04/05/05 TALK: Central Plains

Interesting landspout event in SW KS. I was on radar and had the luxury of decision making.. the first reports received were with no warning in effect northeast of LBL. It made perfect sense given the fine line and boundary relative storm motion in an environment with dry adiabatic lapse rates to nearly 2.5km AGL. SPC mesoanalysis graphic of 3km CAPE and surface vorticicity proved to be very valuable in highligting this enhanced area of landspout potential.

The next TOR event in western Gray we got a TOR out just before the first report came in, so like less than a minute lead time. This time, it was a little closer to the 88D, and with 8bit high resolution velocity data, was able to track a persistent "kink" on the boundary directly beneath the 50 dbz core that only extended to about 25,000 ft and that's all. It was enuf, however, to stretch the pre-existing vorticity into a tornado scale vortex... In essence, not surprised at all about what happened, just a little bit with location, though!

Some of the landspouts were >10 min duration events, and we had report of some damage in the Kismet-Hayne area of seward county w/ power lines down and roof off a home... preliminary info though..

Mike U
 
Thanks for the layout Mike. I hope one of the spotters or someone out there got some video of them. Given the drier conditions out there lately, I am betting those would be quite full of dirt.
 
Excellent tornadic storm with a prolific hook echo in Haskell County, OK with some great rotation (...shear at 33 MPH) - and it just earned a TOR ... Radar indicating 2" inch hail along with it, it's moving to the northeast at around 40 MPH.

JR is chasing this cell! http://www2.okstorms.com:8080/cgi-bin/GPSlive.cgi

Another tornadic storm was located in southeast Oklahoma ... in Pushmataha county - this storm also has a TOR on it.

..Nick..
 
The storm JR is on is reminding me of the "tornadocane" supercell of 04/15/99 in Kenansville, NC (see SPC cool images) the way it is wrapping it's rfd precip around and into its meso. The Kenansville storm produced a rain wrapped .6 mile wide F3 tornado that stayed on the ground for 30 miles. Good luck JR, and be careful with that thing.
 
Chased out to the Torn warned cells east of Wichita, KS. Got some nickel size hail and a CG that hit the shrubs right off the side of the road next to us! Got a nice LP cell on the way back to 135 that I'll have to post soon. All in all not a bad first chase in April.

This is a storm that fired up along the dryline east of El Dorado, KS on HW 54 late in the day as Tony and I were heading back to CO. About 10 minutes after this shot we took shelter under a gas station awning from nickel size hail. Some of you may have seen Tony's video on TWC today. :D

www.stormchaserco.com/20050405_ElDoradoKS.MOV

File sizes are less than 1Mb each, to view place your cursor in the window and then move your mouse while holding down the left mouse button.

Earlier in the day we caught the squall line over Elk County, KS. This shot is from near Moline, KS at HW160 and 99. It went Tornado warned about 20 mins after this shot was taken.

www.stormchaserco.com/20050405_ElkCountyKS.MOV
 
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