Siobhan's Closing Thoughts

Hello devoted weather-enthusiasts,

The SWIFT Internship was everything I thought it would be and more.  I came in hoping to learn more about the weather and apply what I learned in the classroom to real life situations.  I definitely believe I was able to do that as well as expound on the knowledge that I already had. From interpreting models to understanding what the movement in the clouds meant, the concepts from class that I didn’t fully understand because they were hard to visualize were definitely cemented over the past couple of weeks. 

 One thing that stands out in my mind is how small variations in the environment cause huge changes in the weather forecast. I specifically remember one of our first chasing days, it may have been my first day on the weather team, where there didn’t seem to be much going on because of the inverted trough.  I believe we headed to Oklahoma and saw some of the most photogenic storms of the trip.  What stands out to me was that there was a slight bulge in the 500mb HRRR model where we were targeting.  This slight bulge created a local low that was crucial to the development of storms in that area.  Low and behold, we saw some great storms that produced hail but there was not enough low level rotation to produce anything more significant. 

That brings up the second lesson that stands out in my mind: you can have nine parameters out of ten saying yes there will be a tornado and one parameter that says no and the storm will not produce a tornado.  Additionally, all of the parameters can say go go go and nothing happens still.  Furthermore, tornados are such complex and strange phenomena and we still have much to learn about how, when, and why they develop. 

I believe that is what makes internships like this and other groups that go out to study the storms so important.  The more data we can get from the storms and the more accurate we become at predicting where the tornados are going to pop up the more lives and property we can help save.