Prepartion Begins

Well, I believe it be best that I start off with explaining what “The ROTATE project” is. This is long term project that I have been working on since 2008. Aiding me in ROTATE is my younger brother, Michael. ROTATE (Rotational Origins of Tornadoes And Thunderstorms Experiment) is my brother and I doing our best to see if there is a significant and noticeable difference in any of the inflow elements into a wall cloud that produces and tornado and a wall cloud that does not for my senior project in high school. I really do hope to further expand this project into my college years and maybe my work life. Though this strenuous task requires us to drive from our home base of Seattle, Washington all the way into South Western Montana, we seldom consider it a hindrance to our research attempts, despite it being a fifteen hour drive out there.

                As of now, our upcoming trip for 2012 take’s off in just thirteen days. Compared to last year, the ROTATE crew is far more prepared. When we started in 2008, we took physical observations of severe storm cells (some tornadic) throughout Central Montana, into the Black Hills of South Dakota and several areas of Northern Wyoming. In 2009 we took more physical observations of a wall cloud producing super cell in south Madison County, Montana. As of 2010 we actually began buying equipment to measure the storm cells with. Due to the lack of funding we were only able to buy an anemometer and a camera. Luckily, and for the first time, 2010 brought us within a half mile of a funnel cloud in northern Beaverhead County, Montana. Just two days later we were able to make observations on a solid .75 inch hail producing storm in Deer Lodge, Montana. Come 2011 and we had invested in a small mesonet-like piece of equipment that we had mounted to the roof of our vehicle and with that we sampled two large hail producers in Silver Bow and Beaver Head County, Montana.

                Alas, now that 2012 has come, I invested all of my free spending money into the equipment. As we set off to Montana this year, we will have in tow a large deployable mesonet (okay, really it’s a weather station with a mount), a large mountable anemometer, and our past usable equipment. Though it is too early to accurately review the forecast models for the trip, my brother and I have no issue in trusting that the trip will turn out to be a successful one in deed. As it said in the Bible, “With God, all things are possible.”