02/28/07 DISC: KS/MO

[Mike Parker]

I am not 100% sure, no. Like I said, it was nearly impossible form my location to see ground circulation. All I could see was millisecond flashes of what "appeared" to be a rather wide looking tornado that looked to be on the ground. I went back to the exact location that I assumed the tornado would have crossed 169 and I saw no visible damage. I did notice that west of Colony is a rather hilly and treeless terrain. There is nothing there to damage even if it was touching down. I do know it was most definitely not on the ground as it went into Colony. That is plain as day from my video. You can plainly see cars that are traveling on 169 between me and the wall cloud.

Andy, which way did you exit Colony? Was it East? If you were on that blacktop road heading east then you barely escaped the tornado as it touched back down. There is plenty of damage starting about 2 miles east of Colony and just a quarter mile north of the blacktop.

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

This is a picture of the apparent wedge, west of Colony. I am about 1-2 miles south of Neosho Falls here. To me it looks more like dust than scud. IMO i don't think that is hail either because that is right where the clear slot is and the hailcore is being illuminated behind the tornado.

 

[afischer]

I am not 100% sure, no. Like I said, it was nearly impossible form my location to see ground circulation. All I could see was millisecond flashes of what "appeared" to be a rather wide looking tornado that looked to be on the ground. I went back to the exact location that I assumed the tornado would have crossed 169 and I saw no visible damage. I did notice that west of Colony is a rather hilly and treeless terrain. There is nothing there to damage even if it was touching down. I do know it was most definitely not on the ground as it went into Colony. That is plain as day from my video. You can plainly see cars that are traveling on 169 between me and the wall cloud.

Andy, which way did you exit Colony? Was it East? If you were on that blacktop road heading east then you barely escaped the tornado as it touched back down. There is plenty of damage starting about 2 miles east of Colony and just a quarter mile north of the blacktop.

Mike, yeah, I took the main drag (300 St SW or whatever) through Colony and stayed on it... it remains a paved road over to Lone Elm. I encountered that damage along the road a couple miles east of town via two downed powerpoles (one powerline hanging diagonally across the road) and two barbed wire fences stretched across the road. I was delayed about five minutes here.

I wouldn't be surprised if it did touch down SW of Colony (and I somehow missed it), then "skipped" over the southern outskirts of Colony. After it did the powerpole-snapping and I saw it for the first time... it was hardly even showing any rotation... just looked like ominous scud fingers hanging from a high-based flat mesocyclone... so it coulda been "skipping" then, too. Looked better later on (around 715)... like an actual tornado, that is. lol

 

[Mike Peregrine]

I will say that this particular storm was pretty challenging from a spotter/chaser perspective. The reason for this in my mind amounts to the fact that the meso was very large, and any lightning was occurring in the precip core off to the northeast for the most part, putting it a ways off from the tornado at any given time. Sheet lightning seemed weak to me (especially for the size storm we were working with), and in general the lightning was sporadic. I got like one or two decent freezes from video (hasn't been posted yet), which shows what it was like - since I had that camera trained on it for like 10 minutes. If I hadn't known exactly where I was in relation to the tornado, it would have been really difficult to spot. My guess is that the situation was pretty similar further upstream where you guys initially intercepted. I'm anxious to see EAX's assessments.

 

[Mike Parker]

There seems to be a theme I am detecting. I have talked to two separate chasers that were basically in Colony as the storm approached. Both said that they could not see anything west of them. One of the chasers (he is a member of this board and can chime in if he wishes) moved a few miles south and could plainly see the meso. The other chaser stayed there and never saw the meso until it literally was on top of them. So, for some reason, if you were looking west form Colony, the view of the storm appears to have been obstructed by something but by moving just a bit south, things became in focus. Just an observation that may or may not be relevant.

 

[Darin Brunin]

I guess I might as well throw in my opinion........

We got back to highway 169 and were in Colony probably 3-4 minutes before the rotation got there. I totally agree with Andy that when it was on the west side of Colony there was no structure to be seen and we were saying "WTF is going on here" Just as it started to move over Colony a new wall cloud developed and a tightly wrapped funnel maybe 1/4 of the way to the ground formed over the city or just east of it. So in my opinion the storm was cycling for a few minutes before it approched Colony. I haven't looked at radar of it yet so that is just my guess of what happened. We then moved east out of Colony on 350th road and saw the tornado touch down for the first time right on or just a little north of 350th road 1-2 miles east of Colony. If you look it up on Google Maps, it's the gravel road that goes east of out of the north side of Colony.

Now for the description.....I don't think that it really matters what shape the tornado was....A tornado is a tornado and will do equal damage no matter the shape of it is. Before the tornado formed there was definitely a lot of scud underneath the base and we even used the word "scud bomb" when looking at it. Then a definite funnel emerged on the right side on of the wall cloud and that was when we called it a tornado because the other two "vortices" on the left side really looked raggedy and weak as seen in the photo below but still had circulation beneath them. When it first formed it was definitely a multivortex.

After we were stopped by powerlines down across the road at SW Grant we watched the tornado morph into what I called a barrel kind of stovepipe and then it grew even a little larger from what I can tell as it moved east away from us. It was getting big enough that I could see why someone might call it a wedge but in my honest opinion it seemed like it was changing shapes everytime that there was a flash of lightning to illuminate it so trying to coin it with one term is definitely not the right thing to do.

Whether someone called it violent or not at the time shouldn't have been taken seriously then and shouldn't now because in the heat of the chase it is easy to get over excited as well all know.

Darin

 

[Scott Olson]

I would have really enjoyed chasing this beast but It wasn't too bad watching it unfold on radar. As it entered Missorui it displayed behavior of a very mature supercell, in some instances forming having a new updraft couplet form to the east in just a single scan. I'm going to try and do a full recap of the first part of the supercell's journey using the saved L2 data and the information you all have provided. I hope to have this together tonight or by tommorow.

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

Here is a picture from west of Colony looking east towards Colony. There are power flashes every couple of seconds at this point and it looks like one in the picture (maybe?). This was about 2 or 3 minutes after the tornado report came out. The funnel on the right i believe is the main event. You can see see the clear slot just to the right, above it.


Here is a picture from maybe 10 seconds later. You can see obvious scud filling from the left. Whatever it is, is very low to the ground.


That big mass hanging down did not last long, but the multivortex followed about 5 minutes later well east of town.

 

[Scott Blair]

Darin Brunin wrote:
Now for the description.....I don't think that it really matters what shape the tornado was....A tornado is a tornado and will do equal damage no matter the shape of it is.

ALSO...

Whether someone called it violent or not at the time shouldn't have been taken seriously then and shouldn't now because in the heat of the chase it is easy to get over excited as well all know.

[FONT=&quot]I couldn't disagree more with the above statements. Listen folks, specific/detailed reports of exactly what is occurring with a tornado are critical to the NWS mission to save life and property. If there is any degree in question to what you're observing, then DO NOT jump the gun and label something that isn't...especially if you are reporting something in. I don't care if somewhat is excited or not...calm down...make a GOOD observation...and then call in a QUALITY report. There is NO excuse for saying I was overly excited at the time...oops...sorry about that report. That report has already been implemented into the warning decisions at the local NWS offices. Bad reports for whatever reason bring down the warning process as a whole. For those newer chasers out there, please take the time to carefully examine what you're observing.

Just my two cents from a chaser/radar operator perspective.

SFB [/FONT]

 

[Dick McGowan]

Darin Brunin wrote:
Now for the description.....I don't think that it really matters what shape the tornado was....A tornado is a tornado and will do equal damage no matter the shape of it is.

ALSO...

Whether someone called it violent or not at the time shouldn't have been taken seriously then and shouldn't now because in the heat of the chase it is easy to get over excited as well all know.

[FONT=&quot]I couldn't disagree more with the above statements. Listen folks, specific/detailed reports of exactly what is occurring with a tornado are critical to the NWS mission to save life and property. If there is any degree in question to what you're observing, then DO NOT jump the gun and label something that isn't...especially if you are reporting something in. I don't care if somewhat is excited or not...calm down...make a GOOD observation...and then call in a QUALITY report. There is NO excuse for saying I was overly excited at the time...oops...sorry about that report. That report has already been implemented into the warning decisions at the local NWS offices. Bad reports for whatever reason bring down the warning process as a whole. For those newer chasers out there, please take the time to carefully examine what you're observing.

Just my two cents from a chaser/radar operator perspective.

SFB [/FONT]

Since when did Mr. Brunin say that he called in a report to "your office." ?

Does it MATTER if it is a wedge or a stovepipe? A tornado is a TORNADO and regardless, people should take cover.

You can't sit here and tell me that Mr. Smith won't take cover for a rope tornado, but will for a wedge. Give me a break.

PS: Darin never reported anything to your office (neither did I), and if you are going to sit here and ridicule chasers for what they OBSERVED, then maybe you can just rely on your spotters next time.

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Scott O. - it would be great to see that. I've only seen a couple of radar grabs so far that someone had posted in the NOW thread. Also - Wesley's photos reminded me of something else that I feel like may have gone on more than once with that storm, and that is incomplete condensation funnels, or at least debris clouds that were obscurring the base of the tornado at times, which seems to happen a lot at night. It's possible that there were times that multiple funnels were producing enough debris to make multi-vortex indistinguishable from a 'wedge.' It would be good to try and figure out what was going on with the storm during those times. I've even wondered just after the first cycle, if some heavy precip may have been wrapping tightly. Scott's radar might help.

This storm was definitely cyclic, and it seemed to produce tornadoes that lasted for a few minutes, quickly occluded, followed by new tornadogenesis downstream. There appeared to be long periods of time when the storm was 'taking a breath' and regaining its composure, possibly ingesting some of its own outflow for a bit and then going back to tapping into the somewhat marginal moisture available to it. My brother was nowcasting and just as he would think the storm was in a weak cycle, I would see it get its act together again and reorganize (the time lag/discrepancy between radar and ground truth was really apparent). This was really noticeable at one point when the storm moved east of Adrian. The meso became disorganized for a while just east of 71 highway, but about ten minutes later it became noticeably organized again. The lightning picked up and the base really tightened up again. It wasn't long and the meso became obscurred and things calmed down. The third strong cycle that I observed came again north of Urich, where the storm tornadoed again.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I've uploaded *.rv3 files from EAX and ICT for some of the time the supercell was churning across se KS. You can access these at http://www.tornadocentral.com/now/Feb28/ ... Check out the EAX folder and file keax_20070301_015312.rv3 , which will show you the BR1 of the supercell as it was immediately north of Linn, KS. Hook-o-rama! Just right-click the file(s) you want, and do "Save As". Then, you can just just drag it into the GR3 window (e.g. open up My Computer, move to the folder in what you saved the files, and drag the file(s) into the GR3 window). For a teaser:

 

[Scott Blair]

Dick,

I never suggested anyone in particular on this list called the office I work for. The problem with Darin's statements highlight an underlying problem with an attitude that reaches far past this event. Unfortantley, we did receive numerous calls from similar observations that have been posted on here, which was not the best descriptions for the ongoing event. And I understand Darins statements might have been more directed towards the current thread. With that said...

Is it not obvious why it is important to properly describe a tornado??? Give ME a break! You, as a chaser (if you plan to aid in the warning process), should focus on prodiving the NWS with the most accurate information possible. There is a major difference between a wedge (large tornado) and a rope...both from an impact and warning standpoint. Even the call-to-action statements within the warnings will reflect this. Also, understanding what phase a tornado is in contains helpful information to the radar operator/office to better visulize what's truly occuring.

My posts do not attempt to anger anyone, but simply educate those interested in the importance of accurate information into the NWS. I do not apologize if someone takes this personally and fails to see I'm simply providing insight into the importance of quality contributions to the local NWS offices.

 

[afischer]

[FONT=&quot]I couldn't disagree more with the above statements. Listen folks, specific/detailed reports of exactly what is occurring with a tornado are critical to the NWS mission to save life and property. If there is any degree in question to what you're observing, then DO NOT jump the gun and label something that isn't...especially if you are reporting something in. I don't care if somewhat is excited or not...calm down...make a GOOD observation...and then call in a QUALITY report. There is NO excuse for saying I was overly excited at the time...oops...sorry about that report. That report has already been implemented into the warning decisions at the local NWS offices. Bad reports for whatever reason bring down the warning process as a whole. For those newer chasers out there, please take the time to carefully examine what you're observing.

Just my two cents from a chaser/radar operator perspective.

SFB [/FONT]

Excellent advice.

I think Darin was more responding to the dissenting views within this thread regarding what the Colony tornado really "was," though... not advocating irresponsible or exaggerated reporting of severe weather to NWSFOs.

 

[Mike Parker]

Scott, could you give us examples of what kind of reports you were getting? I agree that IF one decides to call a NWS office that the report should be accurate. However, if a chaser calls in and says he or she sees something and that turns out to be inaccurate, IE.. wedge vs rope.. would you prefer not to have the report at all? I am just curious. I don't call in reports so I have never taken the time to figure out what is most helpful for you guys.