Questions about Mid-Month Pattern

QUESTIONS ABOUT MID-MONTH PATTERN

For much of the next week here in Wichita, we will be looking at gradually increasing temperatures and chances for storms. Will the pattern change and do we have any cool downs in store for us? Lets take a look.

Multiple waves of energy look to traverse the US through the end of this week and into the weekend. Looking at water vapor imagery this morning, you can make out multiple pieces of energy with the most organized looking system being located in the East. There is also another piece currently pushing onshore in the West. This will be what brings the Plains to Upper Midwest severe weather chances this weekend.

Zooming into this severe weather threat would show that there is a decent setup. That aforementioned wave moving onshore in the West will progress eastward, with the GFS showing its position to be titled from east Kansas through southern Minnesota Saturday evening. Coupled with upper level divergence present, these two mechanisms will provide appreciable amounts of lift to promote thunderstorm development.

With respect to moisture and how buoyant the atmosphere will be. There are a few things which are going to allow air to rise. First off, dew points in the 60s-70s coupled with diurnal heating is going to push CAPE values at least into the 1000-2000 J/kg range. Areas of higher instability will be present across southeast Kansas through south-central Iowa.

On top of this, dry air at 700 mb will continue to promote upward motion via latent heat release.

As storms develop on the front, northwesterly shear coupled with the movement of the shortwave being zonal (west to east) will push storms east-northeast. Storms will continue through the overnight into Wisconsin given the presence of a LLJ. These overnight storms could bring much needed rain to portions of northern Iowa where portions of the area are experiencing extreme drought.

Beyond Saturday, the weather will remain mostly clean through much of the next week.

The next significant chance of rain will be next weekend as a cold front attempts to push through the Central Plains. Currently, there is agreement from model output that storms will occur either Saturday or Sunday. The questions are, does the front move through and cool us down? OR do we go right back to the pattern we have been dealing with?

Looking at what the disagreement is, you can see below that the GFS has a more anomalous trough across the High Plains and Prairies while the Euro has substantial ridging setting up into the Northwest.

There are big implications here as the GFS would usher in cooler temperatures while the Euro would keep us in a similar pattern to what we’ve been seeing most of the summer (gradual warming, large cold front, gradual warming, so on so forth…). Ensembles would side with the Euro idea. The 00z GEFS mid level heights so a pattern that is more indicative of what the operation euro is putting out than what the GFS is.

Another thing to consider and monitor going forward will be the impact of the tropical Pacific on the mid level pattern across the US mid to late month. Currently, there is a storm moving up west Asia. The remnants of this storm will make its influence on the US about a week later. Perhaps the GFS is onto something here.

However, I like the placement of the blocking ridge in the northeast Pacific. There will also be multiple storms impacting the east Pacific which should act to enhance the ridge to the north.

Perhaps a blend of the Euro/GFS is what is preferred. Namely that a trough will dig into the US but will kick more into the east rather than the High Plains and Prairies. This is what the EPS hints at which means much of the same pattern moving into late August.

Good news with that is for July through August, we have been 2.8 degrees below normal. We also have only got 1.2 inches of rain which is making it dry out. This will make being outside enjoyable compared to usually being roasted out by this point in the summer.

Tropical Activity To Ramp Up Mid-Month

We’ve been in quite the stretch of quiet weather in the tropics, but there are signs that activity will quickly trend upwards later this month.

First off, why the lull?

Tropical cyclones thrive when there is divergence of mass in the upper troposphere. This allows air to efficiently rise. Late in July, much of the tropics were under upper convergence. This causes large scale downward motion. Take a look at the two images below which were analyzed on July 20^th and 25^th. Brown colors denote convergence and you can see quite a bit of it from Central America through the southeast Atlantic on the 20^th and 25^th.

That wasn’t the only thing suppressing development. Through the later half of July, there was wind shear present across much of the Caribbean. Tropical cyclones can strengthen in environments where the deep layer shear is less than 20 knots, but as you can see in the image below, the shear was as high as 50 knots.

Lastly, to get any storm to develop, you need moisture. Much of the tropical Atlantic was pestered with dry air through the later half of July. Looking at the satellite image below from the 23^rd, you can see those brick red/orange colors from the Antilles through west Africa. This is dry air and it has been pushing into the Atlantic storm track, keeping thunderstorm and development potential to a minimum.

Today is August 4^th and as we look forward to mid August, things are changing which could allow tropical activity to ramp up.

First, looking at our convergent wind aloft. Things continue to trend towards more upper level divergence. Examining the analysis from August 1^st, you can see there is quite a bit of divergence developing in the southeast Atlantic. The only area of potential downward motion is across the Antilles.

With respect to shear, there absolutely is still some present, but the spacial area of 20 knots + is much less now than what it was in late July.

Trends would indicate that while there will be areas of shear present across the Caribbean which will act to suppress tropical activity, there won’t be enough shear to eliminate the potential with there being ample areas of favorable shear for storms to strengthen (ex. East coast, Antilles).

Last but not least, looking at moisture. The African monsoon is particularly active at the moment which is causing a deep layer of moisture to move off the continent. See the 06z GFS below.

Dry air is still in place to the north of this area but for the time being, this moisture is going to continue to be serviced by the storm activity over Africa. This is going to allow moisture to surge westward into the Caribbean, and eventually towards the Southeast US by mid month.

If one of these waves can move into a favorable shear environment then it won’t have much trouble quickly organizing, especially with such warm water present. Sea surface temperatures are ripe across the Gulf into the Florida Keys at over 30C but are plenty warm across all of the tropics.

Ensemble models are picking up on this development potential with many members outputting low centers from the Gulf through the Outer Banks mid month. All this is to say that while we have been in a lull, there is good reason not to let your guard down. Especially with us approaching the peak of tropical season.

Tropical Cyclones and Precipitation Distribution

Tropical Storm Cristobal ~June 6th, 2020

Flooding and storm surge are the two most deadly elements of a tropical cyclone (TC). In this post, I am going to explore the forecasting of heavy rain and flooding within TCs. To do this, I have read “Precipitation Distribution Associated with Landfalling Tropical Cyclones over the Eastern United States” by Eyad Atallah, Lance F. Bosart and Anantha R. Aiyyer. I plan to summarize what I believe to be the key findings from this paper, and will organize them here so they can be utilized in the operational setting.

INTRO

Before they enter their study, they talk in brief about extratropical transition (ET), how it occurs, its varying definitions depending on frameworks and what determines its strength. They note, [from Atallah and Bosart (2003)] that the distribution and intensity of rainfall depend on surrounding synoptic features (troughs/ridges) and the TC’s transition to a extratropical cyclone (EC). So when ET occurs is very important in addition to the surrounding synoptic features. ET is a complicated process and as mentioned above, it has varying definitions depending on different frameworks (QG, PV, cross sections, surface frontal boundaries). There are a few debated definitions of how ET occurs. First, changes in the low-level thickness field and mid-tropospheric thermal wind; second and more simply, look at the system and once you can identify frontal and thermal structures ET has occurred. It should be noted that while it is important to know when ET will occur, it matters little the strength of the extratropical cyclone as heavy rain events have been recorded out both weak [Hurricane Camille (1969)] and strong [Irene (1999)] ECs. As to whether the ECs will be strong or not depends mostly on whether a negatively titled trough is located upstream of a TC [Hart et al. (2006)]. If the trough is positively tilted, than a weaker EC is preferred. However, “the main focus of this paper is to understand the synoptic-scale dynamics modulating the precipitation distribution associated with landfalling TCs” (pg. 2187).

STORMS STUDIED

The 32 storms that were compiled were storms which had all of the following:

• Landfall was along either the Gulf or Atlantic coasts of the United States.
• The storm had to display a poleward component in its track.
• The storm was far enough inland to permit rain measurements in all quadrants of the storm.

Some of the storms that the team analyzed are listed below with LOC meaning “left of center” and ROC meaning “right of center”. You will note that some fall under both of the LOC and the ROC composite. The times listed are when the cyclone started exhibiting that particular bias.

RESULTS

The storm tracks which produced the LOC and ROC composites are below.

With the LOC tracks, notice that there is a pretty broad spectrum of tracks with respect to spacial area covered. This is to say that while the Appalachians and cold air damming (CAD) will influence precipitation distribution, it is not necessary for a LOC event to occur as they occur to the east and west of the Apps. At the same time however, do note that the LOC tracks which make landfall farther north align with the LOC composite rather than the ROC tracks. This is to say that storm tracks which landfall farther north will be more heavily influenced by CAD and mid-level troughs which make heavy precipitation LOC more likely. With the ROC tracks, notice that all storms that made landfall on the east coast which exhibited ROC characteristics made landfall between Georgia and South Carolina. The rest of the tracks made landfall across the Gulf. Note that tracks which push farther into the Mississippi Valley are more likely to be ROC while most of the LOC tracks are farther east.

SYNOPTIC OVERVIEW

The above figure has 1000-500 mb thickness in dashed lines, 1000 mb heights in solid lines and 850-200 mb shear in m/s filled. The LOC is on the left while the ROC composite is on the right.

In short…

LOC – Look for a trough approaching the TC from the west, which will also negatively tilt into the vicinity of the TC. This will in turn effectively turn the TC into a EC. If you utilize a cross section analysis of this composite (see Fig. 7 below ), you will see strong easterly isentropic ascent to the west of the center of the cyclone, which “is consistent with a redistribution of precipitation to the northwest quadrant of the storm” (pg. 2197).

ROC – “Storms that exhibit an ROC precipitation distribution tend to be the ones that weakly interact with midlatitude troughs in comparison to the LOC storms. ROC storms are in general characterized by small circulation centers at the time of landfall. As the circulation center approaches a zonally oriented baroclinic zone to the north, the storm tilts downshear (see Fig. 7d below) causing the precipitation to become displaced to the east of the cyclone.”

Below is the schematic of landfalling TCs with LOC portrayed by (a) and ROC portrayed by (b). The solid black lines are 250 mb flow, the motion and shear arrows portray respective vectors as well as relative magnitude, the green line is the parcel path starting at the surface in the warm sector and ending in the mid to upper troposphere in the cold sector and the grey area is the location of the heaviest precipitation.

This post was triggered by Tropical Storm Cristobal which occurred in early June of 2020. It was a ROC storm and while the models were incredibly consistent, the rain forecast was tricky, specifically on the right flank. Below is the observed rainfall, with landfall having occurred in south-central Louisiana. As an update to this post or separate one, I hope to tackle a quick analysis of why Cristobal was a ROC precipitation event with respect to the findings presented in this paper. Namely that surrounding synoptic features (troughs/ridges) and the TC’s transition to a extratropical cyclone (EC) impact the distribution and intensity of rainfall.

Reference

Atallah, E., L. F. Bosart, and A. R. Aiyyer, 2007: Precipitation Distribution Associated with Landfalling Tropical Cyclones over the Eastern United States. Mon. Wea. Rev., 135, 2185–2206, https://doi.org/10.1175/MWR3382.1.

Turn Again

Over the last month, I have been reflecting on the end of the Gospel of Luke at my adoration hour. Specifically on Peter’s denial and Jesus meeting the disciples on the road to Emmaus. I feel called to share what I have heard. I will start with a reflection on Peter’s denial before jumping to the road to Emmaus with a later post.

First, a little context as the end of Luke’s gospel is action packed! Right after the Last Supper and institution of the Eucharist, “A dispute also arose among them, which of them was to be regarded as the greatest” (Lk 22:24). I sometimes find myself in this same train of thought. Its only natural for me to do so right? After all, this country is built on an ideal that if you’re not first, you’re last. Jesus answers, “let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves” (22:26). Come again Jesus? Isn’t this backwards? Could you imagine the apostles reaction? Jesus continues, “You are those who have continued with me in my trials; as my Father appointed a kingdom for me, so do I appoint for you that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Jesus, the Son of God, has appointed me to eat and drink at His table, to be served by Him. “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” This is a prayer that Catholics pray before receiving the Eucharist.

My heart gets hung on “Lord I am not worthy” because I don’t feel worthy of such an invitation. The Son of God is calling me to His table!? My soul needs healing first, I need a nicer suit, a haircut, something because this is a BIG deal. This is a constant struggle of mine and can ultimately be attributed to the world we live in. Our world is broken, it is fallen. I’m not saying there is no beauty in it, because it is filled with beauty, but it is also fallen. Watch the nightly news, then go hike a mountain; you’ll see what I mean. This brings doubt and despair to me regarding my faith. I’m alone, I am here just to make money and be happy. I choose to do what is not best for me. I choose to do what is bad with respect to my faith! I choose what is wrong, I choose to sin. It seems like all I can do is wait for things to mess up! A voice says, “just don’t try, you know its hard work.” I go against the invitation from the Son of God. I sin repeatedly. I fall, over and over again like a baby learning to walk. But why oh God would you allow me to struggle with these things? Please keep these struggles away from my family. How could I turn down such a grand invitation?? Because I want to protect myself??? I want to serve myself??? I want to serve myself. The voice says again, “asking others for help will bring judgement and a lessening of my reputation. Keep these things to yourself if you want to be first.” For some reason, things don’t turn out the way I expect or the way I want. Why Lord?

Jesus says, “Simon (insert your name), Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (22:31,32).

Turn again? In principle, how stupid could I be to turn down happiness? Peter says, “Lord I am ready to go with you to prison and to death,” knowing that what Jesus offers is the happiness he desires. Peter is wiling, I am willing, but Jesus answers, “I tell you Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you three times deny that you know me.”

As things go south for Jesus, his followers scatter, they run from the good, they choose what is wrong, to run from Jesus. Peter indeed denies Jesus three times “and he went out and wept bitterly” (22:62). The truth I think about as I read these pages is, every decision we make does indeed matter. There is a right and there is a wrong. The wrong choices lead us down a spiraling road to despair, laziness and anxiety about the future. Especially in recent times; putting our trust in the world, in our plans will only lead to anxiety about the future. However, living by faith puts a focus on the present moment, which in turn helps to plan/guide your future. I know this path leads to life/happiness/peace. I speak from experience. Jesus has prayed for our faith, that it might not fail. Jesus is pro faith, but what happens to me when I choose what is wrong? In the following chapter, we see what Jesus does for Peter, what he does for me. He endures a horrendous death, the death that I should deserve and then He defeats death itself. The consequences of Peter’s wrong doing, of my wrong doing, are taken away assuming that we “turn again” (32). Remember Jesus’ words, “Simon (insert your name), Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned (Epistrepho) again, strengthen your brethren” (22:31,32). The road will be rough at times, we might fail, our plans fail, but our faith never fails. Even in our shortcomings, all we have to do is turn around. Give the song below a listen before reading on.

Fun fact, the original Greek word used here for “turn” is “Epistrepho.” This word appears more in the book of Acts than anywhere else in the Bible. The book of Acts is essentially the testimony of the apostles and their work. So the power of this passage is strong. While we may fail like Peter’s denial, Jesus prays that our faith will never fail, that we will always turn to Him. Doing this will strengthen our friends in faith, which has gone on to make the Catholic Church a billion people strong. Its not about me. Its about serving others, loving others, a sort of collective. This is the good news, “for God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). You don’t have to take the broken road, there is a free invitation to a never ending wedding reception. Who doesn’t love free stuff? We will fail along the way, but turn again, ALWAYS TURN and God will be there as faith in God never fails. Perfect faith means to always turn, constantly turn. Then, you serve. Strengthen others around you as faith is meant to be shared because its not even ours to possess. Its a total gift from God. Lead by example, be happy, live like no one is watching. This gives me peace and joy in what is seemingly the day-to-day grind. In reality, its an invitation to a greater life, an eternal one. God bless you, Holy Spirit guide you, Jesus pray that our faith may never fail.

Kauai Adventure

I’m not sure Elizabeth and I were prepared for how quickly the whole thing would pass by. I’m talking about the wedding, not the honeymoon. Oh trust me, I’ll get to the honeymoon. We had been engaged for a year and a half, had plenty of time to prepare everything, the wedding weekend would be a walk in the park right? In hind sight, it was a walk in the park as everyone, friends and family included, were unbelievably helpful. However, in the moment, things past by like a bullet train headed for the 4^th of July. It was the best day of my life! And interestingly enough, with each passing day from the wedding; the memories of the day seem to get better and better… I’m no love expert but I feel like we done-did something right then.

The wedding weekend quickly came and past. We blinked and it was over but at the same time just beginning. Liz and I had the first flight out of Indy to Phoenix on Monday morning. We then flew the too many hour long flight to Kauai. Lets get it started up in herr.

DAY 1 – CHICKENS AND MAI TAIS

We got off our flight and located our locally rented rental car. It was a smoking hot 2001, white Hyundai Accent. We had to walk through a few roosters to get to the car. We chuckled, thought of the character Hay-Hay from Moana and thought “oh what a funny one time experience that was ha ha ha”… WRONG. We had no clue that roosters had taken over the island. They were everywhere for the whole week. You couldn’t always see them, but you can hear them… especially at 3 am.

Here’s a picture of Grandma, our smoking hot 2001 Accent with no power windows. It did have power steering and could dominate the intense Kauai terrain! We also blended right in with the local crowd. All the tourists who use Hertz or Enterprise get fancy Mustangs or Cadillacs but we had Grandma!

We stopped into a restaurant called Lemongrass on our way up to our condo. I was heavily influenced by the sign which read something to the extent of “Happy Hour 4-5 pm Come drink lots”… Okay, okay, it didn’t say exactly that but that’s how I read it in my mind. I looked at Grandma’s faded time and it was 3:53. I made a squeeling turn decision to stop for food there. Liz was very happy with my driving so far! We had our first Mai Tai’s and dinner which were both amazing! Goodness did it feel great to sit with no where else to go, or anything to get done. Let the good times role.

DAY 2 – TO THE WEST

We got up early on Tuesday to make our way to the rigorous west side of the island. It was a two-hour drive and we were nearly circling the entire island to get there. Picture driving clockwise from 1 o’clock to 10 o’clock on a analog clock. That’s what we did. It would have been quicker to drive counterclockwise but that’s not how time works! But for real though, to get from 1 to 10 o’clock the short way would involve getting through the intense terrain of the Napali Coast. This is impossible as there are no roads that traverse the Napali Coast. You can only traverse it on foot. Liz and I actually had permits to hike the beautiful coastline but it was closed due to the historic flooding that occurred there in April (I was more disappointed about this than Liz was… The Napali Coast is a intense hike!). Napali aside, we drove over to the Kalalau Lookout and had a few hours just to chill and talk in the car on our way there. As we ascended into the high terrain of the west side of the island, it felt like we were approaching Arizona’s Grand Canyon. It was very rocky, canyon-like terrain!

We ended up hiking an unofficial trail off the Kalalau Lookout which a local told us had great views of the Napali Coast and wasn’t too strenuous… The local was actually our waitress from Lemongrass the evening before. From beginning to end, the locals were a huge help. We sat next to a Mrs. Morgan on our flight in who gave us so many great tips! Basically, don’t be nervous to talk to the locals. Back to the hike… IT WAS A GREAT HIKE! Breathtaking views the entire way. Probably because we were staring down a thousand foot drop on either side of the ridge we were hiking. Needless to say, there was some fairly decent exposure but the trail was dry and well established so we were never worried for our safety. Although I have much more hiking experience than Liz, she was more comfortable on this hike than I was. You see, I am afraid of heights and I kid you not that the views were amazing the entire way. The rush of nature was overwhelming. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

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On our drive back, we stopped at Kokee Lodge and Museum for our 2^nd round of mai tais. We were happy hikers.

As we slowly made our way back, we decided to go to Polihale State Park to catch the sunset and some well needed beach time. Little did I know what we had to go over to get there. I do not suggest traversing a 3 mile rocky road with a 2001 Hyundai Accent. I think my thoughts the entire way down this road consisted of something like, “PLEASE GRANDMA, JUST HANG IN THERE.” It was slow going, 15 mph slow, but we made it to the beach and we nearly had the whole beach to ourselves! It was well worth the wait. We played some ultimate frisbee for a while and Liz wants me to comment on the fact that I threw it in the water multiple times to make her chase after it. I will say that it may or may not have been on purpose. We left the beach as it started getting dark and it stormed our entire way back to the condo as we made our way through the south and east side of the island. We had easterly flow most of the week which means the west side of the island was high and dry but the east side of the island was a different story. WEST SIDE, DRY SIDE!

DAY 3 – SLEEPING GIANT

Liz and I didn’t realize how much we really did on Tuesday (Day 2). How we were even alive the next day is beyond us, especially following the wedding weekend. So we chilled out and enjoyed some Kalua coffee in the morning with our bird friend Frank (see below) and then shipped out to hike sleeping giant in the afternoon despite the soreness. This is a very popular hike, I figured it would be fairly easy and quick. Which it was! We were just a little sore from all the walking around we did from the previous day which made this hike a little strenuous. There also weren’t amazing views to distract you from your tiredness like the day before. This hike is located on the eastern-middle side of the island, so the ecosystem is much more tropical on this side of the island. We trudged through what felt like jungle until we reached the summit which treated us with some awesome views of Kapaa and the eastern side of the island.

Afterwards we ran over to Sleeping Giant Grill for their fish tacos (a different local told us to go there… the locals were very friendly) and they were AMAZING! It could have been how hungry we were, but the fish in these tacos were amazing!! We ate a ton of fish throughout the week and it was some of the best fish I’ve ever had. There was a dance bar called Tree’s in the same complex as the grill which we went to after thinking we could find a place to dance for a while. We had none of it though. Nobody was dancing. Not that it would have stopped us but the DJ was playing some weird low-fi hip hop music which I enjoy, but not when you’re trying to get people dancing. Either way, we still had a good time dancing to a few songs and enjoyed more mai tais!

DAY 4 – SURFS UP!

Learned how to surf in the morning. Our instructor set the standard from the stereotypical surfer bro. His name was Clay. Good guy. Seeing as we were in the water, there are no pictures, but I can assure you that both Liz and I got up on a surf board. Interesting tid bit, I was talking to Clay while we were waiting for a good set of waves to come in and was asking how his place survived the rains in April. He wasn’t on Kauai at the time but told me to look at the mountains in the back drop of Hanalei Beach. You could see many brown stripes which extended the entirety of the cliffs on these mountains. Apparently, they were all waterfalls back in April. The mountains I was looking at had received 3 feet of rainfall within 24 hours, so it was a historic amount of rain we are talking about. Here’s an article about it. From surfing in the morning, we rented and road some bikes on the east side trail in the afternoon and finally got some time for Liz to shop around Kapaa. We had a great dinner at Olympic Café which is located right on the main road through Kapaa. We got a table right on the road and we had some great views. Liz wants me to say her Pina Colada was excellent!

Small note, throughout the whole week we nearly exclusively referred to one another as husband and wife to make it sound like this was all real… I’m still not sure if it was or not.

DAY 5 – What Day Is It?

We had lost track of the days at this point in the honeymoon. What a blast we were having. We had no plans starting off each day, we more or less planned our days as they came. This day, I managed to go on a run earlier in the morning which allowed me to explore the area we were staying which was Princeville. I managed to run my way to an abandon resort off of Hanalei Bay! This was not on purpose, I just stumbled upon it. It was incredible looking. I felt like I was discovering the abandon Jurassic Park. It was a huge resort on the east side of the bay back in the 1970s but Hurricane Iniki in 1992 wiped it out and it was never rebuilt. Being alert for dinosaurs, I managed to find my way down to the beach following a relatively defined path. To my left, a gentleman was painting the forgotten views of the mountains behind Hanalei. What I ended up finding was another extremely secluded beach. Personally, I found this beach to be much nicer than Polihale. I ran back to tell Liz about the place and we ended up spending the afternoon enjoying that beach.

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And in the evening, we EAT!!! We had tickets to a Luau in the evening and I’m not sure I have ever eaten so much food… I kid you not, just ask Liz. I was sooo full. It was an all you can eat buffet and open bar (yes the bar included mai tai’s). We had a great time and enjoyed the show that went along with it. Liz’s favorite guy was the one that spun the fire… To which I say typical. In addition, we were not the only Bauer’s there! There was another table which was filled with Bauer’s. We were not related but based off there enthusiasm for life, I wanted to say we were.

DAY 6 – Rocky Day

Enjoyed the condo in the morning. By this point in the week, we learned that we had a smart TV which had Netflix on it so we enjoyed bits of a few movies. Overall though, we didn’t spend too much time in the condo but it really was VERY nice. We got it through AirBnB which is basically a website which rents out houses like a hotel, except in most situations you get the whole house to yourself. Its also cheaper than hotels. Anyway, come the afternoon we made our way to another hike which would take us to Secret Falls. With all the hiking and walking around we had done throughout the week, we were unadmittedly pretty tired. That being said, we were defeated by this hike. There was some rather significant rock maneuvering which made for a pretty slow and exhaustive hike. Not to mention that it was mud city everywhere. This was hike where all the bugs came out to play as well, otherwise the bugs on the island were minimal. We got very dirty on this one. We didn’t make it to the falls but still had a fun time enjoying what I would say was the closest we came to seeing what Kauai was truly like.

I almost forgot, we had more mai tai’s in the evening! This should not be a surprise at this point.

DAY 7 – Church Clothes!

Church was done right in Kauai. First off, they celebrated the sacrifice of the mass, this is good! They also greeted us with leis and the church was open so there were birds inside the church. You would think it would be annoying, but it actually sounded natural. It was a very simple church and it was a fantastic mass as they all are. From mass, we had an urge to get a good brunch, we are Catholic after all! So we made our way to the Kountry Kitchen. This was a restaurant filled with pictures of roosters! At this point in the week, if we never had to hear a rooster again; we would be completely okay with it. The roosters had become wild across the island after Hurricane Iniki and they were literally EVERYWHERE and they would never shut up. It would be 3 am and we would still be hearing them. Brunch was awesome though! After brunch, we made our way to Shipwrecks Beach. It was a pretty windy day so we napped on the beach a bit and then decided to hike down the coastline to Makauwahi Cave. I actually have a ton of GoPro pictures from this little adventure so enjoy a few of these below.

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DAY 8 – Napali Wannabe

As I mentioned previously, we were unable to hike the Napali Coast because of the rains back in April. I knew this before we got to the island but I was still hoping to be able to get to the trailhead to view the potential for a great hike in the future. So this morning we decided we would drive down there and explore a bit. Well, I was going to explore; Liz was planning on sitting on the beach. Turns out though, they have the national guard blocking the road with M16’s! We drove just past Hanalei before the road was completely blocked off. We weren’t able to get anywhere close to the trailhead. I was pretty bummed about this but we ended up having a good time walking and shopping around Hanalei.

We stayed close to home in the afternoon and decided to knock out Queens Bath which is a very popular site to see on the north side of the island. We walked there and it involves a very brief, but MUDDY hike to get to and the views of the coast are a huge benefit for the amount of time/effort it takes to hike there. Once there, the cliffs were amazingly different than what we had witnessed across the rest of the island and had a great time jumping into one of the inlets which had turtles swimming in it! … Not sure how I felt about swimming with giant sea turtles… Jack Sparrow! A quick side note, I would not recommend jumping in if you are not a good swimmer or climber as it takes some strength to be able to pull yourself out of the very turbulent waters! Many people have actually died jumping into the water in this area. We made sure we had a good exit strategy before we jumped in and had no issues. We continued to hike around the area for a while before we walked back to the condo. We went back to Hanalei in the evening to shop around and then literally ran to the beach to catch what looked like would be an amazing sunset. It decided to rain on us instead… classic Kauai.

DAY 9 – Hippie Day

Our flight left Kauai at 10:01 pm on this day and we had to be checked out of our AirBnB by 10 am. This means we had 8-9 hours to kill before we had to be at the airport. So we decided to do a “usual” touristy activity. We went to Princeville Ranch and did their 4×4 tour which included driving ATV’s, zip lining, swimming and even MORE HIKING. We were a little tired of hiking at this point. We had a fun overall experience. By far the best part about it was not having to worry about food, water or directions. They provided everything and told us where to go for the whole morning which allowed us to just enjoy the experience and each other.

As one can note, we got very muddy again… Mud is everywhere in Kauai… We needed a place to shower after the Ranch. We asked our guides and they explained that there were some public showers at Anini Beach so we headed that way as we no longer had the luxury of being able to go back to the condo to clean off. We were so tired that we ended up going right to the beach and just taking a nap for an hour. We awoke to hermit crabs scavenging for lunch right in front of our eyes which ended up keeping us from falling back asleep. The thought of a crabs crawling across our stomachs was not a pleasant one. I showered at the beach which had functioning showers. This was a very campy, hippie-esque beach. There were multiple people who clearly lived on the beach here. One guy lived out of his van which was filled to the brim with stuff and had grass the size of Kansas wheat surrounding it. He waved and I calmly waved back. The whole island had been unbelievably welcoming to us the entire week. I was not ready to go home.

We got some nice, clean clothes on and made our way back to the big city where we went to the Koloa Rum Company for some free rum! The last thing we did before we headed to the airport was eat dinner at a place called Keokis. It had great food and an awesome atmosphere! Liz also managed to get some last minute shopping in. I was so thrilled.

As we made our way to the airport and dropped off the car, things came down to earth very quickly. We did not realize it, but we had just had the best couple weeks of our lives to date. Liz had graduated, I had my bachelor party, then we had the wedding and we just finished the honeymoon. Now a drive to Wichita would be all that would stand between us and the “real world”. As I finish this blog post nearly a month into marriage, I can say that I still love Liz and I’m pretty sure she still loves me. All is going smoothly in Wichita and we can’t wait to make it back to Kauai someday. Here’s to a life spent happily ever after! Mahalo!

Sorry… had to sneak in a few of my wedding favorites.

California Atmospheric Rivers: A Review of the 2016-2017 West Winter

INTRO

An historic winter occurred in much of the Pacific Northwest extending into California, and under a neutral El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) pattern to boot! Not many long range forecasters would have given much weight to a forecast that was outputting the Pacific Northwest and California having a hectic winter back in the fall, but here we are looking back on the season and what a crazy ride it has been. To give you an idea on just how crazy a ride it’s been, let’s take a look to the record charts. To start, Nevada and Wyoming as a state had their wettest winter seasons on record (December-February). California had its second wettest winter on record (184% of normal precipitation) with the only other winter ahead of it being the El Nino winter of 1969. The drought in California was annihilated in the month of February with multiple atmospheric river induced storms moving over the region. The drought ridden state entered the month with 51% of it being under a drought designation. By the end of the month, only 9% of the state was under a drought designation with many regions seeing catastrophic flooding! Speaking of February, this specific month was a particularly active one for much of the West. Portola, California, a city nestled in a valley amongst the Sierra Nevada Mountains, received 12.36 inches of precipitation in February. This broke all previous records in place in its 102 year history of recording data. Bonners Ferry in far northern Idaho also received its record amount of precipitation with records started in 1907! Figure 1 below shows the distribution of precipitation as a percent of average which you’ll note a large portion of the west was above normal. Along the Sierra Nevada in February, snow water equivalent values were 150-200% of their normal values for February. Much of the winter out west was truly very active with much of the region seeing above normal precipitation. Take a look at figure 2 for a few highlighted station records with those graphics being put together by the National Centers for Environmental Information.

Figure 1: Percent of Normal Precipitation for the month of February

Figure 2: Review of observations near record this winter.

OUTLINE

With the wide area of above average precipitation out west this winter, this leads one to ask the question (at least it leads me to ask the question); how did this happen? Especially with a neutral to even weak La Nina ENSO pattern, things didn’t look like they were going to do more than an average winter before the season began. Well, first off, there is more that needs to be looked at in long range forecasting than just the ENSO pattern. There are a plethora of other climate teleconnections that can be studied and analyzed when trying to come to a consensus on a long range forecast. A simple google search of these phenomena will pull you up a variety of utilities to help one learn about these connections. I will draw more on the specific connections that were crucial to the west winter in the sections to come, but for now I return to the question at hand; how did this happen? To answer this question, my plan is to walk you through a specific event that impacted California from February 16th through the 18th of 2017. From there, we will take a look at the Pacific Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomalies, their impact on the storm itself and how they influenced the rest of the winter. Lastly, I will conclude on how this setup can be recognized for seasonal forecasts. This will include an analysis on teleconnections and upstream conditions from this past winter.

SETTING THE SCENE

To understand the significance of the February 16^th through the 18^th event, one must be aware of what happened leading up to February 16^th… It was bad. My shifts at AccuWeather were crazy busy only because the western half of the country was so active. Multiple waves of energy crashed into Northern and Central California from February 1^st through the 10^th. This created abnormally high amounts of precipitation from the northern central valleys to the Coastal and Sierra Mountain Ranges. I’m not talking just a few inches above normal either, areas centered on Portola were 9-12 inches above normal only half way through the month as depicted by figure 3 below. Farther south in California wasn’t as bad for the beginning of February, a little rain did manage to make it to southern California on the evening of the 10^th but for the most part southern California was thirsting for some rain going into middle February with much of the region under moderate drought conditions which you can see below in figure 4.

Figure 3: Departure from mean precipitation from the 1st through the 16th.

Figure 4: Drought monitor for the end of January.

From February 10^th through the 15^th, dry weather moved into all of California which made for a nice break within a stormy pattern. Although no precipitation was falling, runoff from excessive mountain rain caused significant issues surrounding the Sierra Nevada. This was heavily publicized on Portola (picture 1) and the Oroville Dam (picture 2). The surrounding cities in the valley adjacent to the Oroville Dam were actually evacuated in fear that the dam would fail and deal catastrophic flooding damage to areas across the central inner valleys just southeast of Sacramento. This made national, continuous news coverage for multiple days surrounding Valentine’s Day. I actually remember coming into work on Valentine’s Day with news coverage saying that the dam could break at any moment. It was a rather intense situation waiting to see if the dam would break and the potential warnings we would have to issue. Meanwhile, all of this unfolding while another Pacific storm system was brewing in the Central Pacific. *insert Jaws theme music here*

Picture 1: Firefighters responding to the widespread flooding in Portola. Multiple water rescues occurred.

Picture 2: Crews investigating the extent of damage to the Orville Dam spillway on the 10th.

THE CASE

Leading up to February 16^th, model output was consistent on there being another large event for California which would last from February 16^th through the 18^th. Most media outlets were already hyping up the next round of rain while they were covering the flooding already occurring. The spatial and temporal variability in where the strongest rain and snow would occur with the next wave was high which led to forecasts shifting around quite a bit leading up to the event. As usual, I think too much weight is put on the quantitative precipitation forecast (QPF) output by deterministic models. Especially when forecasting along the west coast in these scenarios, numerical weather models will not do a good job. I repeat… they will not do a good job! This is mainly due to the atmospheric conditions over the Pacific Ocean not being sampled well due to a lack of surface observations and available soundings. We do have decent satellite coverage which helps out but overall the data that is being ingested into models as initial conditions over the Pacific is largely parameterized which leads to errors in the modeled forecast. Hopefully, GOES-16 (a new kick butt geostationary satellite) will aid in creating better surface and upper air analysis for models to utilize. Until then though, west coast forecasting is a great place for a human forecaster to shine (yay me and other fellow meteorologists!). With the human aspect of forecasting in these scenarios, I say that knowledge of upper air conditions (especially 700-500 mb) and sea surface temperature anomalies become increasingly important to determine where the heaviest rain or snow will occur. I’ll demonstrate this later in the post. With that being said, let’s take a look at what models were outputting for this event.

500 mb

A predominant zonal pattern was in place across the Northern Pacific for the days leading up to this event. Over the Central Rockies, a distinguishable ridge was present. The 12z upper air analysis on the 15^th (figure 5) showed a narrow 70 to 115 knot jet extending from Japan to the northwest US and western Canada. This jet would quickly amplify with the 12z analysis on the 16^th (figure 6) as multiple embedded filaments of vorticity sped through the predominant zonal jet. By 12z on the 17^th (figure 7), multiple 500 mb waves are lining up under geostrophic flow across the Northern Pacific with large amounts of quasi geostrophic accent occurring in southern California. Meanwhile, the ridge controlling the Central Rockies, although it broke down slightly in response to wave that moved over the top of it on the 16^th, remained entrenched. This pattern made for an active pattern for the Pacific Northwest while also being conducive to cut off low pressure systems sweeping underneath the upper ridge. Upon studying GFS and European model data 48 hours before the event (Figure 8-9). Minimal differences were seen between the GFS’s and European’s 500 mb model out. The GFS actually ended up verifying slightly better with the upper low not closing off until after 00z on the 19^th. The Euro had it cut off by this time. This is why it is important to study upper air conditions first when preparing a forecast because most models within 48 hours do a, for all intensive purposes, a near perfect job on upper air conditions. This isn’t the case with modeled surface conditions.

Figure 5: 500 mb Analysis on 12z February 15th by the Ocean Prediction Center

Figure 6: 500 mb Analysis on 12z February 16th by the Ocean Prediction Center

Figure 7: 500 mb Analysis on 12z February 17th by the Ocean Prediction Center

Figure 8: European modeled 500 mb conditions valid 00z on Saturday the 18th and initialized on 12z on Thu the 16th.

Figure 9: GFS modeled 500 mb conditions valid 00z on Saturday the 18th and initialized on 12z on Thu the 16th.

700 mb

In pulling up 700 mb relative humidity plots, one could very well visualize the river of moisture which was setting up to the southwest of the California coast at 12z on the 16^th. More reasons to be familiar with your upper air conditions! Cough cough**. The images below (Figure 10-11) show the Euro and GFS output for that hour. These are the modeled initialized conditions. Both the GFS and Euro handled the moisture with a fair amount of agreement except that the GFS has a bias to saturate more of the layer than the Euro does. Overall though, the two models highlighted similar areas and values of RH. I wasn’t able to find any analysis data to verify initialized model data.

Figure 10: European modeled 700 mb conditions valid 12z on Thursday the 16th and initialized on 12z on Thu the 16th.

Figure 11: GFS modeled 700 mb conditions valid 12z on Thursday the 16th and initialized on 12z on Thu the 16th. Comparing GFS/Euro, you can see GFS has a bias to saturate more of the layer than the Euro does. Hmmmm.

850 mb

In looking at precipitable water (pwats) and 850 mb winds, one could even better visualize the strength and depth of the atmospheric river that was setting up back to the southwest of California. On the morning of the 17^th, 1+ inch pwats moved into southwest California. It was at this time frame that the heaviest rainfall was moving over southwest California. These high pwat values would remain in the region through 00z on the 18^th when the system finally shifted east into the Desert Southwest (See figures 12-13 below). However, with a whole day of 1 inch pwats in the area, southwest California was bound to pick up some significant precipitation.

Figure 12: European modeled 850 mb conditions with precipitable water filled. Valid 00z on Saturday the 18th and initialized on 12z on Thu the 16th. This was around the end of the heaviest rainfall in SW California.

Figure 13: GFS modeled 850 mb conditions with precipitable water filled. Valid 00z on Saturday the 18th and initialized on 12z on Thu the 16th. This was around the end of the heaviest rainfall in SW California.

Surface

By 12z on the 16^th, surface cyclogenesis had already occurred northeast of the Hawaiian Islands with a closed surface low of ~1000 mb (see figure below). This system would continue to deepen as it moved eastward, making landfall just south of Sacramento on the evening of the 17^th as a seasonably powerful 984 mb low (see figure below). Shortly after this early on the 18^th, the low occluded and turned into an open wave by the evening of the 18^th. Its associated 500 mb shortwave was moving nearly completely meridional and parallel with the coast, the surface low followed suit and remained hung up on the coast through the 18^th (see 00z 19^th output below). Although the low was occluded and weakening by this point, this still allowed for heavy, warm sector rains to continue in southern California.

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What Ended Up Happening

With all these parameters in place, a record setting rain event unfolded for much of California from 00z on the February 16^th through the afternoon of February 18^th. Precipitation spread from northern portions of the state to southern portions throughout the course of the event as the system tracked east-southeast along the coast (see radar loop below). Precipitation did manage to linger in the northern central valleys throughout this event due to sufficient moisture return from the Pacific and the surface low remaining just off the coast. You can visualize with the modeled surface plots above. The European ended up doing a little better with the track of the surface low remaining along the coast. That said, much of the coastal range saw 2 to 4 inches of rainfall with northwestern California seeing locally higher totals to 6 inches. The southwest coastal mountains, focused from Santa Barbara to north of Los Angeles saw as much as 10 inches of rainfall with the valleys seeing anywhere from 2 to 5 inches of rainfall. The northern central valleys of California saw 2 to 4 inches with the southern valleys seeing 0.5 to 1 inch of rainfall being heavily shadowed from the mountains to the southwest. Rainfall of this spatial and temporal magnitude made for potent and widespread flooding. Take a look at rainfall totals below (figure 14-15) National headlines again were made with the coastal range, the northern central valley and southwest California all seeing significant flooding.

Composite Radar Loop: 00z on the 16th through 15z on the 18th.

Figure 14: Total accumulated rainfall between February 16th and 18th.

Figure 15: Total accumulated rainfall zoomed on Southwest California between February 16th and 18th.

An Active Month for the West Explained

As I’ve hopefully made clear in this post, the spotlight was on much of the West (especially California) for the entire month of February. From the Oroville Dam in the beginning of the month, to the heavy, flooding rains in the middle of the month, to what seemed to be continued heavy snow over the Sierra Nevada, to say the west was under an active weather pattern this past winter would be an understatement. Going back to the records that were mentioned in the introduction, Portola, CA broke all records with 12.36” of precipitation through the month. Records for Portola started back in 1915. Venado, CA located amongst the coastal range north of San Francisco, picked up an incredible 37.45” with its previous record being 19.24”! In the Sierra Nevada Range, Tahoe City received 16.66” of precipitation which was its 2^nd wettest February on record. This was 293% of its normal precipitation! Shoot dang. The Sierra Nevada saw snow water equivalent values 150-200% of normal for February. The drought was also gone! At the start of the month, 51% of the state was under a drought designation with only 9% having any drought designation by the end of the month. Idaho and Wyoming also saw a very wet month of February. For the whole winter (Dec.-Feb.), Nevada and Wyoming saw their wettest winter on record! Although the focus of this write up is the event which impacted California on February 16^th through the 18^th, I would like to use this event to help summarize the entire winter out west as it was these kind of systems which continued to occur through the winter. Let me explain.

So it’s about time for some explanations. It is hypothesized, by me and a few other colleges that I work with, that teleconnections, the upstream fall conditions on the Asian continent and sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies across the Pacific were to blame for the development of events in February for California and really the active west winter as a whole. Lets finally take a look into teleconnections as promised from earlier. The three teleconnections analyzed for this blog post were the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Pacific North American (PNA) teleconnection. As mentioned in the introduction, the ENSO pattern was neutral for this winter which allowed for other teleconnections to shine. The PDO was neutral to slightly positive for the whole winter. A positive PDO causes a zonal distribution of SST anomalies across the central Pacific with water just off the West Coast of North America being normal (neither anomalously cold or warm). This pattern can in turn promote a strong zonal jet stream across the Pacific Ocean due to the thermal wind. This said, any system that develops over the Pacific would have a clean shot at riding this jet stream right towards the western US. The PNA is a widely variable teleconnection which generally oscillates back and forth from negative to positive on the course of a week or so. However, when you average the PNA index over the course of the 2017 winter (December through February), it is slightly positive at 0.08. At the start of the event on February 16th, the index was very positive (1.4) and made a transition to nearly neutral (0.3) by the end of the event. A positive PNA is associated with above average 500 mb heights over the Intermountain West. This puts the upstream side of the ridge, where upward atmospheric motion occurs along the west coast. How convenient, mmm yes. This allowed systems throughout the winter to either slide up over the ridge towards areas like Bonners Ferry, ID (far northern Idaho) which saw its record amount of precipitation, or slide underneath the ridge like our case on February 16th through the 18th. That said, we need to dwell a little more on the zonal distribution of SST’s.

What caused this zonal distribution of SST in the Pacific throughout this winter? Certainly the PDO reflected this zonal distribution, but the PDO itself wasn’t the cause but rather just a measure of the distribution itself. So it is proposed that upstream conditions in the fall of 2016 in eastern Asia influenced and cooled SST across the northern Pacific. From October to November, anomalously cold conditions were in place across much of northern Asia (images below from the NWS show global temperatures with the ONLY area of significant below normal temperatures being in northeast Asia… also view figure 16 for reanalysis data). Looking at 300 mb winds across this area for the same time, we see anomalously strong westerly winds, pushing this cold air across the northern Pacific (figure 17) and in turn causing the anomalously cool SST in the northern Pacific to develop in October and expand juristically in November (see grouping of images below to visualize this… its pretty incredible really. I have the previous winters (2015-2016) SST anomalies attached as well for comparison).

Temperatures Departures from Average for October

Temperatures Departures from Average for November

Figure 16: Reanalysis data of surface temperature anomalies in October of 2016 of the Asian Continent. Note large area of below normal temperatures!!

Figure 17: Reanalysis data of 300mb zonal wind anomalies in October to November of 2016 over the Asian Continent. Note large area of above average winds in northeast Asia and northern Japan into the Northern Pacific.

Sea surface temperature anomalies for October 2015.

Sea surface temperature anomalies for October 2016.

Sea surface temperature anomalies for November 2015.

Sea surface temperature anomalies for November 2016.

Sea surface temperature anomalies for December 2015.

Sea surface temperature anomalies for December 2016.

Sea surface temperature anomalies for January 2016.

Sea surface temperature anomalies for January 2017.

Sea surface temperature anomalies for February 2016.

Sea surface temperature anomalies for February 2017.

Sea surface temperature anomalies for March 2016.

Sea surface temperature anomalies for March 2017.

Conclusion

An historic winter occurred out west during the 2016-2017 season. It seemed that there was never an end in sight with storm after storm rolling into the west throughout the winter months. In analyzing one storm from February 16^th through 18^th, 2017, highlighted forecast parameters were handled well by both models (EURO and GFS) and did not shift much within 48 hours of the event. Especially the upper air features which were handled very well. As usually the case though, the forecast challenge appeared to be mesoscale in nature. Namely where the best upslope flow caused enhanced precipitation along the coastal mountains whos orientation was normal to the southwest flow aloft. The hardest hit areas included the central Sierra Nevada, the California coastal mountain ranges and southwest California, especially in and around Santa Barbara and Oxnard, CA. Record and widespread flooding was seen across many of these areas, busting the drought that had a stranglehold on California for years. In short, this active pattern was caused by sea surface temperature anomalies in the northern Pacific Ocean. Specifically colder anomalous waters to the north with warmer waters to the south. This gradient promoted prime conditions for continued surface cyclogenesis to occur (much like the classic polar front theory). The stronger, prolonged systems (like Feb 16-18) commonly developed under the aid of a shortwave aloft. So looking at upper levels, an El Nino-esque Pacific jet stream extended (nearly zonally) from Japan to the northwest US coast for much of mid-February. Becoming very amplified at times (Feb 16-18).  The sea surface temperatures anomalies in the Pacific were caused by an anomalously cold air mass (5º below monthly normal!) which developed over eastern Asia extending east through northern Japan. At the same time, an anomalously strong upper jet stream was in place to advect this air over the Northern Pacific Ocean. Sea surface temperatures in the northern Pacific began responding to this air mass in October, but especially expanded in November before temperatures in East Asia rebounded in December. These cool sea surface temperatures slowly drifted eastward across the Pacific throughout the winter, allowing storm systems to ride along the gradient towards the west coast the United States.

Going forward for long range forecasting, less weight needs to be put on the ENSO especially when it is neutral. Look to sea surface temperature anomalies and how the jet across the Pacific is setting up and what is changing these two variables. I recommend looking into how the fall season in eastern Asia transpired as in this past 2016-2017 winter it looked to play a pivotal role for the Western US.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions or comments!

 

https://www.timeout.com/los-angeles/blog/current-storm-hitting-l-a-is-already-causing-flooding-and-damage-021717

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/22/san-jose-flood-mayor-clear-failure-delayed-warning/

http://www.fox4now.com/news/news-photo-gallery/floods-swallow-california-as-severe-storms-kill-three

A Colorado Adventure!

Its amazing what a week in the wilderness will do for you. Regardless of whether you think you need it or not, making sporadic or planned trips to nature refreshes the body and soul in ways that you won’t be able to aptly explain when all is said and done. God definitely has a plan for us to enjoy his awesome creation to bring us into a greater communion with Him. For my most recent outdoor adventure, I took to the San Isabel National Forecast northwest of Buena Vista, Colorado with the pastor of my church Fr. David and a group of 10 other guys. The trip’s dates were Tuesday, July 11th through Monday the 17th. The goals for the week; hike mountains, catch fish, stay dry, quote as much Spongebob as possible (“pizza would be nice”), and not run out of TP. For those that don’t know, TP means toilet paper… I’m surprised you didn’t know that 🙂

With stops factored in, the drive from Wichita to Buena Vista is about 10 hours. We do gain an hour heading out west which was nice but it was still 10 hours. Bleh. Driving up to the Front Range of the Rockies Tuesday afternoon we ran into some summertime, “gnat” thunderstorms. We had 8 of us and our gear packed into 2 trucks. Trucks is significant because all of our gear was uncovered in the back which lead us to frantically cover everything to keep things from getting wet. It ended up storming pretty much everyday on our trip, so looking back, it really was a meaningless endeavor to try and keep things dry, but its the thought that counts right?

… Ya nevermind, it was worth it. It preceded to sporadically storm for the rest of our way to the trailhead.

Thankfully the rain cleared up just in time to keep us dry as we hiked from our trailhead (North Cottonwood Creek) to our campsite late in the afternoon on Tuesday. We hiked into the night before we established camp just east of Anglemeyer Lake at a little over 11,000 feet.

DAY 2

This adventure was one which was unlike anything I’d ever done before. Never have I gone on a trip where I knew so few people for such a long duration of time. Not that this worried me at all but it allowed me to observe how each one of the 12 guys settled into a role in the group throughout the week. Cheese aside, we found Anglemeyer Lake the morning after we established camp. This lake was actually quite difficult to find in the thick foliage below the tree line as the trees and boulders were hefty. Once we found the lake, we fished for a while. All I have to say is trout are stupid (actually smart, but I think stupid). We didn’t catch anything. To make ourselves feel better, or just for entertainment, we (Joe, Patrick and I) did manage to climb up to the tree line towards Birthday Peak to be gifted with some nice views of the valley below. As we started hiking down we got caught in a storm which would be a regular experience by the end of the week.

Anglemeyer Lake… Mucho stupid trout in this lake.

Somewhere up Birthday Peak looking towards Mt. Harvard… to be conquered later in the week. Mt. Columbia to the far upper right.

DAY 3

THE DAY WE ALMOST DIED BY LIGHTNING. It was a great start to the day. Everyone was ready to knock out a 14er with our sights set on Mt. Columbia. A few others and myself had scouted out the trail going towards Columbia the afternoon before (once it had stopped raining that is) so our morning hike was pretty routine other than some shoe swallowing areas of mud. Even up to when we started climbing. It was a beautiful morning! Pretty much every morning started off with some cloud cover, but would dissipate as the nocturnal boundary layer would get mixed out. The nocturnal boundary layer aids in keeping moisture near the surface overnight. As the ground cools overnight it can create a thick layer of clouds at the top of the layer or in some cases fog. When the sun comes up, air rises through this layer as the ground warms and “cleans it out”. Sorry for the weather tangents on this post… The weather blew my mind this week.

Looking south towards Yale from the base of Columbia

Back to mountains! As we started our accent, we missed the trail going up… Fail. This led to us scrambling up some pretty complex terrain. Terrain varied from dirt which gave out under each step (more like quick sand) to large boulders which required some significant scrambling. More than half of our group ended up turning back towards camp about half way up the mountain. I found myself bringing up the back of the group, so when the other group turned back I got to happily climb my way up the complex terrain to catch up with Fr. David and his brother Mike. I have to note that I was terrified of causing a giant rock slide multiple times along this journey between SLOW GROUP (woop woop!) and Father in which I was on my own.

Anyway, we summited! I was actually VERY tired at this point and wanted the ability to summon pizza at will, but at least I had my weight in spicy jerky, mmmmm so much jerky. The summit was in a cloud when we arrived which was awesome to see how the complex terrain impacted the movement of air which the condensed parcels (clouds) portrayed beautifully. After some time resting at the summit, the clouds cleared out right as we were leaving which allowed us to grab some quick pictures before our decent.

Clouded Mt. Columbia summit. Pretty large drop off on either side here

Looking towards Mt. Harvard. I think all the soft white covering on the mountain is graupel.

A cleared Columbia summit! Woo! Looking northeast of summit here.

On our way down, the weather quickly started deteriorating. What started off being just a few frozen hydro-meteors (ice) falling from the sky quickly turned into an all out graupel (like small hail) downpour! As we stopped to pull out our rain gear to stay dry and warm, we suddenly felt a large pressure change and a release of electrical energy which was rapidly followed by a large flash and BOOOOMM!! I’d say a bolt of lightning was easily within 100 yards of our position. This was the most scared I’ve been in a while and the closest I’ve ever been to a lightning strike. At this point, Fr. David led us down the mountain in haste with it pouring a mix of ice and rain… It was pretty terrible. My hands and feet were soaked and freezing cold. Honestly, thoughts of just surviving the day were coming into my head as I said a prayer that God would let me get through this. Ya, I need to calm down. We made it obviously … It was an intense experience though. It made reaching a warm sleeping bag and a warm cup of water all the more satisfying. Night came, and so was DAY 3.

Climbing down… Ya thats the storm.

DAY 4 

After a trying previous WedThurs?? … Eh screw it, I’ve lost track of days at this point. We rested up and fished at Anglemeyer again. Having a warm breakfast was fantastic while lunch was pretty much nola bars and my weight in jerky, mmmm jerky. Ricardo caught 3 trout, not saving any for the rest of us. I think this was also the day he knocked over a tree… I can’t remember. So funny story, this guy knocked over a whole tree close to our campsite as everyone was napping. It sounded loud enough to be a gunshot but felt like an earthquake. This was no scrub tree either! It was a mongo tree! Dang, Ricardo was the man on this trip. We hiked back to camp after fishing, cleaned the 3 fish we caught and cooked them on the campfire. Although there wasn’t a lot to go around, the fish was amazing!!! I’m not sure if it was because I was super hungry or if fresh water mountain trout are just that good but it was some dang good fish. We were going to cook dinner in addition to the fish but a rain storm moved in before we could do so and it preceded to rain the rest of the evening. This forced us to spend the rest of the evening in our tents. Our plan going into the next day was to wake up early and climb Mt. Harvard which we were about to do without a dinner. Well this could be a disaster.

DAY 5

BEST HIKE OF MY LIFE.

Despite there being no dinner the night before, moral exponentially increased as we hiked above the tree line. In addition, we decided to split into two groups for Mt. Harvard. A faster group and a slower group. This made everyone more comfortable on the climb with everyone being able to hike at a pace comfortable for them. We had a cloudy sunrise that gave way to some warm sunshine as we accented the steepest part of Harvard. I like this hike already!

Coming up Harvard, just after sunrise and above the tree line. Views of the valley were amazing. The best is yet to come…

Really quick, I have to mention Osa (Fathers dog) which is the reason I managed to grab so many awesome pictures on the way up (including the one above). She kept losing her booties on the way up. So yes, this lead to us hunting for booties a time or two. She didn’t really like wearing them but it was rough terrain with plenty of sharp rocks and cactus. These were no ordinary “foo-foo” booties but the equivalent of  mountaineering boots for your small 15-30 lb dog. This dog Osa is probably the most BA small dog I’ve ever met. Anyway, I’m not really sure how to put into words my summit experience on Harvard as we reached the top. It was cold and windy at first but only got warmer as more of our brothers reached the top. The views were breathtaking.

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Usually people would associate being at the summit as the best part of the hike but in this particular case that wasn’t so. Both groups combined at the top and once everyone was well rested we made our way back down together. Helping one another out, cracking jokes and enjoying company. I will never forgot the immense feeling of peace that I felt as a gazed on the vast valley below me with the company of my new brothers. I tasted a bit of heaven. Praise God. We had fun as we made our back down the mountain, even managed to get in a snowball fight with Ricardo (my tent mate) where I nearly cracked my knee open (still have the scar). Father said mass for us in the evening. He did this everyday which was AMAZING and preceded dinner. FOOD WAS SO GOOD.

“I’m sleepin’ well tonight boys!”

DAY 6

The following day was spent much like day 4 was except everyone was in awe of the hike we had the day before. Ricardo, Paco and I made our way to Anglemeyer to get an early start on some fishing. It apparently was a weekend this day because there were a decent amount of tents camped up along the lake. I still had no clue as to what the date or day of the week was. Shortly after we arrived, some guys broke out some cool fly fishing skillz which looked cool but they didn’t catch anything… Trout are still stupid. We had been using lures the previous few days but had switched to live bait in the form of worms by this point. It was WAY more effective. Its how Ricardo caught his 3 fish a few days earlier. We did have to dig up our own worms though which was kind of a new adventure for me in itself. I searched for a while! I ended up finding a bunch of them down along the stream in the valley. This made for a productive day of fishing. Mike, Father’s brother, ended up catching 3 fish. Father caught 2 and Ricardo caught 1 which was double the amount of fish we had from a few nights ago. Hoozah! Dinner! Although I never caught any fish cause trout are stupid, I did manage to clean my first trout and enjoy a good portion of the best fish I’ve ever had. Night came, vanilla Crown Royal followed. Cheers.

DAY 7

We packed it up on what I now remember to be Monday the 17th. I only remember because I had to be back at work on Tuesday night. Booo. Although we were packing up, it was amazing to see how we had all settled into roles around the camp. There’s always things to get done around a camp site and each one of us found something to work on. Ricardo knocked over WHOLE size trees with is bear hands for dry fire wood. Multiple guys would help out with meal prep while a few different guys would help out with clean up while others were simply and extraordinarily being fathers. It was a cool thing to witness.

DCIM100GOPRO

DCIM100GOPRO

Once we got back to the cars, we headed off to Leadville, CO for some beer and a meal. We stopped at a place that I was really fascinated with called the Silver Dollar Saloon. Its a place thats been around since the gold rush in the 1860s and had quite a bit of fun history to it. Famous old gun slingers like Doc Holiday and Oscar Wilde used to walk through its doors. Not that those names are supposed to be super memorable or anything although Doc Holiday rings a bell with me. Bottom line, the place had character! I enjoyed a Sam Adams Summer Ale and a Colorado Bourbon Whiskey while learning all this random stuff. Being at a higher altitude, I must say I was gone after those 2 drinks. Afterward, we walked over to High Mountain Pies for some pizza. Thank the Lord for pizza! I grabbed a PBR and a pesto chicken, fancy pants calzone because I’m apparently Ben Wyatt. It was the best!! From there, we headed back to Wichita, but not before picking up a bottle of something special before I left. Ask nicely and I may let you have some.

More various pictures below…

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Not, Just Another Testimony

It was my last summer as a college student. Excitement and angst competed over my feelings for the future. I did a lot of thinking about where I would be in a year. I was coming off a wonderful school year in every possible way. I became friends with God by his grace for the first time, it was academically my best year by far and I got a girlfriend! God had worked in unbelievable ways to lift me off the ground in my faith. So much so that I had committed to leading a Bible study as well as leading praise and worship for a large faith awakening retreat in the coming semester. I just had to make it through the summer. Little did I know how hard that would be. I spent the summer mainly by myself working and just going about life ordinarily, it left me feeling empty and without passion for my faith. It was similar to the feeling of when a good friend moves away to pursue new ambitions or when you’re favorite TV show has come to an end. I felt lonely, trapped in sin, buried by doubt and filled with questions. I had serious second thoughts about the commitments I had made for the coming semester, thinking about different ways I could remove myself from them. As far away as I had walked from Him, I could still hear His voice shouting from a distance. Before the semester of my final school year began, I was to attend an Evangelical Training Camp (ETC) for a week to help prepare me to share my faith with others. I was nervous that I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I was correct in that assumption, but I was incorrect to be nervous. God had a plan in mind for me.

A little about Evangelical Training Camp, we had a full itinerary every day which included prayer, talks, group activities and breakout sessions. All with the goal of building habits of prayer, developing evangelical skills and building a vision for our ministry. I cannot possibly summarize my entire ETC experience as it was a fantastic time with many takeaways that I still use to this day, but I plan on summarizing how God was at work within me through ETC.

Despite my second thoughts about attending the Training Camp, I jumped headfirst into the activities and told myself that I would go about my time here with an open heart and mind, allowing God to move in me. My prayer for the week was asking God to give me something to share, to revive my fire for the faith and to make me the man that He was calling me to be. Going into a school year where I would be sharing my faith story with so many others, one of the biggest things I was nervous about was that I didn’t have much of a story to share in the first place. After all, I had just rediscovered my faith. Every morning at ETC, everyone started with a time of quiet prayer on our own. The goal from ETC’s prospective? To form daily experiences and practices of prayer that we could take with us for the rest of my lives. On day one as I sat by the lake watching the sunrise, I opened up the Bible to a random place as I did every morning that week. I turned to Galatians 5:1, which is where it all began. This verse speaks about the freedom God grants us when we stand firm in our faith. This sounded great, but was missing one thing… Freedom itself. As I mentioned, I felt trapped in sin, buried by doubt and filled with questions from a summer spent away from Him. God continued to work through the week though. On my second day I opened up to Isiah 6. In this chapter, Isiah experiences the presence and the power of God to change hearts. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts! All the Earth is filled with His glory.” Through this reading, I recognized the significance of His power and His plan for me. I prayed about this, that I would recognize His power and presence to reveal His plan for me when the time was right. The next morning, I found myself again sitting on the end of a pier enjoying the sunrise over the lake the camp sat next to. This morning, prayer was to be focused on praise! I had many reasons to be happy that morning. I really felt God’s grace entering my heart through prayer, through the people that were at the camp and through all the new information I was processing. In retrospect, it is amazing how quickly I grew close to God! I reflected like I never had before; waiting and hoping that God would speak to me. I listened and watched with my eyes closed in prayer. I saw a heart, I found myself thinking about sharing, as if God were trying to tell me to share something I didn’t have. Lastly, I felt the power of prayer or just the presence of prayer, I’m not sure. As I said, it’s amazing how quickly I felt the presence of God again in prayer. I took these thoughts to heart and decided I would find some scripture to pray over. I randomly opened to Psalm 50, which speaks to offering praise as an acceptable sacrifice to God. How fitting that it was our theme for the day! I closed the prayer, continuing to ask for God’s presence and direction in my life.

The events remaining on our second to last day were a few more group meetings and talks followed then by adoration and confession that night. I was so excited for adoration and confession, to directly experience the mercy and the mystery of our Lord. At this point in my faith journey, I had never experienced honest excitement for these sacraments before. On a scale of one to excited, I was well off the charts. I honestly could not wait to adore the true presence of our Lord in the Eucharist and to receive a clean heart through confession. My fire for my faith was back through a week of devoted prayer! I was so happy and satisfied with my faith again, but God still had more to reveal to me. When adoration began that night, I knelt down to examine my conscience before confession. This is something I struggle with generally, but God had shined a bright light into my soul revealing so much brokenness that I was ready to let the Lord mend. So I raced off to confession which was in a separate building from where adoration was. A priest from North Carolina State ended up being my confessor. This is significant because students from NC State that I had talked with throughout the week had told me that he was such a good confessor. I didn’t think much of it until the moment I realized I got him as my confessor and the confession line was for the first available priest, not pick your priest. What are the odds that I get him!? Small detail, anyway; I get to him and have nothing short of an awesome confession. We talked for a while and he made many great points of encouragement in my struggle with my faith over the summer. For my penance, he asked me to think of someone in my group to pray for. No one specific came to my mind as I had just met many of the people in my group for the first time. I told him this and as if he was expecting that answer he said that God will give me someone to pray for and connect with and that I should pray for him or her for my penance. This was by far the strangest penance I had ever received, but I was soaring high on God’s grace getting out of confession that I didn’t really think about how crazy the penance was. I’m pretty sure I ran or skipped back to the building where adoration was being held. As I walked into the hall, I immediately ran into a staff member I had met earlier in the day who was praying with anyone who wanted or needed it and he asked how I was doing as I walked through the door. I told him I was feeling free! I know it’s cheesy, but he then started praying over me, asking God to assist me in my pursuit of freedom in Christ as I take my faith back to school. It was so cool because this was a theme of prayer for my week! It put me into the right mindset to go back into adoration. I knelt down next to a friend from school that I had just met on the trip. He is not a particularly outgoing fellow, but after I knelt down, I was overcome with the presence of the Lord. My eyes started to fill with tears at which point my quiet friend embraced me. Lo and behold this presence came over me at that moment. Remember my penance? I realized that God was giving me my new friend to pray for and connect with. My friend and I exchanged some awesome prayer for the next several minutes. Giving thanks for each of our experiences at this camp, we prayed for our group and for those we would encounter back at school. It was intense! As if that was not cool enough, just after we finished praying, the praise band went up to sing a worship song “How He Loves”. I was so excited to sing my praises to the Lord. I was singing loudly when my friend taps me on the shoulder and hands me his Bible pointing at a passage for me to read and I completely lost it again. It was Psalm 50! The exact scripture I had randomly turned to that morning when the theme was praise! I instantly recognized God’s unbelievable presence yet again as He was reaffirming all that we had talked about that week together in prayer. I found through this experience that there were three points to His plan for me. Pursue a new heart to ignite my connection to Jesus through the sacraments, especially confession. Believe in the power of prayer to continue to bring me God’s grace, freedom and peace. Lastly, show joy in sharing my faith with others! I learned that through the freedom that His Son offered us, we can accomplish anything regardless of where we are on our faith journey.

Looking back on my experiences throughout the week, God was equipping me to be a faithful servant. He gave me a clean heart through confession, a story to share and my weapon to continue writing my story, prayer. He also showed me the power of praise which the Catechism says is the form of prayer which recognizes most immediately that God is God. That coming year, I lead my Bible study for the entire school year at Purdue, lead praise and worship for two awakening retreats and managed to introduce a freshman to Jesus. Today, I have graduated. I have a job doing what I love, I am a youth mentor at my local Church’s youth ministry and have started the first contemporary praise and worship band there. Although He may seem distant at times, when I simply reflect and listen, it shows just how present God has been and will be in my life. He has continued to reveal His plan since the week I was at Evangelical Training Camp, and He will continue to be the leader of my journey here on Earth.

 

Father, thank you for the gift of faith and the saving grace that you’re Son offers us. I will offer praise as my sacrifice to You now and forever.

 

At ETC!

 

A Summer from Wichita

Moving is hard after all. Its been three months since I graduated, got a job, and moved to Wichita to start a new life. At this time three months ago, I was expecting to move back home to start my summer. I had already come to terms with the fact that I probably would not have a job before I graduated. So much so that I had already made plans for what I was going to do when I made it back to my hometown in South Bend, IN. I planned on running in the mornings at Notre Dame, spending time with our new family puppy and maybe playing a few video games in the afternoon as I leisurely go about finding a job. I still have this plan on my phone and it serves as a reminder to me that life can change rapidly in the blink of an eye. Stupid excited, ecstatic, blissful, and full of anticipation filled me as I received my job offer from AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions right after seeing the new Avengers movie. I had literally just walked out of the movie theater when my new boss called me to give me the news. Not to mention that I had just finished my last final exam the day before. Needless to say, I could not think of a better time to get a job and life was good. I was unspeakably excited at the idea of this job and knew I was up to the challenges that would come along with it. The challenges ended up being a little more significant than I thought though. Throw all previous plans out the window, lets move to Wichita, Kansas!

The day after I graduated on May 18th, I moved out of the place that I called home for the last 5 years in Cary Quad at Purdue University and drove west to Kansas in search of a new home. The experience was surreal really. I was off to a place where I knew no one and I didn’t even have a place to sleep for that night. I did the only thing I could think to do which was to pray the rosary once every hour in between all the music I was listening to. Sooo much music. When I finally made it to Wichita after 12 hours of driving, I quickly came to the conclusion that there were and are a ton of apartments in Wichita. Wichita has a reputation for being a city where many people live in apartments. The city was booming with business in the 70s thanks to most major airline corporations being headquartered there. This led to many of the apartment complexes being built in the 70s. Many of the companies though have pulled out of the city which has hurt the local economy. So many of the apartment complexes are older, but also cheaper at the same time since there are so many. Anyway, over the course of 48 hours, I managed to visit close to 15 different apartment complexes. I took many things into account in choosing my new crib. I was honestly thinking too hard about my decision. My Dad reminded me though what was most important in choosing a new place. I was telling him all about the ins and outs of all the apartments I had visited before he stopped me to inform me that ultimately, you need to choose a home that will put you in the best position to be happy. This was wise advice from a wise old man (don’t tell him I said that). How does one experience true happiness though? What variables do I need to weigh to make sure that I experience happiness at my new place? This made my decision easier and I’m going to come back to the decision I made and happiness in a bit.

One of the largest obstacles I’ve run into out here is solitude. For the last 5 years, I’ve lived amongst my friends. People came into my room to talk. Whether it was for Bible study, video games, goonery, or to play music. I made friends by lounging in my room. It was that easy. That certainly is one of the reasons why college is awesome. You are exposed to so many people of different backgrounds allowing you to meet and to learn from each of their experiences. Now pull ALL those people out of your life, move nearly 700 miles away from home, change your lifestyle from student to employed and try to live the same life… Its not possible. Something has to and will change. I full well knew that the changes were going to be significant going into this new job, but didn’t adequately understand how truly difficult the transition to a new lifestyle would be. Thankfully I had/have my faith to get me through the transition.

I now live in a place with little distraction. No one (God willing) is going to come barging into my room at 2am to shoot me with a nerf gun or give me a hug. This is both a good thing and a bad thing in my opinion. Living on my own has allowed me to find out who I really am. To see how I live my life when there are no distractions. Just me, my thoughts, and I. It has allowed me to pray and read more which has encouraged me so much over the last two months. However, without distractions also leaves you entirely accountable for yourself. I can now see if you are not careful living on your own how you can fall into despair, to sin and depression. We were not meant to be alone and we are not called to just to get by. John R. Wood points out in his book “Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Mission” that major cultural issues today stem from hedonism, individualism and minimalism. When living on your own, you are at particular risk of falling into all of these idealisms. Eating as much as you want, drinking as much as you want, sleeping with who you want, all whenever you want falls under hedonism and doing things only because they feel good. The philosophy of “What’s in it for me?” and putting our will above all others falls under individualism. Minimalism being the easiest to fall into which is simply doing the least you can do in any particular situation to get by. Falling into these idealisms does not yield happiness but rather pleasure which is temporary by nature and will leave one feeling lost. I make the simple case that happiness comes from the joy we receive in serving others. Is it not intriguing that we obtain joy when we hold the door open for someone? Return something that is lost to someone? Or in helping to build a house for a charity? God created us this way and than gave us the the most ultimate freedom which is free will to choose to serve others and ultimately Him.

Going back to my Dad’s piece of advice from earlier than, how am I to pick an apartment where I can be happy? I think you know the answer. I picked a place where I could have people over for a movie night, where I could host someone who needed a place to stay, where I could cook delicious food for not only myself, but for anyone who came over, where I could play music with others, where I felt needed. I picked a place where I could feel at home or in other words, a place where I was loved. My apartment complex is called Kingston Cove 🙂 My new home parish is St. Ann’s, just 2 blocks away.

I am so thankful for my experiences over the last 5 years. I have constantly been filled with the grace of God from the people around me. God built me up over the last 5 years so I would be ready this experience. Particularly this last year I have learned so much about being an evangelical Catholic. I couldn’t imagine coming out to Wichita without my experiences over just this last year. They have made me strong enough in my faith to stand on my own with the sword of the word of God and the shield of prayer.

I am happy to say that I have loved my time here in Wichita. I love my job at AccuWeather! Yay weather! I work with an awesome small group of 17 other people. There are no strict dress codes and you can listen to music while you work. KOBE! I wanted a job where I was communicating scientific information to people and we do exactly that for the entire country. I have met so many people too, SOOOO many people. Not just at Wichita either, but at the various weddings I’ve been to this summer in Fort Wayne and Chicago which have been awesome. Shout out to my buds Andrew and Markus. I have a beautiful apartment at Kingston Cove like I said earlier. Its on the 3rd floor of my building with a lake view. I ride my bike to work as much as I can along the river which is only a short ride from my place. I have a new home parish in St. Ann’s Catholic Church here on the south side. There is a new youth ministry starting here where I have been asked to help lead music for mass on Wednesday evenings. Its pretty much identical to what I was doing at Purdue which is awesome. Further, I look to leading a bible study at my new place starting this coming fall in my apartment. St. Ann’s was one of thee reasons that I choose the apartment that I did. Its not the nicest or biggest church in Wichita (Wichita is an AWESOME Catholic diocese), but it was a place where I thought I could PRACTICE my faith, where my skills were needed and ultimately a place where I could call home and be happy. And I am happy! Yay happiness. I said would come back to happiness and here we are. You want to live a life of happiness? True happiness comes from freedom, a basic American right which is awesome. Where does freedom come from? Freedom comes from God originally in this idea called free will. Freely choosing to do God’s will is the best thing you can do in this life and God created us to serve others. Therefore, it is in serving others where true joy and happiness comes from which is the idea I am building my new life in Wichita on. Moving and starting a new lifestyle turned out to be more difficult than I thought. But in being removed from the college lifestyle has shed some light on the more important aspects of life. Moving to a new place is hard, starting a new lifestyle takes time, but living your faith is the one thing we were created to do.

For you were called for freedom, brothers. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather, serve one another through love. For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you go on biting and devouring one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another. 

-Galatians 5:13-15

Joseph

Adoration outside on the outskirts of Wichita. It was a crazy experience.

My workstation. Need more screens for sure.

Me crib.

Me crib.

A Case Study Into the Lashley-Hitchcock Type VI Snow Band

ABSTRACT

Sam Lashley and Jon Hitchcock of the Northern Indiana and Buffalo National Weather Service offices have proposed a new type of lake effect snow which is being termed the Type VI or Lashley-Hitchcock snow band. There are many documented cases where this proposed Type VI snow band has been observed. Most notably perhaps on January 14^th, 2014 where an upstream band caused a massive pileup on I-94 near Michigan City, IN. This case study will focus on a similar lake effect snow event which occurred on February 18^th, 2015 and is pictured below. In this case and many of the other archived cases, a surface mesolow develops in the northern part of the lake near Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. This circulation then progressed down the parallel axis of the lake, hugging the shore, while intensifying its snow band on the western or lake side of the low till the precipitation started to wrap around the center of the circulation. The mesolow then moved onshore just north of the South Haven near Holland, MI. This event gave 7.8” of snow to areas just east of Benton Harbor, Michigan and 4” of snow being recorded from Dowagiac to Grand Junction, Michigan. As mentioned, there are many documented cases of this process occurring. Lashley and Hitchcock have since identified the synoptic and much of the mesoscale setup for this new Type VI snow band which will be identified in this paper, but more needs to be learned on explaining how this circulation develops on the mesoscale. Not only will the purpose of this case study be to explain the development and progression of this circulation as established by Lashley and Hitchcock, but it will also look into the influence of frictional differences over the land and water on the initial development of the circulation.

UCAR RADAR ARCHIVE FROM FEB. 18TH

INTRODUCTION

There are five types of lake effect snow that are currently accepted by the atmospheric science community. Relative to Lake Michigan, Type I events include those where there exists intense single bands of snow over a channel of maximum thermal convergence with an N-NW wind to push this intense band into NW Indiana. Long fetch distances and strong, organized mesoscale convergence zones cause these intense snow bands (Niziol, 1995). Type II events are those where the snow bands are perpendicular to the major lake axis of the lake and there exists multiple, less intense bands of precipitation along the Michigan shore. These events will generally yield less snow totals, but over a broader region than that of Type I. Type III events are those where moisture and convergence characteristics are advected from upstream lakes such as Lake Superior. This creates conditions similar to that seen in Type I for northern Indiana, but are generally more intense with increased available moisture from upstream lakes. Type IV events occur under stable synoptic conditions where there are very cold surface temperatures which cause a land breeze to form. These events generally only impact shoreline areas as the lake breeze prevents the snow bands from moving on shore. Type V events occur during weak synoptic gradients and forcing. This type will generally form from prolonged type IV events where Coriolis acceleration allows the flow to begin to rotate into a surface mesolow in the southern basin of Lake Michigan where Forbes and Merritt (1984) point out that these generally occur where the shoreline has a bowl shaped configuration. Under none of these accepted event types does there cover a formation and progression of a mesoscale circulation from the northern part of Lake Michigan to the southern part. It is for this reason that Lashley and Hitchcock have brought forward this phenomena.

Synoptic and mesoscale conditions conducive to Type VI events have been established. Lashley and Hitchcock averaged data from 8 classic cases between 2003 and 2014 to produce synoptic scale composite anomaly charts. Like any lake effect snow event, Lavoie (1972) found the air-lake temperature difference to be the most important forcing mechanism for lake snows. Specifically, a lapse rate of at least 13ºC between the surface and 850mb is necessary for lake effect snows. That is no different for this Type VI case. In addition, all of the classic documented cases thus far have had a distinct 250mb and 500mb trough or closed low. Trough heights (particularly at 500mb) directly over the Great Lakes region are 180m below the climatological average (1981-2010). This points toward the need for strong upper dynamics yet weak upper flow to be present for a classic case to occur. The images above are the plots created by Lashley and Hitchcock to help identify these conditions. 500mb Geo potential height anomaly is plotted in the upper left. At 850mb, it is noted during these classic cases that lower than average heights occur to the southeast and greater than average heights to the northwest of the Great Lakes. This is seen in the above image on the lower left. This leaves nearly neutral pressure conditions over the northern part of the lake as the center of the 850mb trough axis moves E-SE. This creates relatively calm wind conditions at the time of development between 00Z-06Z over the northern part of the lake. In addition, behind this trough at 850mb, exists cold air that has been identified to be approximately 11K below the climatological average seen in the upper right image. So another ingredient for this setup being that cold, arctic continental air be pushing into the Midwest between mid and lower levels. This helps to create steep mid-level lapse rates which will allow the circulation to continue to grow once initiated. At lower levels, a surface trough perpendicular to the lake is present which moves south with an associated 925mb trough and vorticity maximum. This is likely a result rather than a cause due to the large amounts of surface convergence present in all of the classic cases. Off to the west of the lake surface, an arctic air mass pushes in over the Dakota’s with pressure readings 12mb above the climatological average which is a result of the passage of the strong upper trough seen on the sea level pressure graphic on the lower right.

THE CASE: FEBRUARY 18^th, 2015

Starting overnight on the 17^th and occurring into the early morning and day hours of the 18^th, this case could arguably be another classic case to add to the list of archived Type VI events. This and other Type VI events have variable start times as the mesolow is not visible until the formation of the singe snow band on the lake side (west side) of its circulation. In this case, Gaylord, Michigan (KAPX) radar returns at 04Z show the initial signs of the mesolow moving W-SW.  By 06Z the circulation is moving S-SW down the shoreline. Make note of the looping gif image above to see this.

300mb Heights and Wind Analysis at 06Z

500mb Abs Vorticity Analysis at 06Z

At this 00-06Z time frame, synoptic conditions were conducive to a Type VI event. A 300mb trough axis was just to the west of Lake Michigan (note 300mb analysis above). Being close to the trough axis allowed wind flow aloft to be minimal with jet cores associated with this trough over the Dakota’s and a downstream jet core of 150 knots over the upper east coast of the United States. Winds directly over lake were between 25-35 knots at the 00-06Z time frame.

At 500mb, the trough axis is aligned nearly directly underneath the 300mb trough. This leads to the same wind flow set up with winds slowing as they approach the subgeostrophic wind zone at the base of the trough. Along the base of this trough is some curvature absolute vorticity which will act to increase vertical motion, but will not be the primary forcing mechanism for the event. It is simply important to note that forcing terms aloft are not working against the formation of this event. With the associated 500mb absolute vorticity maximum near the Iowa-Illinois border at 06Z (note 500mb figure above), the synoptic conditions will tend to increase vertical motion as the trough axis moves over Lake Michigan per positive vorticity advection pockets which increases tendency for vertical motion.

850mb Heights and Temp at 06Z

850mb heights and temperatures, pictured to the left, are what we would expect to see for a Type VI event. The base of the 850mb trough at 06Z is directly over the northern part of Lake Michigan with the axis extending down into Illinois. Continental arctic air is moving in behind this front with frigid 850mb temperatures of -30ºC to the northwest of Lake Superior and surface dew points nearing -20ºF in the same area (UCAR surface data). This will act to increase mid-level lapse rates as this frigid air mass moves over the sub-freezing lake which still has just above freezing surface water temperatures. Moving further down in the atmosphere, at 925mb, there is a broad trough which deepens as it moves over the lake between 00-06Z. Then at 06Z, it becomes easy to locate the position of an E-W orientated boundary which will follow the path of the surface circulation. Make note that the trough at 00Z is only present over the northwestern part of Michigan and then drops south and strengthens as the surface circulation strengthens. Before the occurrence of strong surface convergence, the 925mb trough is very weak which leads one to believe that the 925mb trough and vorticity strengthening is due to a stretching of the surface to 925mb layer which would be primarily caused by the convergence zone at the surface. The images for 925mb abs vorticity are attached below at 00Z and 06Z respectively.

925mb Abs Vorticity at 00Z

925mb Abs Vorticity at 06Z

This synoptic setup aids the formation of the surface low by increasing the tendency for vertical motion as stated above, but it is not the cause of this circulation. There is no subsidence, which is good, but there is also no significant vertical motion being caused by the 300mb, 500mb, and 850mb features. So there must be something on the mesoscale or microscale that is causing this circulation that we initially see at 04Z to form. In researching the progression of this event, it is the diagram below that describes the events that lead to the formation and movement of the low down the lake shore.

Progression of events which lead to Type VI snowband formation

10 meter height surface winds can be found in Figure 6 and 7. The lake, which has a lower frictional coefficient than the land causes winds to accelerate over the water and then converge over the land due to an increased frictional coefficient and an increase in elevation. At 00Z, there are clearly winds accelerating over Lake Michigan (Note surface winds plot below). By 06Z however, we see that winds have continued to accelerate under the weak synoptic flow aloft. At 06Z, we see winds approaching the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SBDNL) being between 12-16 knots or 14-18 mph. Over the land, winds are notably smaller in magnitude meaning that mass is being piled into the area near the shore. This is convergence. Any vector quantity with flow components u and v (north-south, east-west) can be decomposed into a rotating and non-rotating parts. With this, we should look at how divergence is calculated. This equation along with vorticity is listed below.

 

Difference between speed and directional Divergence/Convergence

The calculation of divergence takes into account both directional and speed divergence (visualize difference in above figure). Convergence is the inflow of air into a layer or region and divergence is the opposite. Note that both speed and directional convergence is occurring due to the cyclonic turning of winds at 06Z (seen in the image below).

Surface Divergence at 00Z

Surface Divergence at 06Z

What this convergence then creates is vertical motion due to the influx of mass into the area. The progression of divergence/convergence at this initial formation time (00Z-06Z) can be visualized in the two above figures. The next step in the formation of this circulation is the creation of low pressure due to this rising motion. The tendency then is for air in the immediate surrounding area to move towards that area of low pressure. As air is forced into this small area of low pressure by the pressure gradient force, the Coriolis force acts to create the cyclonic motion seen in the circulation made visible on radar by the lake-side single snow band at 04Z. Roland B. Stull in An Introduction to Boundary Layer Meteorology studies convergent bands formed at the surface using a grid spacing of 2km. Therefore it needs to be recognized that we are studying a near boundary layer special scale event. It is difficult to study events on boundary layer special scales however.

Surface Wind at 00Z

Surface Wind at 06Z

Starting at 06Z, the circulation starts to move in a more southerly direction. What causes this movement of the circulation down the lake is likely due to a couple of things. First, it has already been established that air accelerates over Lake Michigan due to a decrease in friction (note surface winds plot below). Therefore, this is also likely to be occurring as air moves around this small scale mesolow causing air to accelerate on the lake-side of the low and decelerate on the land side of the mesolow. In theory, what this would cause is the net movement of the circulation to be southerly down the shoreline. Forbes and Merritt (1984) point out that Type V events likely occur due to the curvature of the lake shoreline. This can be applied to the cyclonic curvature of the lakeshore from SBDNL to Holland, MI. From Holland, the curvature of the lake is than anticyclone as you head south down the shore. In many cases, we see the circulation move on shore near the Holland area indicating that this change in shore orientation might be a reason this circulation makes landfall in that area.

Surface Divergence at 12Z

925mb Abs Vorticity at 12Z

Between 06-12Z, we see the circulation grow significantly in many ways. Not only does the single snow band grow on radar returns and begin to wrap around the mesolow (note radar loop at beginning of post), but 925mb heights continue to drop and vorticity strengthens (note figure on right). Snow is now falling in the Grand Rapids area as well. Maximum surface convergence values are still correlated with the general position of the circulation which is located just off shore near Whitehall, MI (note below). At this point in the event, we start to see upper levels really begin to show signs of deep vertical motion with 700mb omega values up to -15 Pa/s (note below). In addition, strong mid-level lapse rates of up to -7.5ºC (only in the 850-700mb layer) are still present thanks to frigid 850mb temperatures (note below). This is where the weak synoptic environment aloft aids in the formation of this circulation. It’s possible that if there was stronger flow aloft that it would shear out the circulation or force it on shore earlier which makes it dissipate.

700mb OMEGA at 12Z

850-700mb dT at 12Z

 

Surface Divergence at 18Z

This event was in its ending stages between 12-21Z as a stronger pressure gradient associated with the upper trough moves in from the west. The upper trough axis is now to the east of Lake Michigan which means the jet core on the upstream side of the upper trough is starting to influence the area. What this ended up doing was forcing the circulation to move on shore. By 18Z, the circulation is pushed completely over land and the single band then starts to deteriorate (note radar loop at beginning of post). The analysis of lower levels show that strong onshore flow was still occurring. With this, strong convergent regions were still present in the SE corner of the lake (note figure on right). This area of convergence continued to produce a hybrid of Type I and II snow bands throughout the day on the 18^th. However, 18Z 925mb heights and vorticity plots showed that the circulation was located near the NE corner of Indiana at that time (note figure below). Again, this is likely due to the increase in northwesterly flow from the increase in the pressure gradient over the area.

A FRICTION EXPERIMENT

To test the hypostasis regarding the southward motion of the circulation. A second WRF run was submitted with altered land friction values. The land type of the Michigan shoreline was coarsely identified by plotting the land use map and eyeballing the land type. The land type 14 and 15 were changed to ¼ of the original value of .5 to make them .125. What would be expected to happen if this hypothesis is correct is that the circulation would progress to the east more quickly as air isn’t slowed over the land as much with lower friction coefficients. This didn’t happen. As a matter of fact, little change can be identified between the WRF run with regular and reduced land friction values which you can note below with the 06Z 10m divergence and wind plots.

The circulation progressed in nearly the exact same path that it did in the original WRF run. This can mean a few things. First and maybe most obviously is that differences in friction over the land and water play little role in the projection of the circulation down the shore. A second possibility is that this 40km model resolution is too broad to test this experiment with only approximately 6 grid points in the SBDNL to Holland, MI area. It might be that more grid points would increase the effects of friction on the circulation.

Surface wind with 1/4 friction values at 09Z

Surface wind with regular friction values at 09Z

Surface divergence with 1/4 the friction values at 12Z

Surface divergence with regular friction values at 12Z

EVENT IMPACTS

This particular event did not have major impacts to southwest Michigan or northwest Indiana. A few reports of whiteouts were sent in on Twitter and snow totals were between 4” to 7.8” in the Benton Harbor area. Indiana hardly was effected by this event.   However, these events have caused major pileups on I-94 in the past, particularly on February 7^th, 2003 (the first documented case) and January 23^rd, 2014 (Lashley, 2014). Between the 2 of these events, there were 5 fatalities and numerous injuries due to large snowfall rates and whiteout conditions produced from Type VI events. In an analysis of previous events, these events can produce heavy snowfall rates of 1 to 3 inches per hour (Lashley, 2014).

FUTURE WORK / LIMITATIONS

The resolution of WRF which was used to generate all of the plots shown in this case study was 40km. Therefore, this circulation would not be sampled accurately using a model larger than 4km due to the fact that these circulations are around 2km in size (Stull, 1988). Future studies should look into creating a 4km reanalysis data set. With this, you should be able to pick up the circulation itself at the surface and the boundary layer parameterizations will be more accurate. A higher resolution model would also help study the influence of frictional differences on the direction the circulation moves. The study of the initial formation of the circulation is a boundary layer topic. With that said, it would be helpful (but maybe not cost effective) to get surface layer data of the strength of the land-lake breeze between 00-06Z. Along those same lines, what is so unique about the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore area in the formation of wintertime mesoscale vorticities?

CONCLUSION

The proposed Type VI Lashley-Hitchcock snow band does not fit under any prescribed lake effect snow type. This is therefore a new type of lake effect snow. Starting overnight on the 17^th and occurring into the early morning and day hours of the 18^th, this case could arguably be another classic case to add to the list of archived Type VI events. The development of Type VI events starts with frigid W-NW surface winds flowing and accelerating over the seasonably warm lake surface temperatures on the northwestern part of Lake Michigan. Specifically in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore area. This causes horizontal convergence as mass and moisture piles up and mixes with cold, drier air over the shoreline. Not only this, but the presence of a surface frontal boundary creates directional convergence which further increases the convergence values. This creates significant vertical motion over the land breeze boundary (or area of peak convergence), which in turn forces an area of low pressure to occur over the area of maximum convergence. This allows the pressure gradient force and the Coriolis force to start cyclonic rotation in the area.  The further vertical development of the circulation is aided by rapid mid-level lapse rates and by the upper dynamic setup.

REFERENCES

Forbes, Gregory S., and Jonathan H. Merritt. “Mesoscale vortices over the Great Lakes in wintertime.” Monthly weather review 112.2 (1984): 377-381.

Holton, James R., and Gregory J. Hakim. An introduction to dynamic meteorology. Academic press, 2013.

Lackmann, Gary. Midlatitude synoptic meteorology. American Meteorological Society, 2011.

Laird, N. F., 1999: Observation of coexisting mesoscale lake-effect vortices over the western Great Lakes. Mon. Wea. Rev., 127, 1137–1141.

Lavoie, Ronald L. “A Mesoseale Numerical Model of Lake-Effect Storms.” Journal of the atmospheric sciences 29.6 (1972): 1025-1040.

Niziol, Thomas A., Warren R. Snyder, and Jeff S. Waldstreicher. “Winter weather forecasting throughout the eastern United States. Part IV: Lake effect snow.” Weather and Forecasting 10.1 (1995): 61-77.

NOAA : National Centers for Environmental Prediction. WRF Data Source. 3 Mar. 2015. Raw data. N.p.

Noone, David. “Circulation Theorem.” Colorado University. May-June 2015. Lecture.

Stull, Roland B. An introduction to boundary layer meteorology. Vol. 13. Springer Science & Business Media, 1988.