Awc's Weather Colloquium

For the man sound in body and serene of mind
there is no such thing as bad weather;
every sky has its beauty,
and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously.
George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

Photograph © 2009 AWColley
Wall cloud near Bippus IN 2009-06-19 © 2009 AWColley

I have loved observing and studying the weather since I was a child. Growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, gave me plenty of opportunity to run to the basement many spring and summer nights as the tornado sirens sounded! Until 2009, I had only witnessed two live tornados, both from a safe distance.

The first time was during my senior year in high school, on the infamous afternoon of April 3, 1974, when I peered out the second-floor windows at home and watched a massive tornado (nearly half a mile wide as I watched it) pass less than five miles north of our home in Louisville, Kentucky (read more, pictures).

The second time was sixteen years later on July 11, 1990, when a tornado tracked eastward across I-25 a little north of Castle Pines North (Douglas County, Colorado). I was in an office building 3 or 4 miles to the north (near C-470) and could not see the base of the tornado since it was behind a ridge from my vantage point.

Then in 2009, I took at storm chasing tour (read more, pictures) and experienced the debris zone of a tornado! TWICE! We first encountered the Kirksville, Missouri, tornado west of town, then several minutes later east of town. Both times it was rain-wrapped and difficult to see coming, and both times we found ourselves within a hundred yards of the tornado before realizing we needed to BACK UP (read more, pictures).

My interest in meteorology led me all the way to a M.S. Degree in Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. Life has it's way of leading you down paths you never expected, however, and my profession of umpteen years has been (and still is) software engineering. Still, I have the heart of a meteorologist.

Weather Pages

Weather Now: Current local, regional, and national weather
Current Conditions: The current weather conditions at my house as reported by The Official AWC Weather Station. In addition to current data, there are summaries for the current month and year; and a data archive of all data captured by my station since it went online on 7 December 2005.
Weather Gallery: Event and thematic albums of weather-related photographs I've taken over the years. Some are awesomely cool, if I do say so myself.
Weather Links: Weather (meteorology) related links that I find useful, informative, and/or entertaining.

Weather Journal / Articles

Weather Blog: My journal of interesting weather here in Fort Wayne, or wherever I happen to be.
Extreme Tornado Tours 2009: My journal and photos of my Extreme Tornado Tour in May, 2009. We experienced the debris zone of a tornado! TWICE! We first encountered the Kirksville, Missouri, tornado west of town, then several minutes later east of town. Both times it was rain-wrapped and difficult to see coming, and both times we found ourselves within a hundred yards of the tornado before realizing we needed to BACK UP.
3 April 1974 Remembered: My recollection of the Super Outbreak of tornadoes on 3-4 April 1974, in particular the Louisville Tornado. Included are a few pictures I took of the devastation in the Louisville area a couple of days later.
The Blizzard of 07: They promised it, and it came. Not quite as much as they promised, but as much snow in one storm as in all of 2006! Visit this article for the unfolding NWS forecasts, my take on it all, and a photo gallery.
2007-04-30 Long Narrow Thunderstorm Line: An extremely thin (only one thundercell wide for the first couple of hours) and eventually quite long line of thunderstorms developed virtually out of clear air in less than two hours. Visit this article for a discussion, satellite images and animation, and radar animition of this curious event.
Two True Weathermen: My little tribute to two television weather guys, true meteorologists in a sea of talking heads and aspiring somthing-elses.
Meteorology: Technical articles, mostly copied from somewhere else and stored here for safe keeping.