the e norther - american meteorological society · minimum at ol’ macdonalds farm rv park in...
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The Blue Norther is the official monthly newsletter of the Twin Cities Meteorological Society, which digitally pub-lishes it at no cost to the organization and its members. All members have donated their time and resources.
The Blue [email protected]
Editor: Jarrod Schoenecker.Proofreader: Chris Bovitz.Staff Writers: Daniel Dix.Guest Contributors: Ruseell Jones.Special Thanks: N/A.
Twin Cities Meteorological Society (TCMetSoc)http://www.TCMetSoc.org ~ [email protected]
TCMetSoc is an official local chapter of the American Meteorlogical Society (AMS) and the National Weather Association (NWA).
Current Officers Daniel Dix, [email protected] Jarrod Schoenecker, [email protected] Mallory Lumpe, [email protected] Jim Taggart, [email protected] Committees and Activities Jarrod Schoenecker, [email protected] Arden Berge, [email protected] Chris Bovitz, [email protected]
Created in Adobe InDesign CS6 to Adobe PDF. Font: Ari-al. Logo and Newsletter Design by: Jarrod Schoenecker.
Volume 39 Issue 2. Released October 16, 2017.Copyright 2017 Continued on Page 3 ...
ToTal Solar EclipSE: a pErSonal accounT.
By Russell Jones, Guest Writer.
The Blue NortherOfficial Newsletter of the Twin Cities Meteorological Society
O n Monday, August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse crossed the middle
of the United States of America. It was to be one of the biggest spectator events in American History, and I was to be part of that history.
After several months of indecision in 2016, I decided our family would make the trip to St. Joseph, MO, the closest city in the path of totality to our home here in the Twin Cities. It is about a 6-1/2 hour drive. By the time I finally made the deci-sion to go, all the hotels and motels with-in miles were booked. The only thing left were camp grounds, and then only the primitive campsites were left.
My wife, Anita, was an experienced camper, so I figured she’d pull us through. I invited my mom, Elizabeth, to tag along, even though she was just a month shy of her 87th birthday. She had never been camping in a tent before, so it surprised me when she offered to go and cover most of our travel expenses! Also set to come along for the ride were our two sons, Brandon, 11, and Zachary 9.
The big day finally arrived for us to leave, and I had reserved the three days minimum at Ol’ MacDonalds Farm RV Park in Savanna, MO.
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In This Issue...Solar EclipSE ..........p1, 3-5cold Front ..................... p2MESoScalE MinutES ........p6WintEr contESt ..............p6cirruS BuSinESS .............. p7
cold FronTa mESSagE From ThE EdiTor and VicE prESidEnT
I t might seem easy to pop in at one of our events, but I assure you, it is not easy to get to that point sometimes behind the scenes.
By the time you have stepped in the door at the pre-meeting social hour, all the hard work is really done. Taking a look back at all the places we have been and the topics we have covered, it is pretty amazing for this little organization of ours. There is one small problem in that, “little.”
Although our president’s groundwork in attempting to recruit more members has been successful, there are so many more meterologists, storm chasers, spotters and overall sci-ence and weather fans out there that could be and should be both benefiting and involving themselves in our organization.
Being active in TCMetSoc can mean a number of things. Presenting yourself on your in-dustry and/or current project you are working on is one way, such as how John Wetter spoke about his involement with the HopWRF project last month. Similiar, we can always use a good article that helps further our members knowledge of any meteorological subject. My basis has always been this: if you can find it in a Google search, you didn’t give us enough in-depth information.
Of course, just seeing your smiling faces at the events we host is beneficial. There is noth-ing more embarassing than an individual or a company taking time and resources to make a presentation for us and almost no one shows up. You bringing a new friend and potential member to a meeting is one way of being an active member.
We haven’t involved ourselves with committees and projects outside of what we have min-imally been doign to keep the club running, but I see room for growth there. We need to be actively seeking members both on an individual level and as an organiational level. You do not need to send out e-mails every day, but at least make a mention to your collegues and friends and invite them to come along to a meeting or two every year.
As we continue to slowly expand, I would like to see some active committees exist where we can plan annual events and can provide our members with more resources.
It has been difficult to motivate people to be active in this community. So I ask you: what motivates you to be a member? What would motivate you more to be a more active member of TCMetSoc? What do you think inspires and motivates your friends and collegues that might want to be a part of TCMetSoc?
As you may recall, a survey was put out last year asking, more or less, what kind of job we are doing and what we could do differently. The outcome is that we were doing well, in-cluding the number of meetings held each year, variety of events and the other offerings the officers provide. But I always look to improve. Is more than what we are doing now wanted and needed?
Send me a message at [email protected] if you have any ideas for improve-ment, member retention and attracting new members.
— Jarrod Schoenecker, TCMetSoc Vice President and Editor
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The eclipse as seen by satillite on August 21, 2017. Courtesy of NASA.
On Sunday, August 20th, I rounded up my wife and kids. Then we stopped to get grandma, Elizabeth, and we were off. We had brought two tents, a big one for us and a smaller one for my mom. We had also been forewarned by the news media to bring extra supplies because local supermarkets had run low, as well as gas stations and other merchants.
Up to 7 million peopl gathering from across the USA to experience this event. Mobile phone towers were over-loaded. Law enforcement was over-whelmed. Traffice on roads were at a stand-still, and the National Guard had been called out in some spots. I wasn’t worried. I took my storm chasing vehi-cle, a 2005 Turbo-Diesel Dodge Ram 3500 extended cab 1-ton 4x4 pick-up truck. It has a 56 gallon fuel tank, with a 900-mile range, off-road and utility lights, Mars/Cap modified ham radios, GPS, and a DVD player with digital TV reception for the kids. We didn’t need to rely on mobile phone towers for communication.
Since we drove down Sunday, most of the traffic had thinned out. The drive wasn’t all that bad, although a little more congested than usual. We ended up arriving at the camp grounds after dark, and no one was at the office to check us in. A lady was parked there in her car charging her cell phone. I walked up to ask her help and she explained that the camp grounds had been inundated with people, and the owners had become over-whelmed with it all and given up. Our paid-for and reserved camp site we had been taken. It was basically a free-for-all, pitch-your-tent-wherever-you-can sit-uation!
We drove around in the dark and fi-nally found a couple of open spots left
in a remote location. There were other campers all around, and the guy next to us was still awake. He turned on his headlights and I used my spot light so we could see well enough to pitch our tents. As Anita began to unpack every-thing, it became apparent that we had forgotten to pack some of our stuff. One of those items were the tent stakes! We ended up finding and using the stakes for the smaller tent, intended for Grandma, on our larger tent. This meant that all of us were going to have to sleep in the same tent, packed in like sardines. After about two hours of organiza-tion we were finally moved into our temporary dwelling. We all managed to get ready for bed and slip into a restless sleep for the night.
We were all awakened the next morning around 7:00 by a news helicopter flying over head, probably reporting on the overwhelming crowds filling the camp grounds around the area. Meanwhile, there was also a mesoscale convec-tive complex or a cluster of thunderstorms forming around our area. I decided that we were not going to be able to view the total solar eclipse from our chosen location. I put my storm chasing skills to work: I studied a map of the path
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Screengrab of the eclipse as seen by Russell Jones.
of the eclipse, weather charts and listened to the weather forecast, I suggested we all to hop in the truck and head about 200 miles east where it was sunny.
By 9:30 a.m., we were on the road again from our base camp attempting to make it to Fulton, MO, about 200 miles east/southeast of Kansas City on I-70. Hopefully we’d make it there before 1:06 p.m. when the moon would com-pletely block out the sun. We weren’t the only ones with this idea though. The Kansas City metro area was not in the path of totality. Traffic from Kansas City combined with the intensifying thunderstorms made eastbound I-70 travel at about 15 mph. After about 1-1/2 hours of stop-and-go traffic on the freeway and pouring rain, I was ready to just give up and turn back for our tent.
Suddenly traffic started moving a little faster. We were up to 50 mph! I decided to keep driving and see if we could outrun the cloud cover. As I continued to drive east, speeds increased and we were almost doing the speed limit now. About an hour later, the rain was well behind us and we could see blue skies about 10 miles to the south.
By 12:15 p.m., I had Anita looking on the map for a town to pull over in. We weren’t going to make it to Fulton, but we were in good shape to see the eclipse. Although there was still cloud cover, it was hazy sun now. You could barely see shadows on the ground and as we looked up, we saw the shining ball of our nearest star overhead. It was 12:45 p.m. and we pulled off the freeway in Columbia, MO. After unsuccessfully trying to find a park in which to set up our chairs, we pulled into a grocery store parking lot in downtown Columbia to make our stand. The sun was fairly visible through high cloud cover with blue skies still about 10 miles south. I didn’t want to risk driving further south, as it might take us out of the 70-mile wide swath of totality.
There we sat with only a few other eclipse watch-ers scattered about the parking lot. We put our eclipse glasses on and had a great view of the partial eclipse already in progress! Just before totality, the tempera-ture started to drop and a pleasant cool breeze picked up from the west. The hazy cloud cover started to dis-sipate and break apart, and it started to get noticeably darker. There was still too much haze to see any stars, but it was a very pleasant and peaceful experience.
When totality hit we had enough visibility to clearly see the sun’s corona glowing through the haze. People started shouting and cheering. Fireworks went off all around the town. We took our glasses off and stared directly at the fully blocked out disk of the sun. It was a beautiful mesmer-izing sight. Next we looked all around at the horizon. It was like dusk or dawn in a 360° circle around us: pretty pinks, oranges and reds. It wasn’t as dark as they said it would be, but more like it gets just before a severe thunderstorm. The street lights came on, but you could still see well enough to get around easily. The totality lasted for about 2-1/2 minutes, and it was one of the most heavenly experiences I’ve ever had on this earth.
As the sun’s rays began to peek through again, it got bright quickly and the temperature started rising fast. The sky also completely cleared out to a crystal blue. A fellow eclipse watcher came up and started talking with us about the experience. We were all in a good mood and felt it had been worth all the challenges.
Little did we know our adventure was not yet over. Even though we waited an 1-1/2 before leaving to go back to camp, the roads were just as jammed up as they were on our way out there. Traffic got worse at each small town as droves of vehicles were backed up trying to get on I-70 back towards Kansas City.
We decided to pull off at the next town and have dinner hoping that traffic would thin some afterward. We used the GPS to look for some nice family sit down restaurants nearby. The closest one that came up was about 10 miles away, so we set our sights on a nice meal. When we finally arrived at the location in some really small town, the restaurant was CLOSED!
We had to back track another 10 miles to the freeway and found a dive pizza joint to eat at. While at the pizza joint, the skies got dark again, and a severe thunderstorm warning went out for the area. We waited out the storm and finished our meal, then headed off for camp again. We learned that a flash flood watch had been issued for a large area of eastern Kansas and northwestern Missouri, including our camp grounds, until 10:00 a.m. the next morning.
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Since we had paid for another night at the camp grounds, Anita wanted to stop at a Walmart in Kansas City and resupply our stock as well as buy a set of tent stakes so we could set up the second tent for Grandma and give every-body more room. With traffic flowing much better, we made great time the rest of the way, but not without more severe thunderstorm warnings going out and a flash flood warning for parts of Kansas City. As we pulled into Walmart’s parking lot we could see really dark clouds and a lot of lightning in the direction of our camp site in the St. Joseph/Savanna area.
On ham radio I heard reports of a major rainfall event heading into the area from Topeka, KS. More of the sky was filling with dark clouds and lightning during the 45 minutes Anita was in Walmart. She came out just as the storm was entering the area, and we got loaded up just in time. No sooner had we gotten on the freeway towards our camp site than a severe thunderstorm warning went out for hail and torrential rains.
The rain fell so hard that people had pulled over with their four-way flashers on and a major accident had taken place on the other side of the freeway with many emergency vehicles attending to the scene. My kids were scared. We kept on going and managed to drive through it after about 15 miles of treacherous road. By the time we got to St. Joseph, the roads were dry and the rest of the drive was uneventful.
The area we were in at the camp grounds was still under a flash flood watch, and it had also gotten completely dark. When we arrived back at camp, no one was left. All the other tents were gone. Almost all of the RVs had left too. With no one else around in the dark, Anita wasn’t about to try to set up the second tent, so we set out organizing our big tent better so we’d be more comfortable. Anita also swapped out the tent stakes with the better ones she’d bought to stabilize the tent more. We were all so exhausted that we went to bed early but kept getting woke up by the weather radio alerting us of flash flood warnings. It then started to rain hard at our location.
The storms came in three waves with the second one being the worst. It rained so hard that water flowed under our tent floor like a river, then the wind picked up. Between the rain and wind I wondered if the power lines we were camped under might fall, then the tent collapsed on us! Anita and I sprang up from our airbeds and pushed the tent up off of us.
Anita went out into the pouring rain to secure the tent stakes again. It was then that the National Weather Service issued a flash flood emergency for the Kansas City area. Nine inches of rain had fallen in some areas in just a few hours! We wondered if we were going to be swept away?
Miraculously, we made it through the night and woke up to sunny skies. We spent the day visiting the Pony Express and Jes-se James House museums in St. Joseph. When we got back to our tent to pack it up, we found it collapsed again from the gusty winds that day. During the collapse some of the tent supports must have bent, because it took us much longer to pack up than it did to set up. It was nearly 9:00 p.m. before we finally pulled out for the 6-1/2 hour drive back home.
We drove through the night. Anita and I kept switching as drivers to keep from falling asleep. Grandma and the kids slept most of the way, but not much for us. It was just shy of 5:00 a.m. when we dropped Grandma off at home, and everyone was heading into work as we traveled the last stretch of freeway to-wards our house, safe and sound at last. Eclipse from the international space station. Photo Courtesy NASA.
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OctOber 16, 2017, Meeting
T he September meeting was held at DTN in Burnsville. John Wetter, below, updated the group on the his-tory and current operations of the HopWRF project. Photo by Daniel Dix.
— Jarrod Schoenecker, TCMetSoc Vice President
mESoScalE minuTESmonThly mEETing Summary
WinTEr WEaThEr conTESTSo you Think you can ForEcaST!?
Our annual winter weather contest is still accepting entries until November 30. Here’s what you’ll be attempting to predict for the period December 1, 2017 to April 30, 2018:
• Coldest temperature• Total snowfall• Highest storm-total snowfall• Ice-out date on Lake MinnetonkaWinners of the temperature and snowfall categories will receive $20 gift cards. The Minnetonka ice-out date
is a tiebreaker.You can make your forecast by going to our winter weather contest entry page at tcmetsoc.org/winter_contest .Someone’s going to win. If you don’t enter, it won’t be you!
— Chris Bovitz, TCMetSoc Webmaster
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ocTobEr
MinnesOta Water resOurces cOnference 17-18Saint Paul RiveRcentRehttPS://cce.umn.edu/minneSota-wateR-ReSouRceS-confeRence
tcMetsOc Meeting & speakers 19 PRe-Social houR 4:30P mooSe countRy whiSkey and food 857 Sibley memoRial hwy mendota heightS, minneSota (next dooR to thomPSon lightning PRotection) meeting and PReSentation 6:00P thomPSon lightning PRotection touR & info levi kaRney PReSenting location thomPSon lightning PRotection 901 Sibley memoRial hwy weSt St Paul, minneSota (35e & mn13)nOrthern plains Winter Weather WOrkshOp 26-27
holiday inn, St. cloud, minneSotahttp://www.npwww.org/
noVEmbEr
WiscOnsin Winter Weather aWareness Week 6-10MinnesOta Winter Weather aWareness Week 13-1725th annual kuehnast lecture 16 keynote SPeakeR: maRk Seeley 2:00P univeRSity of minneSota macnameRa alumni centeR httPS://www.Swac.umn.edu/lectuReS/kuehnaSttcMetsOc Meeting & speakers 16 PRe-Social houR 4:30-5:30P hell’S kitchen 80 S 9th St minneaPoliS, minneSota meeting, touR, telecaSt and QueStionS 5:45P wcco entRy (PRe-RegiStRation ReQuiRed!) mike auguStyniak hoSting 6:00 Pm telecaSt meeting, touR and Q & a to follow. contact [email protected] to RegiSteR. location wcco-tv 90 S 11th St minneaPoliS, minneSota
dEcEmbEr
Winter Weather cOntest starts 1nO Meeting. next Meeting in January.
cirruS buSinESSEVEnTS, mEETingS and gaThEringS
Hidden Falls, Nerstrand Big Woods State Park as fall colors start in early October. Photo: Jarrod Schoenecker
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