Introduction To Operation Storm-Front
Operation Storm-front is a private research project with a goal to collect barometric pressure, temperature, dew point, and humidity data during a scheduled time of severe weather. This research project is being done in hopes to fully understand the concept behind a severe thunderstorm to help with prediction improvements.
The truth about tornadoes and advanced warnings, according to NOAA, is current warnings have only a 13 minute average lead time and a 70% false alarm rate. The tornado is hard to forecast and is still not understood and is still unpredictable.
For this research, I will be focusing on the thunderstorm and not the tornado for one reason, the tornado is the end result of a severe thunderstorm. The tornado is not the source, the thunderstorm is. If we can understand the thunderstorm, and examine the data of the severe thunderstorm, there is a good possibility we will find the missing link to tornado-genesis. If we find the missing link we will solve our problems with severe weather predictions and know what storms will be associated with tornado-genesis. It seems like people can get so focused on the result, they look past the fact that they need to switch to the source! Just like a cancer, the focus needs to be the source of the cancer not just the cancer itself! That source of the tornado can only be one thing, the severe thunderstorm.
Operation Storm-Front research project will be conducted as time is available. Data collection from a proprietary designed device and examinations of radar displays and visual examinations of storms will be vital to this extensive research project. As data that is collected will be compared to baseline data from days that have no forecast of severe weather. The ending results and all data will be posted on this site for any and all to use for other research projects. Blog entries will be posted as data is collected and discoveries are found.
The Importance of Weather Alerts
One type of alert to rely upon is never enough. That gives you one single point of failure. Seconds count in the event of a tornado. Tornado’s, are still to this day highly unpredictable, but have gotten better with advanced warnings. Sirens can fail, people can make a wrong judgement call behind the alert. Your phone alert can fail, your texts could never come through. You can lose power. Your cable or the television broadcast can go out.
A question often arises, how many services and alerts should I have? The answer is simple, as many as feasibly possible. Weather radio? Yes! Should not be an option. The basic weather radio such as the one I own that alerts on everything in your county works very well! I have had it for years and years and it has been a reliable little radio. It has battery backup as well. Just remember to change out those batteries every daylight savings time like your smoke detectors. Price Chopper carries these as well as Walmart. Some weather radios have the ability to add a flashing strobe for those that are hearing impaired as well. Other weather radios have the ability to filter out alerts you don’t want to be woken up to, such as flash flooding. I am actually eyeballing the Midland WR400 Deluxe weather radio. This radio is a combination weather/alarm clock, also has a USB charging port for your phone. This will free up space having both an alarm clock and my weather radio taking up space on my end table next to my bed.
Then there is the cell phone alerts. Here in Blue Springs we have a service put out by CJCEMA called Nixle where you receive texts to your phone. If you do not have Nixle you can sign up here.
There are plenty of weather apps for phones out there that can be used as well. One of the popular one’s I use are Wunderground and Windy which both are free. Then from a storm spotter perspective I also use a purchased app called Radar Scope (about 10 bucks) which is where the clips of radar I post on my Facebook page come from. It has a monthly subscription that gives radar scope a lot more options as well.
Warm, Cold, Rain, Snow in The Same Week!
The past few days have been quite the interesting events. We ended up with about 8.9 inches of snowfall on Friday/Saturday this past weekend. It was a difficult prediction even for a weather enthusiast like myself, but I will have to admit that this past storm was pretty impressive! Our atmosphere was saturated with moisture and caused big fat snow to fall and to accumulate on our trees and power lines. This became a problem for us as the weight of the snow would cause tree limbs and entire trees to fall and a lot of people lost power. Some won’t have power back till Thursday. Just in time for another round of snow to accumulate in our area.
Our next round of systems will be another interesting set up.
1. Tuesday will be mid to upper 40’s. but may not be able to be high enough to melt a whole lot of the snow. That is the system coming up from southwest.
2. Wednesday afternoon we have another 60% chance of precipitation and the temperature will barely be above freezing at 33 degrees. This will occur well into Thursday
3. Friday evening into Saturday is the next system. Starting off with rain at 38 degrees. The temperature will tank once this system starts and by Saturday morning at about 1am the rain will transition to snow stopping about noon or a little after. Temperatures will continue to drop throughout the weekend and by 8am Sunday will be at -4 degrees if everything plays out. Temperatures will climb back up to the 30s by Monday afternoon.
I will keep an eye on this system and the models as the week progresses and will update with any changes that may occur. If you end up going to the Chief’s game make sure you bundle up in layers to keep warm! GO CHIEFS!