The three stars from Storm Chasers: Sean Casey - TIV Chief and Champion Storm Chaser, Dr. Josh Wurman - Research Meteorologist, and Reed Timmer - TVN Lead Storm Chaser, Meteorologist
For those that haven’t seen the show, it is must see TV, even if you aren’t much into weather. The show chronicles a team of storm chasers as they crisscross the Great Plains hunting tornadoes. They have an array of high tech gagetry at hand to help them in their chase to further our understanding of the storms including the TIV – Tornado Intercept Vehicle. The TIV’s primary function? To drive into a tornado!
The third episode’s summary says:
Storm Chasers
Mutiny on the Plains
Sunday, Nov 02 at 10:00 pm E/P on Discovery Channel
Tensions mount between Sean and Josh, as Reed offers to chase with the TIV. Reed chases a risky nighttime tornado into the hills of Arkansas, while Sean and Josh return to Greensburg, Kansas one year after a twister nearly wiped the town off the map.
Without further ado, ThorntonWeather.com’s sneak peak of the episode. In this scene small pieces of debris fall from the sky after meteorologists Danny and Aaron track down a funnel cloud in Rock Valley, Iowa.
The 2009 National Storm Chaser Convention will be February 13 - 15, 2009.
The dates for the 11th annual National Storm Chaser Convention have been announced. The event will be held February 13th to the 15th at the Red Lion Inn in Parker. As usual there looks to be a great lineup of speakers and of course it will certainly be informative and fun. The agenda is still being finalized but some of the highlights announced thus far include:
This year’s convention promises to be the biggest and best yet! The convention is held each year in Denver, Colorado, and is geared for you, the storm chaser, spotter and storm enthusiast, to be the premiere gathering of the year. Because of the intense severe storm and hurricane season that 2008 brought, we have been able to gather some of the best scientists and forecasters in the world to present at this year’s convention. Dr Steve Lyons, hurricane expert for The Weather Channel, will be this year’s keynote speaker. From the National Hurricane Center, we welcome lead forecaster Dr Jack Bevens.
On the severe storm side, we welcome Dr Greg Forbes from The Weather Channel, and are also excited to welcome back Dr Howie Bluestein. We are also excited to have Rich Thompson, lead forecaster at the Storm Prediction center, as well as meteorologist Jon Davies. Tim Marshall will once again bring is attention getting presentation to our convention. We have several other speakers that you won’t want to miss!!! So sign up early and tell all your friends to come to the 2009 National Storm Chaser Convention.
Photo of the tornado near Parker. Image courtesy Jeff Smith and 9News.
Three tornadoes and multiple funnel clouds were reported in Elbert and Douglas counties Sunday evening. At 5:31pm the Centennial Airport tower reported a tornado on the ground five miles southwest of Parker. This was followed by a second tornado reported at 5:47pm six miles northeast of Parker. Lastly, a third twister was spotted three miles west of Castle Rock reported by trained spotters at 6:03pm.
News video showed the tornadoes weaving through relatively unpopulated areas interspersed wtih some houses. Authorities currently report no major damage.
Tornado warnings were issued but have now expired. As always, please be aware of the weather situation around you and when a danger presents itself, take appropriate action.
Update, 8/25/08, 7:50am – Reports are varying on the actual number of tornadoes that touched down. We have seen reports as low as two twisters to as many as a dozen. Chances are the actual number is toward the lower end of that range as oftentimes the same tornado is reported by multiple spotters with different descriptions of their locations. The National Weather Service investigates these and at some point in the future will determine the true number of tornadoes.
Park County tornado near Eleven Mile Reservoir. Image courtesy 7News and Jerry Bivens.
In a truly unusual weather occurence, a tornado struck near Eleven Mile Reservoir in Park County Saturday afternoon. Certainly we are all used to hearing about twisters along the Front Range and on the plains but mountain tornadoes are quite rare – the rugged terrain usually disrupts the weather patterns necessary to product tornadoes. Authorities estimate five vehicles were damaged including a motorhome and pickup truck camper that were overturned, a trailer was destroyed. Beyond cuts and scrapes, thankfully no one was injured.
Colorado is ranked ninth in the country with an average of 40 tornadoes a year. It is interesting to note that every state in the union – including Alaska and Hawaii – have had tornadoes.
Doing some research at the TornadoProject.com yields an interesting fact as well. This was Park County’s first tornado ever. That leaves 12 of Colorado’s 64 counties that have never had a tornado including:
Clear Creek
Dolores
Garfield
Gilpin
Gunnison
Hinsdale
Lake
Montrose
Ouray
San Juan
San Miguel
Summit
It does serve as a reminder that while the unofficial severe weather season is behind us, Colorado’s weather is anything but boring and everyone should be aware of all the types of weather hazards that are possible.
Quite an eventful time we have had over the last 72 hours or so in terms of weather. Some of the more noteworthy items:
The streak ends. With cooler air finally moving into Colorado, Tuesday, August 5th marked the last day of our streak of 90 degree or higher temperatures. Wednesday the temperature reached 88 degrees at DIA thus breaking the heat wave and ending the streak at a record 24 days. The previous record of 18 days was last set 107 years ago in 1901! Click here to view the official statistics for the streak. Here at ThorntonWeather.com, our streak wasn’t quite as long. While the official streak dates back to July 12th, Thornton did have one day – July 17th – where the temperature “only” reached 88 degrees. If we start counting for Thornton on the 18th, that would put the Thornton streak at 17 days. But, let’s face it, “hot is hot” no matter how you look at it!
A racoon takes shelter in a storm drain at 120th & Colorado Blvd. Image courtesy 9News.com.
Record seting rainstorm on Wednesday, August 6th. As we discussed in our previous entry, severe weather moved across the Front Range bringing everything from thunder and lightning to funnel clouds and tornadoes to severe rain. Various watches / warnings were issued including Tornado Warnings, Flash Flood Warnings / Watches and more. Rain totals varied across the metro area with Thornton, particularly the northeast portions of the city, receiving the lion’s share. At ThorntonWeather.com, we measured a whopping 2.43″. The vast majority of that fell in a 70 minute time span from 6:00pm to 7:10pm. Rain rates were reading between 3″ and 7″ per hour during that timeframe! That is ThorntonWeather.com’s #1 rainiest day on record since going into service in October 2006; the previous record was 2.2″ set on April 24, 2007. Some street flooding was reported in Thornton but thankfully little real damage. At DIA they recorded 1.29″ of rain, breaking the old record for the date of 1.1″ set in 1929.
Cooler weather to prevail today. Significant moisture in the atmosphere and cooler temperatures should keep the excitement level down today – at least compared to yesterday. After noon there will be a chance for rain and those that do get rain can expect it to be heavy at times. As long as the temperatures stay down, we shouldn’t have the severity that we experienced yesterday though. Click here to view the latest forecast.
Be safe, use your head, pay attention! A bit of a report from the soapbox today. As we were looking at pictures of the storm on various news sites, we came across one submitted to 9News from a Thornton resident of children playing in the street in the rain. Now, that makes for a wonderfully fun picture and I am sure the kids had fun too but we do question how smart the parents were of these kids. At the time Thornton was getting hit with the storm, lightning was popping across the entire area and there was a Tornado Warning issued as funnel clouds had been spotted. Is outside playing in the street really where kids should be in a case like this? That fun would come to a quick end if lightning struck or worse yet, one of those funnel clouds developed into a tornado. Is that little bit of fun worth the risk of losing your child? THINK ABOUT IT! It may be worthwhile to review our Weather Education Series on Lightning and Tornadoes.
An exciting evening in Thornton as far as the weather goes. Just before 6:00pm Wednesday a slow-moving severe thunderstorm over north Thornton brought everything from funnel clouds to lightning to torrential rain.
The Thornton radar image when the storm was at its height. The storm dumped over 2" of rain in 1 hour.
Rain began falling in the area of 120th and Colorado Blvd at 6:00pm and over the next 70 minutes dumped 2.36″ of precipitation. Lightning and thunder were predominant for the entire time as well. At 6:40 the National Weather Service issued a Tornado Warning when several funnel clouds were spotted between south Thornton and Dacono. These slow moving storms presented a clear and present danger but appear to have passed relatively uneventful. Minor street flooding has been reported in some parts of Thornton but otherwise little damage.
As of this writing, a Flood Advsiory and Flash Flood Watch remains in effect for much of the Denver metro area. Radar does indicate the storm is deteriorating and things should beging to settle down now.
As always, please stay tuned to ThorntonWeather.com for the latest. Be sure to monitor our Warnings and Advsiories page for realtime updates on current watches and warnings.
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