young’n. His forecast hints helped us verify out thinking and he was a big help during the heat of things yesterday afternoon, when we were trying to get in behind the tornado, fighting equipment problems, and outrunning a hail core. As with all these things, it takes a team effort to get it done safely.

Look for a brief post in the morning – with the apparently earlier start, I doubt I’ll have a lot of time for detail, but I’ll update on the target thinking, at least!

See, I’m a pattern person. I don’t have but a smattering of meteorological background, and any knowledge I have is the result of watching others and the patterns of the atmosphere. That and a little reading inthe past few years.

So when I say the pattern for resembles May 3, 1999, I’m not really saying I think the outcome will be the same. I’m saying the forecasts, at least according to the models I believe and the patterns my mind recognizes subconsciously, indicate the highest probability for severe weather in a pattern that is like May 3rd. In other words, I buy into a solution that has big storms in both Oklahoma and Kansas, about 90 minutes to 2 hours’ drive apart, including strong, long-lived tornadoes.

Do I think either Moore or Haysville are gonna get clobbered again? As of this moment, no. Others have said this bears resemblance to the US 160 outbreaks in 2004. I mentioned a passing resemblance to the Andover tornado yesterday.

I think what this really means is that all the ingredients are there. The way they are setting up resembles, in some fashion, aspects of one or more of those days. But this *is* forecasting, and we *are* talking about the atmosphere. The devil is in the subtle details we *can’t* forecast until 6-8 hours before storms fire, if then. Any one of a laundry list of things changes in the wrong way and we get nothing. A couple of them change the other way and we have a major problem.

The takeaway is that tomorrow is not a day to be complacent about. If you are in the I-35/135 corridor give or take 90 minutes’ drive, south of I-70, you should be aware of your surroundings and how they are changing between about 3pm and 10pm tomorrow.

BTW: The models came into a little better agreement at 12z (7am). In Kansas they are narrowing down the area of potential, IMO. They are also elevating the Oklahoma potential. I don’t see a reason to shift targeting much yet. My line to be somewhere along at initiation is somewhere in the Clearwater to Kingman vicinity…depending a lot on what happens tonight and through 1pm tomorrow.

I’m heading to Dallas next weekend for StartupWeekend – over three days, several people band together around various ideas and build companies. I’d be willing to spring for the gas and your event ticket if you’d be willing to come help me recruit a team of coders to put out a prototype of the application by Sunday night. To keep the topic form getting too off-target, I’ll refer you to the RTNewsLink website to find out more about the project. Or email me to find out more.