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Davis Instruments Plays Key Role in The Weather Channel 2013 Tornado Hunt
By Doug Kohl, of Sierra Communications Meteorologists Mike Bettes and Daniel Dix love a good (bad) weather system. They, along with producer Mike Jenkins and NBC videographer Anthony Quintano, are tornado hunters and a part of The Weather Channel 2013 Tornado Hunt. They are risk-takers and thrill-seekers, reporting live from inside Tornado Alley. The team is marking a “first-ever” in tornado chase history as they send live video and real-time weather readings to the world from their car’s roof-mounted Vantage Vue solar-powered, wireless weather station. Their mobile connection to the Internet is powered by three cell providers. A satellite phone is their backup as they send the latest weather data via webcast using the Davis Instruments’ WeatherLink data logger and software.The latest team location and weather readings are continuously uploaded to The Weather Channel’s 2013 Tornado Hunt web pages on weather.com and Weather Underground. The Weather Channel’s tornado team consists of a three-vehicle convoy. The lead vehicle, a 2013 Chevy Suburban, is the scout. The chase vehicle is a 2013 GMC Yukon that sports cutting-edge instrumentation. Behind the chase vehicle is a state-of-the-art mobile satellite truck nicknamed the “Bloom Mobile” after the late NBC reporter, David Bloom. During the Iraq war desert campaign, Bloom rode in one of these mobile satellite trucks that have the ability to uplink while moving. On board the chase vehicle are four Go Pro High Definition cameras that send the images from within the vehicle, in front of the vehicle and out the back. They uplink this critical data while driving at speeds of up to 55 miles per hour (89 kpm). Mike Bettes rides shotgun in the front passenger seat, looking and acting more like a pilot inside a cockpit of the latest fighter airplane. Bettes is surrounded by instrumentation, displays and equipment. The chase vehicle serves as his mobile command post and office for five adventure-filled weeks as he and the team chase tornados through the Plains States. Bettes holds a joy stick in his lap to control the 360-degree HD Mesodome camera on top of the vehicle. Mounted to the dashboard of the car is the Vantage Vue console so he can easily see real-time data. The Vantage Vue console is connected via a USB cable to a Davis WeatherLink data logger and software. On the first day of the 2013 Tornado Hunt, Daniel Dix installed the WeatherLink software and configured WeatherLink to upload the latest readings to Weather Underground. Within minutes of loading WeatherLink, he began receiving data updates every 60 seconds. During the first week of this tornado season, the chase team drove from Dallas, to Colorado, and then throughout Kansas where they documented incredible extremes in conditions between the fronts of opposing warm and cold air masses that collided and caused cyclone thunderstorms. These thunderstorms often give birth to deadly tornados. Thanks to Vantage Vue, this is the first time the hunt team has been able to record and compare the changing weather conditions on either side of the fronts. “We recorded some crazy weather readings as we crossed from the backside of the warm front into the opposing cold air masses. Within minutes we went from readings of 85°F (30°C) to record drops down into the low 50sF (low teens C), and we did this several times a day,” said Daniel Dix, meteorologist. “We have recorded great swings in readings in the past but this is the first time we could go back and compare the data over the course of the storm as we were driving along.“ NBC’s Anthony Quintano sits in the back, shooting videos, documenting weather events and posting the latest information to Facebook, Twitter and Google. He’s the team’s social media guy as well as video historian. “In the past we could see the data, but couldn’t look back to review and analyze it. Now, we can use that information — humidity, wind, dew point — and talk about it,” said Mike Bettes, meteorologist. “We can also compare the data to the video provided by the cameras.” “The Davis instrumentation gives us more data at our fingertips. We can share information, and talk intelligently about what we see with our eyes and what the instrumentation is picking up. We can look at historical data whenever we want. We can provide instant feedback and analysis, and share it with our followers and viewers.” Few storm systems compare with the EF5 tornado that touched down in Kansas in May 2011 and traveled through Joplin, Missouri. The Weather Channel tornado chase team was the first media group to arrive on the scene to document the event and subsequent devastation. This is the fifth year The Weather Channel has been involved in the Tornado Hunt. More excitement begins during Tornado Week, Monday, April 29th, on the Weather Channel. Don’t miss the chase team’s live action, complements of Davis Instruments. Follow The Weather Channel Tornado Hunt team: The Weather Channel’s 2013 Tornado Hunt page Weather Underground’s Tornado Hunt page
Vantage Pro2 Helping to Save the Watts Towers A CBS News story about the effort to save the iconic Watts Towers in Los Angeles featured a familiar piece of science equipment: a Vantage Pro2. The towers are an amazing artistic installation created by Simon Rodia, an Italian immigrant construction worker. He worked from 1921 to 1954 creating the whimsical rebar and mortar towers that rise 100 feet above a neighborhood known for poverty and a deadly riot. The towers are studded with found objects — bits of broken 7-Up bottles, ceramic tiles, and porcelain plates and mugs. They are now designated as a National Historic Landmark, and are a California State Historic Park. The towers have survived vandalism, earthquakes, last-minute redemption from demolition, and even a safety test that included a crane and steel cables trying to pull the towers down. But time and weather have taken their toll and the structure is cracking and shedding bits of mortar and ceramic. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has partnered with the City of Los Angeles to develop a plan to repair and preserve the towers. Here's a little video about Rodia and his towers on YouTube.
>> Back to Menu "Coming soon to a theater near you: They were just ordinary Americans — ranchers watching over grazing sheep, moms hanging wash to dry in the spring sun, children walking home from school — when the unimaginable happened: millions of half-pound cannon balls, dropped from several thousands of feet struck their sleepy Colorado town — at speeds of 100 mph. In minutes, the attack was over. But the horror had just begun... " Produced by Hollywood? No, just Mother Nature in one her meaner moves. Welcome to hailstorm season! The strange thing is, the real-life movie of hailstorms wouldn't be as gory as you might think. In fact, instead of a horror flick, it might be a mystery. The mystery? Why more people are not killed by hailstones! The fact is that only a few people — less than 10 — have died after being hit by hailstones in United States in the last 150 years or so. If you add in China, India, and Bangladesh — which had a huge storm of grapefruit-sized hail that killed almost 100 people in April, 1996 — it gets a lot worse, but you still don't have enough to make hail a top villain in the "weather killers" category. Why aren't more people killed by being hit on the head by a rock-hard ball of ice? It's a good question, and it probably has something to do with the fact that hail is almost always formed by thunderstorms, and during thunderstorms, people tend to take shelter. (If a hailstorm came upon a group of people who where unable to take cover, well, the story could be very different. Like the time in 850 AD when 200 pilgrims were trekking across a high valley in the Himalayas. A hailstorm sent them all, with neatly cracked skulls, into the lake, where they froze and waited patiently until the 20th century for the lake to thaw and someone to find their remains and figure out what happened. See this story on Skeleton Lake...) But why people are not killed more often by direct hits of hailstones is probably not the right question. Dying by direct hit may be rare, but the huge impact of hailstorms has been enough to shape history. According to the Illinois State Water Survey, annual hail losses in the United States amount to $852 million in properly damage and $581 million in crop damage, for a national total of $1.433 billion. Hail destroys crops, kills livestock, breaks windows, dents cars and roofs, and causes airplane and automobile accidents. It worsens flash floods by clogging drainage, and makes roads impassable. All in just 6 minutes, the average duration of a hailstorm. (Want more info of the damage of hail? Check out this list of deadly or costly hailstorms on Wikipedia.) What the hail is hail anyway? (Forgive our language. It's just irresistible.) How can a microscopic bit of soot become an ice bullet? All you need is an unstable air mass that develops into a cumulonimbus cloud (a nice little convective storm in which the lowest layers are relatively warm and humid) and some large frozen raindrops (graupel) or any particles such as dust, salt or soot — even insects. The particle begins to accumulate supercooled liquid droplets (accretion) as it gets lifted higher into the cloud on updrafts, and even more when the updraft is tilted and the pellet goes laterally through the cloud. When it gets too heavy for the updraft, it begins to fall. It might fall out of the cloud, or it might be lifted again, and again, by another updraft, adding more layers to the pellet. Layers and layers can be added until a stone the size of a pea or a golf ball, or a grapefruit, finally falls from 3 miles (4.8 km) above the earth onto your windshield. It takes one million cloud droplets to make a raindrop, and 10 billion cloud droplets to make a golf-ball-sized hailstone. The golf ball would have to stay in the cloud 5 to 10 minutes to get that big. Some hail melts before it hits the ground, but the hail that falls does so in a narrow band below the cloud. The good news is that the larger the stone, the fewer there are. The bad news is that the same weather conditions that lead to hail can also lead to high winds (that can make a big hailstone hit you faster and harder), as well as tornadoes, lightning, and heavy rain. Sorting out what damage was done by which item on the extreme weather menu can be difficult. (But those holes in the roof? Pretty easy.) Horror stories and baseball-sized ice bombs aside, what child can resist the sudden serendipitous springtime hail storm? The deafening sound on a tin roof, the bright stones dancing on the sidewalk, the not-snowlike piles of ice peas, the quickness of it -- there's barely time to get outside before it's gone; hailstorms are yet another of those complicated, beautiful, dangerous gifts from Mother Nature's springtime arsenal.
>> Back to Menu Lightning Zaps Tech Manager's Home: Consoles are Okay! Our Tech Tip this month was inspired by a real-life incident that struck (pun intended) very close to our Tech Team's heart: a lightning strike at the home of our own Tech Support manager, Brett. While entertaining a houseful of teenagers, Brett's home suddenly lit up and shuddered to a very loud boom. The sudden silence that followed was all the more eerie in the total dark of power loss. It was clear that the dramatic spring thunderstorm had come uncomfortably close to Brett's home. Being a tech wizard, Brett had most of his electronics plugged into surge protectors, and since the lightning hit not the house but the ground and/or power lines nearby, only the dishwasher and a non-surge-protected television were damaged. And being a tech wizard at Davis, the undamaged electronics included a whole complement of Davis consoles. Brett, with the passion of a recent convert, says this is a good reason to use batteries to power your console during lightning storm season. If you have a cabled system or must use AC power, at least use surge protectors. "Surge protectors can help in an indirect lightning hit," Brett said, "but they haven't made the surge protector that will stop a hundred-million-volt direct lightning strike. But batteries will run your Vantage Vue or Vantage Pro2 console for up to a year. And when they are getting low, your console will show a 'low console battery' message, so you don't have to worry about losing data to dead batteries." (After this experience, Brett is planning to install a whole-house surge protector at the breaker box.) Here are a few pointers from the NWS for indoor safety during thunder storms:
In a timely note, Kyle Richardson sent this sad photograph of what used to be his Vantage Vue.
"Loved our weather station, here is the aftermath of a direct lightning strike," Kyle eulogized. Since weather stations are sometimes mounted on roofs, they can be the highest thing around — exactly not what you want to be in the event of a lightning strike. To avoid your station becoming a lightning rod, you should check with a local electrical contractor to make sure it is installed safely for your area.
>> Back to Menu We've been waiting to be discovered by Hollywood casting agents, and it's finally happened. Well, sort of. The casting agents were in the UK and France, not Hollywood, and the filming took place on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, but our little television star is front and center. In fact, he's sort of a villain! The PBS series, "Death in Paradise," starring Ben Miller and Sara Martins, featured a guest star in Season 2, Episode 7, "The Hurricane." In this quirky crime comedy-drama, a university meteorology student monitoring an approaching hurricane has been murdered. And the murder weapon seems to be ... (dum dum dum, duuuum)... the pole on which one of the island's Vantage Vues was mounted! The murder scene is horrifying! Splintered wood, the poor little Vantage Vue on its side on the ground, its little wind cups stilled, still desperately trying to send one last packet... Oh, and the dead body and blood are bad, too. The fun series is about a city-loving British investigator assigned as the police inspector on the laid-back, sun-drenched (fictional) island of Saint-Marie. Poor Inspector Poole - he wears a gray suit and tie every day and hates sand - but he is rather good at figuring out whodunnit from the most subtle clues. In "The Hurricane," the cameos of the murder scene Vantage Vue, as well as the four others the meteorologists are monitoring, make this episode even more fun to watch! It has already aired in the UK, but if you are in the U.S., you can probably catch it this spring on your local PBS channel. Check your local listings and set the DVR!
Indian Blogger Community Provides Weather Data In a story on The Hindu's web site, we found a photo of the founder of a local blogger community composed of weather enthusiasts. K. Ehsan Ahmed is shown with his Vantage Pro2, which he has installed on the roof of his home in Nungambakkam, in Chennai, India. Ehsan and about 30 colleagues get together — virtually — to do what all weather enthusiasts love to do: talk (or in this case, blog) about the weather. They also track storm systems, and provide a live weather site that allows visitors to check on the fast-changing weather conditions of the coast of the Bay of Bengal, including cyclones and thunderstorms. We enjoyed reading that Ehsan first got interested in the weather when he was a student here in the U.S. and that he took that love of weather back to India with him!
>> Back to Menu What do you think of the E-Newsletter? How can we improve? How do you use your Davis weather products? E-mail us at news@davisnet.com. Question 1: The rebar and cement Watts Towers move. Which environmental factor is NOT a cause of movement? Rainfall is not a major contributor to movement of the towers. Since Watts in Los Angeles, rainfall is low. And yes, sunlight does make them move — every day they move an inch to the north when the sun comes up, and back when the sun goes down. >> Back to Menu Question 2: A and G, first and last, wrong and wronger. A hailmary is some kind of football play, we think; and a hailspout just sounded good. Hailstorm: a convective storm that produces hail. Fill in the blanks: The largest recorded U.S. hailstone fell in the town of ______(A.)______ and was ______(B.)___________ in diameter and weighed ______(C.)__________. A. Vivian, SD. Okay, we did try to trick you. Aurora (2003) and Coffeyville (1970) had the 2nd and 3rd place winners! Essay Question: If you cut a large hailstone in half, you can see concentric circles around the center pellet, alternating milky white and clear. Explain. The layers are a record of the hailstone's trips up into the cloud, down and then up again. The milky layers form higher in the cloud, where it is very cold, and the moisture is lower. The supercooled droplets freeze immediately, trapping gases so it looks cloudy. The clear layers form in the lower, warmer part of the cloud where there are more droplets.They collect so fast that surface temperature remains above 0°C and the hailstone becomes coated in clear water which cools and freezes slowly so trapped gases can escape. True or False: A hailstorm had an important role in the French Revolution. True. A huge hailstorm in France in 1799 destroyed crops and did little to help quell the anger of a hungry, rebellious population. How did you do? Since we don't grade on a curve, you all get A's and you get to watch a video as your reward! Pick: "Golf ball-size hail makes an Oklahoma swimming pool boil over" or "Golf ball-sized hail makes a Georgia swimming pool boil over" or "Mothership drops bowling balls over South Dakota" ; (in this one, no hail falls but there's a gorgeous cumulonimbus in this one, shot by extreme weather photographer, Chad Cowan!) >> Back to Menu Question 3:True or False: If you can hear thunder, you are close enough to be struck. If you could capture a lightning strike and slice it, it's diameter would probably be no bigger than a half dollar. The lightning you see goes from cloud to earth. Lightning never strikes twice. Most lightning-strike victims die. >> Back to Menu Well, of course! According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2010 Atmospheric Scientists, including meteorologists, with a Bachelor's degree had a median pay of $87,780. And the job outlook is pretty rosy, with projected growth of about 11% between 2010 and 2020. Plus he'd get to think about, talk about, read about and study weather, all day long. >> Back to Menu Question 5: The Bay of Bengal is studded with many islands, home to some 5 million fisherman and villagers. Some of those islanders have fled their homes and become refugees. What are they escaping from? B, rising sea levels. (Half credit for pirates, of which there seem to be plenty, and they are blood thirsty and dangerous.) 80,000 people have become "climate refugees" from the island of Kutubia alone, which is predicted to be gone in 30 years. The island of Lohachara was the first inhabited island known to be lost due to rising sea levels. We saw the last of it in 2006. Extra Credit: True: 1, 2, 4 & 6, False: 3 & 5. Until recently, only foreigners and non-Bangladeshi were permitted on St. Martin's Island. That has changed now! Though the city is called Seven Pagodas, only one ancient temple, the Shore Temple, stands in the Indian city of Mahabalipuram. The other six are real only in a legend in which the god Indra got angry and sunk the city, leaving just the Shore Temple above water. >> Back to Menu Davis! What do you think of our E-news? Please continue to send your comments, weather URLs, and story suggestions to news@davisnet.com. We look forward to getting your comments and any responses you have to the Davis E-News. Member participation is what keeps the Davis E-News alive and kicking. Well, that's it for this edition. You'll be hearing from us again next month! The Davis Weather Club E-Newsletter is published by Davis Instruments. Vantage Vue, Vantage Pro2, Vantage Pro2 Plus, Vantage Pro, Vantage Pro Plus, Weather Monitor, Weather Wizard, WeatherLink, WeatherLink IP, Weather Envoy, and Perception are trademarks of Davis Instruments Corp. |
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WEATHER IN ACTION
