Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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• We got graupel, but not on official record
• Moisture could get caught up in cold blast
• Forecast for Weather Journal: Partly print, with frequent Internet
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• Sprinkles or flurries possible Tuesday, but maybe something bigger for the weekend?
• For now, it looks like a quiet, mostly mild week ahead for SW Virginia
• Coldest morning of winter so far likely across much of Southwest Virginia; Tuesday precipitation looking doubtful
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VORTEX2 hit the jackpot Friday evening.

The VORTEX2 (Verification Of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment) armada of about 40 vehicles and 100 scientists successfully deployed on a tornadic supercell in eastern Wyoming. Mobile radar units scanned the storm, and probes were planted to collect data, all in an effort to better understand tornadoes and the supercell storms from which they spring.

The Weather Channel, following along with VORTEX2, broadcast the tornado live to its viewers. Tornadovideos.net successfully put an armored vehicle directly into the tornado, providing some stunning video of whirling debris via a camera encased in a reinforced glass bubble atop the vehicle.

Scores of other storm chasers caught the long-lasting, highly photogenic, well-backlit tornado as it spun across almost totally open terrain with no threat to populated areas -- an ideal event for storm chasers.

It was a little late for our Virginia Tech storm chasing team. Our two-week time frame ended four days earlier. But congratulations are in order for the persistence and patience of the scientists in VORTEX2, and for reams of collected data that hopefully will lead to better tornado forecasting.