Here is the story of a typical day in the life of a VORTEX2 participant – now I do not get to be a part of the science, but here is a sample from my perspective.

8:30 – Eat breakfast – usually the “free” one provided by the hotel.
9:00 – Answer emails, twitter, facebook, download photos from day before, schedule media to ride along with different teams.
10:00 – Check out of hotel
10:30 – Weather briefing in a large room at the hotel. Sometimes we cannot all fit, but mostly we can. The mission scientist of the day, or one of the steering committee gives a quick review of the previous day’s operations by showing storm reports and radar images on a large screen. The briefing then turns to DAY 1 – that is the current day. We are shown surface analyses, upper air charts, skew-T diagrams, hodographs, model forecasts from various groups, etc. The target area is identified, and we are given a meeting location and time. DAY 2 forecasts are then shown because where we go the next day helps determine our hotel location that night. The operations plan is reviewed for the day – where/when, and we are dismissed to our vehicles.
11:00-1:00 – Depart to staging location. See tomorrows post for the rest of the story!