In The Vortex

Month: April 2009

  • 04/09/09 Chase Forecast

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    Good morning from Lawton, OK.  I drove up from Texas last night and stayed here when I got tired to chase in northern OK/southern KS today.  Pressed for time as I need to hit the road but current preliminary target is the OK/KS border at I35, and I will adjust as needed.  I haven’t decided if I am going to play the cold core setup on the west end of that, or the warm front on the east end.  I’ll know when I get close to the preliminary target.

    Moisture is rapidly advecting northward through OK, should be an interesting day with a potent, compact system.  We should see several tornadoes across the outlook area today.

    I’ll be live streaming today, and you can see that on TornadoVideos.net.  I should have that up and rolling here shortly, but the chase won’t actually begin I don’t think until mid-afternoon.

  • No more grills broken by hail!

    As I mentioned before, I’ve had issues with hail breaking my plastic front grills.  After this last storm, which smashed them up pretty good, I decided to take my first steps toward some hail guards.  Who knows, I might do something like this over all the vulnerable parts of the vehicle.  Sounds like a fall/winter project.

    Here is what it looked like before, after the storm. Sorry it’s so dirty, with all of the sandstorms lately I haven’t really had a decent day to wash it:

    grill1

    Here was the test fit of the new one before painting.

    grill2

    And here is the final product after painting and installing them:

    grill3

    I’m probably biased, but I think they actually look better than the factory ones.  One thing is for sure, I won’t have any hail penetrating those.  They are made from stretched steel!  Thus my underlying expensive a/c condensor will be safe.