Category Archives: Weather, Climate and Science

Since Mark and I moved to the east side of town, I haven’t been riding my bike as much. I experimented for a bit with driving the first two or three miles and riding the rest, and a few times with linking biking and bus routes. Yesterday morning, I sucked it up and rode the whole 9.5 miles from home again.

The morning ride was surprisingly pleasant. I buzzed up the hill to our department in the foothills west of town in about 45 minutes. Much better than the hour-long rides I used to do when we first moved. I think my little red bike is faster, and perhaps all of the Lumpy Ridge climbing this year helped a bit with my aerobic fitness, who knows.

The trip home, however was MUCH more exciting! At about 1:30p, flash flood warnings were issued for our town. In the past, these late summer storms have produced fast and deadly flooding. I left the department when heavy rain suddenly appeared south of town, and attempted to beat the storm home.

I failed at that. I’d say yesterday was the most soaked I have ever been in my life. I was dripping wet and making squishy noises when I finally walked into the garage. I was nearly struck by lightening, pounded by hail, and road through a flooding creek more than once. Amazingly, my 16 year-old Timbuk 2 backpack is STILL waterproof!

I didn’t get to take any pictures, but you can enjoy a breakdown of the exciting ride on the map below. Click to see it full size and hopefully you can read my commentary. Mark road south-to-north in a break in the weather at around 6p and only had light rain for about 2 miles. Ah, cruel fate.

So, for years Mark and I worked for Beckman Coulter (originally SAGAIN), writing software that controlled huge, expensive, very smart automatic pipetting machines. I knew more about the intricacies of fluid transfer via automated pipetting than just about anybody in the world. Mark was the first Software R&D employee at SAGIAN, and had spent 10 years working on the software problems surrounding driving smart liquid transfers.

So, yes, we laughed sooooo hard when we say this commercial this afternoon. Mark is still walking around our house singing the song. You deserve to automate…

We did the drive back from St. Louis in one day, leaving my parents’ house at around 6am and getting back to Fort Collins at around 8p. We’ve done this drive before, and while it is long, it’s not too hard. It’s fun to put an audio book on and just cruise across Kansas.

Usually we’re doing the drive on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, or New Year’s Day. We’ve hit ice storms and blizzards along this stretch of I-70 that were powerful and murderous. In July, however, it’s not the snow you have to watch out for. It’s tornadoes.

So, yes, I’m an atmospheric scientist. And I certainly feel sorry for the people who have had losses due to violent storms. But, I can’t help myself. Tornados are cool!

There’s more pictures from the heavy weather on our drive home in the gallery.

We saw storms building in western Kansas, and a quick trip to the NWS website from the iPhone confirmed my suspicions, there was a tornado on the ground to our north. However, there was so much rain, we couldn’t see it.

Later, in Eastern Colorado, I spotted a beautiful, huge, spinning supercell, and Mark stopped so I could get out and take some pictures. And then we drove closer. And took pictures. And then a little closer. And then the storm got closer to us. Standing outside and watching this beautiful, amazing storm was an incredible experience. The wind was blowing so hard I felt like I had to hang on to the car to stay standing. And it was all blowing into the bottom of that wall cloud.

The storm rotated and moved across the plain like a giant hoover, sucking up huge amounts of air. The lift from the updraft in this storm was so intense that a local extreme low pressure was forming below the cloud. That low pressure caused what little moisture that could be found in the hgh plains air to condense into low clouds below the rotating saucer above.

Then it started to hail. So we turned around a high-tailed it back to the interstate. Another check using the iPhone confirmed we were watching a super-cell storm. The national weather service had identified it as a large tornado via Doppler radar. This means that the cloud droplets were definately rotating around the updraft. But we never saw a tornado on the ground for any length of time. So, it’s doubtful that there was an actual tornado on the ground that day.

It was definitely fun to watch, though.

It’s spring, and the strong thunderstorm season is upon us (I just heard a resounding “DUH!” from every citizen of Windsor). I’ve got the camera out at night, and I’m enjoying the thunderstorms as they blow by.

Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder go when it dies? Boys, you got to be ready in every dialect with every shape and form to hex the St. Elmo’s fires, the balls of blue light that prowl the earth like sizzling cats.

– Ray Bradbury Something Wicked This Way Comes

So, when the word went out that there was a huge tornado on the ground about 10 miles from the Atmospheric Science department where I work, what did everybody do? That’s right! We ran up onto the roof to go see if we could see it!

We had a great view of the horizon from our perch on top of one of the highest buildings in the whole area. This made us aware of lightening danger, but not concerned enough to go inside. On a clear day, we can easily see past Windsor to the south and all the way into Wyoming in the north. On Thursday, however, the skies were filled with clouds, rain, and fog, so we never got a clear view of the funnel cloud.

After the storm rained itself out, our skies cleared up a bit, and we got a view of the HUGE cumulonimbus thunderhead above the storm, and eventually the remnants of the wall cloud which includes the upper part of the wide funnel. I uploaded the videos to You Tube, enjoy!

Yes, I am a big weather geek. I spend a lot of time rock climbing and hiking, but my day job is atmospheric dynamics research. So on the morning of May 22, I was happily working away when my office mate announced that a tornado had just touched down north of Greeley, Colorado.

This was especially exciting because my husband Mark works about 20 miles south east of me, and the initial storm track had the vortex heading straight for both Mark and our house! Thankfully, for us, the storm trended more to the north, and Mark saw only high winds and hail. Throughout the day, though, storms appeared in our area and tornados touched down all around us. There is a preliminary storm report at the national weather service if you click here.

We’ve had a cool, wet spring so far. Here’s a shot of clouds growing over Fort Collins this afternoon.

This commercial makes me so happy. It’s really brilliant. Enjoy!