The Times and Travels of Nolan
Documenting trips I’ve taken and places I’ve seen.
Elizabeth and I spent all morning waffling back and forth about whether or not it would be worth it. Despite the fact that James was waiting to go, the storm outlook on May 13 was a bit “meh”. More than anything, I was unenthusiastic about weak deep-layer wind shear that would prevent storms from maintaining …
Continue reading “Chase Log: May 13, 2020 – Southwest Oklahoma Shelf Cloud”
It’s summertime at last! Kind of – the temperature has been in the mid-50s the last few days. But last week was final exam week, and so Elizabeth and myself are officially graduates of the University of Oklahoma. At the moment, I’m working part-time at the Mesonet, but otherwise our schedules are open for seizing …
Sometimes, you embark on a chase knowing everything has to time exactly right for you. I’ve had a lot of chases like that, and they never worked out for me before. That almost kept me home on April 22, but after leaving on a whim, I ended up scoring big. After a long day before …
Continue reading “Chase Log: April 22, 2020 – Springer, OK Tornado”
I was bored. It was already mid-to-late April, and we were trapped in a pattern that encouraged absolutely beautiful weather and not much moisture from the Gulf. Naturally, I was losing my mind in quarantine. I didn’t need much encouragement to get out and chase, and a low-moisture, high-based supercell threat in “God’s country” of …
Continue reading “Chase Log: April 21, 2020 near Canadian, TX – the Hail Chase”
The first chase of the year assumes a magical quality. After a long fall and winter, there is nothing that raises my spirits more than the feel of mid-60s dewpoints, the sight of the Rolling Plains as far as the eye can see, and towers rising out of the cumulus field all around you. For …
Continue reading “Chase Log: April 11, 2020 near Haskell, TX”
December 31, 2019: the last day of the decade, and an opportunity for me to conquer a fear: skiing. Elizabeth had elaborately planned a route down the slopes of Vail that covered my minor skiing flaws: namely, that I had never been on a chairlift and that I had no fricking clue what I was …
Continue reading “New Year 2020: The Trip Where I (Kinda) Learned to Ski (Days Three and Four)”
May 17 dawned hazy and humid, the way all great storm days should. I woke up in the Colby, Kansas Holiday Inn feeling absolutely stoked. The SPC had outlined a large enhanced risk area across much of Nebraska, including a 10% tornado probability near the warm front. After all the waiting, it was go time. …
Continue reading “TORUS: An Eventful Beginning (May 17, 2019: McCook, NE)”
As an undergraduate member of TORUS, I was only around for the duration of May. In some respects, that meant I felt the clock ticking from the moment our deployment window opened. Given that, May 15 and 16 could have come across as real bummers. Packed firmly under a 500 mb ridge, there was clearly …
I’ll never forget the moment that I learned that I had been selected to be part of a dang tornado research campaign. Elizabeth and I were on vacation, in a cab in Montego Bay, Jamaica. We hadn’t had any contact with the outside world for a couple of days, and so when she turned her …
On July 14, 2018, Elizabeth and I tried one of our most challenging hikes – Guadalupe Peak in Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
