Jan 11 summary from Storm Chase Argentina!
Prior to TVN's trip to Argentina, Reed established a solid connection with meteorologists Ramiro Saurral, Matías Bertolotti and othersfrom the University of Buenos Aires. They're very passionate about meteorology and are highly enthusiastic about storm chasing! On Monday, Ramiro, Matías and Ricardo Vidal chased a dynamic setup in the Pampas, which Reed and crew were very sorry to have missed due to having to fly home on Sunday; this is their account and video, the latter of which displays some of the most impressive storm structure you'll ever see. -Watch for futureblog updates from Storm Chase Argentina!
Ramiro and Matías report:
"We left Buenos Aires at 7:00 am and moved due west, to General Villegas, located on route 188 in the border between Buenos Aires and La Pampa, thinking that the activity would start at about 3pm, as the models were suggesting. But once again, as the day we chased with you in Córdoba, models did not handle this situation properly, especially in terms of moisture and instability, and with the 12 UTC soundings we realized that instability was more intense and that the LLJ was blowing at about 50 kts over the area. When we arrived to La Pampa (General Pico), there were already supercells forming south of Santa Rosa. Then, we took rout 35 toward Santa Rosa, but not getting there so as to not get inside the convection... we decided to turn right (westward) so as to remain away of the convection but still being able to see the bases, as we learned from you. In the Santa Rosa radar we saw by that time that many systems to our west were already doing splitting and becoming SC (super cellular)very rapidly, so we decided to take route 10 westward (the famous route that takes to Santa Isabel), and after 70 km we turn right (northward) once again, so as to remain ahead of the rain/hail activity. In those 70 km we really saw some very nice thunderstorms, with very interesting bases (captured in the videos and pictures) and heavy lightning activity.We stayed there about 30 minuted because one of the bases was showing signs of rotation and was coming towards us, and we left just before it hit us because we were not having hail insurance. ...
INCREDIBLE storm structure from Argentinahttp://www.TornadoVideos.net/component/content/article/36-tornadoes/1127-jan-11-summary-from-storm-chase-argentina
