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San Francisco Chronicle
17 hours ago
- Climate
- San Francisco Chronicle
PHOTO ESSAY: Behind-the-scenes moments as hail chasers learn about pounding and costly storms
MORTON, Texas (AP) — Even when Mother Nature turns nasty, the weather extremes carry a sense of awesome beauty. About 60 scientists this spring and early summer went straight into hailstorms to better understand what makes them tick and learn how to reduce the $10 billion in annual in damage they cause each year in the United States. When three Associated Press colleagues joined the scientists for several days, they found more than just hail, strong winds, rain and science in the storm. They found breathtaking sights and sounds to share. When there are dozens of scientists — many of them students — high-tech radar, weather balloons, hail collecting devices and storms that sometimes have tornadoes in them, someone has to make sure it all goes well and no one gets hurt. For the first few weeks of Project ICECHIP that someone was Victor Gensini, Northern Illinois University meteorology professor and one of the hail team's lead scientists. Gensini and his hand-picked students guided everyone like chess pieces via a computer program called Guru in his command vehicle. But he couldn't just sit back in the SUV and let others have the fun. He would drive close to the storm, not close enough to get the car damaged because unlike the Husky Hail Hunter he didn't have protective mesh hanging over the windshield. But he would get close enough to study, direct and just gaze in wonder at storms that would take over the horizon in the Texas panhandle and nearby Oklahoma and New Mexico. The clouds themselves tell the story of a roiling atmosphere. At times dark and dangerous, sometimes they are light with visible vertical stripes indicating downpours. And then a large bulging tornado can form and inspire awe and fear. There are small twisters that can also form and turn out just as dangerous. And finally if you are lucky at the end, there's a rainbow or two. One afternoon in the Texas panhandle, the hail chasing team could gaze out and see a double rainbow and a swirling twister that didn't quite reach the ground. The clouds aren't just beautiful above the vast plains. When they frame a building, such as the one sporting the Hollis Tigers mascot in Hollis, Texas, they combine to look menacing and stark. Two teams, the Red and the Black Teams, try to go ahead of the storm to see how it develops. They release wind balloons with instruments and GPS tracking that measure moisture, wind speed and direction. Inflating weather balloons is not a simple task. As gusty winds push, students scientists they have to inflate the balloon, tie it up, connect the instrument panel which is sealed in a disposable coffee cup with a lid on it. Then it's time to release the weather balloons. It's a two-person job with one holding the cup of instruments and the other the balloon. Releasing weather balloons isn't just letting them go. It's got to be done with some care — usually a 'one, two, three' and release — otherwise the instrument cup could slam into the balloon holder as an Associated Press reporter nearly found out the hard way. Once released, the balloons can fly as high as 60,000 feet or more. Or they can never quite get off the ground if there's a tiny hole in the balloon. There's also time to gawk as well as be scientists. Black Team members Evelynn Mantia and Olivena Carlisle, both of NIU, take photos of an approaching storm they have been monitoring. And once they finish, their job is to fall back a bit and then collect hail that has dropped. A storm hits, forcing one team to take cover The Red Team also releases weather balloons to get ahead of the storm and collect hail stones afterward. But the three students also get to go a bit into the storms. Ahead of the gathering storm, Ethan Mok and Wyatt Ficek release their balloon. In the first several days of the ICECHIP campaign, the Red Team earned a reputation for pushing the envelope. And on this late afternoon into early evening in New Mexico, the team, with Mok at the wheel, showed why. After releasing their balloons they went ahead into the storm as the skies darkened. The rain started coming down. Winds began to blow. They pulled over to take some pictures of the storm taking over the horizon. As they did, a semitruck sped down the road into the storm. Mok and team members laughed, saying the truck would have to turn around. The Red Team wasn't going to turn around. Photos taken, they drove off into the storm like the truck. The skies got even darker. Winds and rain intensified. Visibility out the windshield disappeared. Somewhat reluctantly, Mok finally pulled off the tiny road and waited. They watched the semitruck come back and try to flee the storm. They vehicle shook. They stared at weather radar and outside. Over the radio, Gensini had meteorology student Katie Wargowsky radio to them to get to safety. Mok quickly complied, trying to go south and around the storm and back to the chasers' hotel. The storm had other ideas. It overtook the Red Team. Hail was coming down. Wind was whipping. Visibility was gone. Wargowsky radioed for them to pull into a gas station for safety. Mok said he wished he could but the stretch of road was remote and there were no gas stations for cover. He had to barrel through, finally making it to a fast food drive-thru as reward. Scientist hail chasers see others rushing into storms Ever since the movie 'Twister,' storm chasing has gone from a scientific pursuit to an adrenaline filled, social media-stoked touristy pastime. As the scientific team of hail hunters chased down a massive storm system near Morton, Texas, car after car of storm chasers, some with creative license plates, zipped by. At times, storm chasers dotted the side of the road, cameras at the ready. Gensini, the project ICECHIP operations chief, often had to caution his team to be watchful of the crazy driving of the tornado chasers. They could be as much of a hazard as the storms themselves, Gensini cautioned. Tony Illenden drives the Husky Hail Hunter, one of the team's prime vehicles that goes right into the storms. It has mesh hanging above the windshield to protect it from being cracked. Illenden is careful with a helmet on his head to make sure it isn't cracked from hail when he goes out in the storm. Sometimes it comes awfully close. And once it came too close smacking his unprotected hand, which swelled up for a couple days and then was better. Collecting hail is a key part of the science. So researchers, wearing gloves so as not to warm up the ice balls, pick up the hail, put them in bags and then in coolers. Then they get crushed, sliced, measured, weighed and otherwise examined. With the red plains stretching out, a storm in its sheer magnificence forms an odd looking hole in the clouds. It's a signal of danger. The lower cloud is the wall cloud, where energy and moisture flows up. The cloud then forms lower. The empty space is the dangerous rear flank downdraft, which is cooler air pushing down with great force, getting wrapped around the backside of the wall cloud, team forecaster David Imy said. ___ The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
Japan Today
17-06-2025
- Climate
- Japan Today
Ping, ping ping. Here's what it's like to drive into a big hailstorm in the name of science
Tony Illenden crouches in a helmet and gloves outside Northern Illinois University's Husky Hail Hunter vehicle to scoop hail into a bag during a storm while on a Project ICECHIP operation in Levelland, Texas. By SETH BORENSTEIN, BRITTANY PETERSON and CAROLYN KASTER Wind roared against the SUV's windows as its tires sloshed through water dumped onto the road by the downpour. A horizon-wide funnel cloud loomed out the window, several miles away. Then came the loud metallic pings on the roof. First one, then another. Then it was too fast to count and too loud to hear much of anything else. Hailstones were pelting down, and the car was driving toward them. 'How big are they?' meteorology professor Kelly Lombardo asked from the passenger seat. 'Probably no more than a nickel or dime, but they're just flowing at 50 mph,' said fellow researcher Matthew Kumjian as he steered through the flooded road. Lombardo and Kumjian are part of a team of about 60 researchers chasing hail across the Great Plains to better forecast an underappreciated hazard that causes about $10 billion a year in damage in the U.S. The researchers brought along three Associated Press journalists to observe the first-of-its kind project called ICECHIP, including trips into the heart of the storms in fortified vehicles like the one driven by Kumjian. The payoff is data that could improve hail forecasts. Knowing what's going on inside a storm is crucial to knowing what's going to happen to people in its path, meteorologists said. 'We have a really tough time forecasting hail size,' said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini, one of the project leaders. 'All scientific experiments start with data gathering, and without that data we don't know what we're missing. And so that's what this project is all about.' On this afternoon, Lombardo and Kumjian, Penn State University professors who are married to each other, were negotiating rapid weather changes while collecting their data. Minutes before the hail started, the couple were launching three-foot wide weather balloons designed to give scientists a glimpse of what's happening in the leading edge of the storm. A tornado in the distance was slowly getting closer. Soon cell phones blared tornado alarms, and a nearby town's storm sirens roared to life. The couple jumped in the car and drove into a part of the storm where they could collect hail after it fell, the same stretch of flooded road where they encountered the 50 mph winds. A wind-meter protruding from the black SUV's front captured data that was displayed on Lombardo's laptop. 'This is up there in terms of severity of winds and intensity of precipitation,' Kumjian told an AP reporter after finding a safe place to pull over. Elsewhere in the storm, Joshua Soderholm of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology launched weather balloons carrying devices built to mimic golf ball-sized hail and outfitted with microphones and special sensors. One flew up 8.9 miles at 163 mph. 'It's free floating. It does whatever the storm wants it to do,' Soderholm said. 'This is the only way you could actually get a measurement of what a hail storm might be doing.'' Researchers also deploy special funnels that capture pristine hail, crushers that measure how strong the ice balls are and other high-tech machinery, including radar and drones. The teams also use a variety of gear and practices to stay coordinated and safe. At morning briefings, they review forecasts to plan the safest way to reach the storms producing the most hail. At their destination, teams set up at varying distances to the storms, with three fortified vehicles driving into the heart of the weather. Each vehicle has radar screens in the front seats showing brilliant reds, oranges and yellows of the storm they chase. Gensini is in a command vehicle that tracks and deploys the teams based on weather in real time. At times he has to rein in some enthusiastic chasers. So Northern Illinois meteorology student Katie Wargowsky radios a team deep inside a storm to find safety. Twice. The 21-year-old Wargowsky described how becoming a storm chaser began as an effort to overcome weather anxiety so intense she would dry heave while taking shelter in her family's basement. But confronting her fear helped her develop a deep curiosity that led her to chase tornadoes with her father. 'You get a rush of adrenaline,' she said. 'You really start to notice the little things around you, and your head just feels kind of light. Your natural survival instincts tell you, you need to take shelter, and you need hide from it. But you just know that it's about to be some good research, and you are changing the world one storm at a time.' The three fortified vehicles are equipped with special metal mesh to protect their windshields. But it's not foolproof. The SUV driven by the Penn State researchers lost its windshield in May to sideways-blowing hail that flew under the mesh just 15 minutes into their first storm chase. Another one of the fortified vehicles, called the Husky Hail Hunter, was pelted by three-and-half-inch hail during a trip into a storm with an AP photographer aboard. 'We're getting some new dents,' said Tony Illenden, the Northern Illinois student at the wheel. 'This is insane.' When he stepped out to collect a hailstone — wearing a helmet to protect his head — one slammed into his right hand, causing it to swell in what Gensini called the first hail injury of the season. A few days later Illenden, said his hand felt fine. For the storm chasers, the payoff isn't just the data. It's also the natural beauty. Illenden's team, for example, collected a three-inch (81 millimeter) hailstone that looked like a rose. That same night a double rainbow emerged. After the storm passed, several vans descended on a Walmart parking lot to crush hailstones with special machines that measured how much force was needed to shatter them. 'In hailstones we have layers. So we start off with an embryo, and then you've got different growth layers,' said Central Michigan University scientist John Allen. Since May 18, while logging more than 5,700 miles, the team has collected, measured, crushed, weighed and sliced hailstones as big as 5.5 inches, about the size of a DVD. The study funded in part by $11 million from the National Science Foundation, which took eight years to plan, is already paying off even before researchers have had a chance to thoroughly review the data, scientists said. Gensini said one early data trend he's noticing is that 'the largest hail that we found is not where we thought it would be in terms of the Doppler radar.″ And that's an issue because Doppler radar is the only tool forecasters have been using across the country to say where the big dangerous stones should be falling, he said. Given the federal cuts to science, particularly related to the climate, Gensini said this is likely the first and last time a hail project like this can be done, at least for several years. Scientists from the insurance industry, which is helping fund the study, are testing new types of roof shingles that so far seem to resist hail better, said Ian Giammanco, a meteorologist at the Insurance Institute For Business and Home Safety. "One of our goals is to replicate all of this back at our lab so we can really understand how durable our roofing materials are to all the different flavors of hail,' he said. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 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