Katharine M. Kanak, PhD

Katharine M. Kanak, PhD

@kmkanak.bsky.social

Atmospheric Scientist. Former Adjunct Associate Professor and Research Scientist, School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma. LES, dust devils on Earth and Mars, supercells, tornadoes, mammatus, hail, and cloud physics.

979 Followers 943 Following 31 Posts Joined Oct 2023
6 days ago

Congratulations! 🎉

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1 week ago

I understood Dr. Shrock’s statement to mean: sometimes the best thing we can do is to put beauty, creativity, music, art, discovery, knowledge, positivity, out there….

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1 week ago

A choir director of mine, Dr. Dennis Shrock, said something that has stayed with me ever since; on the evening of 11 Sep 2001, when we still gathered in the choir room at the normal rehearsal time, he said, “sometimes, the only thing we can do in times like these is to create beauty…”

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5 months ago
Photograph of rising incense smoke vortex rings against black background and illuminated by direct sunlight. Photograph of rising incense smoke vortex rings against black background and illuminated by direct sunlight.

Very cool solver and visualization, Tim. Nice smoke video/solutions from @sebastianlague.bsky.social as well. I used to take photographs of incense smoke rising while illuminated by the sun. So here's a 3D challenge for you ;)

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5 months ago

Great paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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5 months ago

Excellent!

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5 months ago

💕

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5 months ago

2/2 and Kelly et al. (1985; MWR) who found only 4% of tornado reports had hail reports with them for 1955-1983.

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5 months ago

1/2 A couple of older papers that support this are: Morgan and Summers (1982; Thunderstorms, Kessler ed.) who discuss the tendency to report the most severe event such that hail reports take a backseat to tornado or damaging wind reports; ...

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6 months ago
View of Observational Study of Two Norman, Oklahoma Storms with Very Large, Damaging Hail in Long-Hodograph Environments

Sorry deleted by accident. Thank you for repost! ejssm.com/ojs/index.ph...

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7 months ago

*to find the parcel that maximizes CAPE

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7 months ago

I wonder if a possible method could be to start with the parcel with max theta-e in lowest 300 mb and with some really efficient code ;) check “adjacent” parcels that optimize the CAPE over the entire depth.

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7 months ago

Max theta-e in the lowest 400 mb?

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9 months ago

Looks like both the links you posted go to the ttu doc

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9 months ago
National Wind Institute | National Wind Institute | TTUNWI circle with text 9Like National Wind Institute on FacebookFollow National Wind Institute on X (twitter)Connect with National Wind Institute ...

Edwards et al. (2013) cite it as WSEC (2006) with reference: WSEC, 2006: A recommendation for an enhanced Fujita
scale (EF-scale). Texas Tech University Wind Sci-
ence and Engineering Center Rep., 95 pp. [Available
online at www.depts.ttu.edu/weweb/pubs/fscale
/efscale.pdf.]

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10 months ago
Blue swallowtail butterfly on ground surrounded by green pepper plants and other plants. Butterfly is iridescent blue but appears mostly black with orange, blue and white spots on hind wings

Finally captured a blue swallowtail butterfly in a photo today.

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11 months ago

Very nice work and really interesting! Defining an”outbreak “ is certainly not easy. Thanks for your intriguing findings and for the discussion.

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11 months ago

Thanks so much! I appreciate your efforts 😊

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11 months ago

Hi Nick - How many tornadoes were in your total count?

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11 months ago
Redbud tree with pink flowers Redbud tree with pink flowers

Redbuds in full bloom

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1 year ago

Your work is so important and makes a real difference in people’s lives and safety. You matter and your work matters. Thank you for dedicating your talents to public service. Sending you support…

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1 year ago

I feel the same way! I think they’re delightful!

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1 year ago

Thanks Liz- that is so pretty! We have an open field behind us and tons of squirrels, and with our other feeders, we just feed everybody! May try some baffles with the camera feeder and a pole.

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1 year ago
Post image

Here's wider view 😊🌪️

Image credit:

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

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1 year ago
Post image

Oh, this?

Just a dust devil, seen from orbit.

From Mars orbit. And the dust devil is 20 kilometres tall.

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1 year ago

This has to be the clearest and most detailed dust devil I’ve yet seen captured. Amazing!

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1 year ago

What a beautiful tribute Elizabeth!

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1 year ago

Congratulations to Roger Edwards on a brilliant career of service and contributions to our science. I wish him all the best in this next chapter.

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1 year ago

[3/3] and with strong wind speeds at all heights. A proposed long-track tornado parameter (LTTP) was also developed.

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