04/06/06 REPORTS: KS/NE/IA/MO/OK/AR/TX

[Brian Emfinger]

chased se oklahoma as part of job responsibilities (tv photographer) so wasnt free to go where i wanted. Nevertheless i still managed to have a decent day. Met up with the storm coming out of Pittsburgh county, ok. Got to Quinton and saw a impressive storm to my west.

The storm was really nice and i will put some time lapse of storm structure later on here. Around 715 i took below picture looking NW from Whitefield.

Was anyone else on this storm? I saw a report from the same time of a brief tornado touchdown from the same direction this picture is looking. I was too far away to verify if it was/wasnt a tornado...

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

Saw the Hanover Tornado from start until rope stage chase partner was actually on the news in Omaha with his video of it earlier. Will post vid captures later. Anyone else run into the mad heard of cattle blocking the road?? And I hope someone had time to stop and get stills of those mammutus WOW!!!

 

[fplowman]

Wow! some really great pics! I left KC at around 11am and headed for Rulo, Went west heading for the edge of the triple.

Ended up hanging out for a few around Steel City then decided to head South. Ended up in Barnes as Baron gave me a good target. This is a pic of the wall cloud from Hwy 9 in between Barnes and GreenLeaf looking south.
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I traveled down a gravel / dirt road to flank to the East and position myself to the SE. I got right up close and personal with the Wall cloud. It went right over me and I must say There were a few moments I was somewhat in fear for my safety, for good reason I suppose. Right after it passed over me it dropped a nice tornado B)

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I must say the pic Mike has as usual is Fantastic! I have some video of the rotating wall cloud pasing over that reminds me of his pic.. After reviewing it I see a tornado to the right of my footage I was concentrating on..lol.. Strange how we get to focused on other things and miss the obvious. Ill have to get the video up and streaming for everyone to see.. Its short but its Awesome!

Lost the tornado as it spun up by Hanover Bremen I was of course driving north to catch up! wish I coud have captured that footage too. Congrats to all that caught a tube.. seemed short lived that the action was on though.

 

[Mikel Shively]

I was on the Hanover tornado as well. I wont post a log here, because it is much like alot of other people's that were on this storm, but my full log and a 30 second video clip is on my website.

From the video

Mike S

 

[Bryce Stone]

Chased the central Oklahoma cell from 177 just north of I-44 to U.S. 75 at Copan. There I waited and caught the next cell in line from the south and followed it to northeast of Dennis, Kansas a ways. I finally gave up and came back home when the storms started picking up speed back to 55 MPH. Saw a very nice triple rainbow along the way, with one rainbow nearly on the ground. Never saw any tornadoes, even though the local radio stations kept saying that a tornado had been on the ground for 30 minutes with the storm in Osage county. Noticed this further up north in Kansas as well. I'd be looking right at the updraft when radio stations claimed to have tornadoes on the ground.

Whatever tornadoes occurred in NE Oklahoma must have been fairly brief. The wind-whipped fires west of U.S. 75 were impressive when I came through. The smoke rising into the updraft base from one of the fires looked kinda like a tornado, and I was tempted to take a picture . . . but I decided not to cheat on the photography. :unsure:

I was actually able to keep up with the storms much better than I had anticipated, and I didn't even take my rocket booster. I noticed OKC's Channel 4 SUV had theirs firmly attatched, and blowing full speed, though. Man, those guys drive fast.

The only other thing of interest that happened was that I was trying to read the map on highway 10 west of U.S. 75 and ran off the road. I fortunately was able to stop before hitting a stand of trees. Thought for sure that I was stuck, as the roadside was muddy and the car was very tilted sideways, but I managed to rock it out and slide backwards and sideways back onto the road. At least no one saw me. I guess that after years of reading the map while driving I learned my lesson.

 

[Ben Tucker]

Adam Holle and I left Lincoln around 12:30 pm and headed towards Beatrice. We updated data at the the Beatrice library and hung loose for a an hour or so. It was rather clear that the dryline firing was taking place an hour or so to our west. We got antsy and headed south and west to an area about 10 miles west of Beleville, Ks. on HWY 36. I had a really sharp nowcaster who persuaded us to forget about the cell to our west and focus on the cell to our direct south around the Concordia area at that time - moving straight north.

We booked it east towards Washington due to tornadic reports approx. 25 miles to the south of Washington. By the time we reached Wash the storm was directly to our south prolly 5-8 miles. We headed south out of Wash trying to punch thru to get a glimpe but it was too risky so we headed back to Wash to let the frontal portion pass.

Shortly thereafter we heard reports of a "spotter trained eye" tornado in a location just to our southeast. We then headed straight east outta Wash and punched thought the SW wrap and to our amazement, the tornado appeared rather quickly. It was all by itself and seemed suped high based (however, we were overlooking a valley) - did anyone else think this was abnormally hgih based tube?

We videoed it until the rope stage and tried to follow it north towards the KS/NE state line. We quickly became engulfed from our south and west by a rookie cell that was VERY intense. We were able to avoid it by finding a nice east/west route - we booked it straight east and avoided the worst of it.

From there we headed back towards home base Lincoln. We were contacted by Ch. 8 news and hooked up with them in Cortland on 77 - they used our footage @ 10 tonight and interviewed my buddy/chase partner Adam.

By the way there is just something about that feeling you get when you are on a country raod in Kansas and you can sense/feel the instabilty in the air. We went thru Narka, KS enroute to our target and man they have that crazy looking water tower in that small town out in the sticks...and then put a dark gray looking sky behind it...kinda creepy. Drive that route sometime between Munden and Mahaska and you can see the reminants from tornado damage going back from a period of prolly 1-5 years - its gotta be one of those top 2 or 3 trivial spots in the country.

This pic is from my cell phone - bad quality. We will post the good digital images and video 2morrow.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I chased with several folks today (Gabe, Brandon; then caravaned with JR, Justin, Adam, and Robin) in northeastern OK and extreme southeastern KS. We targeted Bartlesville, and were quite pleased to see that hte storms that developed near I35 north of OKC were taking aim at our location. We meandered north from Bartlesville towards Dewey to get a good view of the storm as it approached. We knew it was tornado-warned, and the south side of the updraft was quite rigid. However, in time, it's radar appearance dropped... We headed north into extreme southern KS (in Carney), to watch this storm further. There was plenty of turbulent motion, but nothing too organized. We then dropped back south into OK, as radar showed addl storms developed that way. There was a nice RFD occlussion with the storm near the OK/KS border, but we thought that a storm to that one's south that was precipitating into the inflow of the that northern storm would squash the chances for a tornado with that one... So, we dropped south further, hearing of a new tornado-warned supercell southwest of Bartlesville. After getting to just east of Nowata, everything looked quite poor. With a nowcast update from Phil H., we dropped south again, hoping to catch a tornado-warned supercell very near the Tulsa 88D / radar site. We punched the core, making it to Pryor before trying to head east. At this time, the supercell was tornado warned again... On our way out of Pryor, we experienced very strong RFD winds, breaking a small tree not too far ahead of us. The storm exhibited a pretty nice RFD clear slot, but it was quite wet at that time. We tried to keep up with it, but we lost it on the most pathetic of roads that is Hwy 20 south of Langley (east of Lake Hudson).

The somewhat saving grace was experiencing the intense RFD in Pryor. In all, however,this chase falls in line with the other high-hype chases of the year (including 3/30 and 4/1), which is disappointment and frustration. I wish I had the will-power to just stay away from these early season setups, since they almost always seem to fail for one reason or another. Congrats to those who were able to bag today... Bring on May.

 

[Jason A.C. Brock]

Chased the central Oklahoma cell from 177 just north of I-44 to U.S. 75 at Copan. There I waited and caught the next cell in line from the south and followed it to northeast of Dennis, Kansas a ways. I finally gave up and came back home when the storms started picking up speed back to 55 MPH. Saw a very nice triple rainbow along the way, with one rainbow nearly on the ground. Never saw any tornadoes, even though the local radio stations kept saying that a tornado had been on the ground for 30 minutes with the storm in Osage county. Noticed this further up north in Kansas as well. I'd be looking right at the updraft when radio stations claimed to have tornadoes on the ground.

Whatever tornadoes occurred in NE Oklahoma must have been fairly brief. The wind-whipped fires west of U.S. 75 were impressive when I came through. The smoke rising into the updraft base from one of the fires looked kinda like a tornado, and I was tempted to take a picture . . . but I decided not to cheat on the photography. :unsure:

I was actually able to keep up with the storms much better than I had anticipated, and I didn't even take my rocket booster. I noticed OKC's Channel 4 SUV had theirs firmly attatched, and blowing full speed, though. Man, those guys drive fast.

The only other thing of interest that happened was that I was trying to read the map on highway 10 west of U.S. 75 and ran off the road. I fortunately was able to stop before hitting a stand of trees. Thought for sure that I was stuck, as the roadside was muddy and the car was very tilted sideways, but I managed to rock it out and slide backwards and sideways back onto the road. At least no one saw me. I guess that after years of reading the map while driving I learned my lesson.
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Why do I look Hollingshead photos and then even wonder why I try to take pics of storms at all? LOL
I chased the same cells as Bryce but settled for the cells a tad further South. I followed one newly formed cell North of Tulsa towards Talala. I filmed a nice area of rotation and what for awhile looked like a large funnel about 3/4 of the way to the ground and also looked very intimidating.
A local sheriff I believe it was pulled along side me on 169 and We watched the cell and decided to go East. Since I didnt know the area too well the sheriff gave me an escort accros some small back country roads which also led me to meet up with a chaser friend of Mine from the OKC area. This storm would race NE at times on XM WX WORX to 70 mph but more around 55. Still it was very hard to keep up with the cells.
I dont believe there were anything more than brief touchdowns in Oklahoma but I would like to see photos of the tornado that touched down over Lake Eufalua.
The wall cloud and rotation I filmed may have prompted the tornado warning in that area however. Looking back at video briefly I dont see anything in contact with the ground but still looked very menacing at times. Storm also tried to get a nice bell shaped and better wrapped meso but I decided to leave the cell as it quickly weakened and head towards cell to the South that would leave me in the dust. Literally. A huge dust cloud came into Tulsa on my way home along with a wildfire West of town. There was also a small wildfire near Chickasha on the way back to the Falls.

Ill have photos and perhaps a brief timelapse up at http://www/texhomastormchasers.com Later this Friday evening. Ill also have some pics from 4/1/06 of the April fools crapfest in Cottle County to Wilbarger county Texas up. I thought I had published them but evidently they need to be redone.

Things about this chase
1. incredible storm speeds from 55-70 mph.
2. People in OKC metro driving 55 in 60-70 mph speed zones.
3. Police escort in parts of NE Oklahoma
4. Meeting girl at McDonalds on the way home in Tulsa who is from Electra Texas
5. Massive dust storm in OKC area some visbilities along I-44 were down to only feet.
6. Winds behind dryline were amazing and frustrating to fight against. My TV antenna which has taken 100 mph winds for some reason kept blowing off. I guess driving into a 55mph wind at 75 mph will do that huh?
7. Chase friend actually found me in the middle of nowhere.
8. Another chaser friend of mine caught some cells near Austin Texas which we were hoping for but were not holding out much luck. Goes to show ya......ya never know and ya cant see storms sitting at home.

Thanks to those who nowcasted today even tho it was limited.
Total chase miles 593

Mike Hollingshead is the greatest severe weather photographer in the history of mankind!

 

[JHadorn]

Beatrice nearly took a direct hit, but the storm could never connect any funnels with the ground. Rotating wall cloud passed right over work and I did manage to get a quick photo of one of its funnels. The funnel looked a lot better before I took the photo. I also believe I briefly witnessed the Odell multi-vortex at the end of its life.

It's next to impossible to take a decent picture from inside a building with only one angle to view anything from. I can't really complain, though. I thought I was going to miss out on all the fun.

Pictures:

http://www.thespiralingshape.org/img/wx/060406/originals/

 

[Edward Ballou]

352 miles @ $2.59 a gallon.....and I got my car wet.

Gotta love the first chase of the year. Got out of Brookings at about 4 pm and booked down I-29 to Sioux City where I made the usual stop at Chick Fil-A. Noticed some towers going up just after they issued a tornado watch for Turner County in SD. It was getting darker already so I decided to get back to SD and meet the storms in Yankton. Saw one good CG strike there and some pretty intense rain, and a smidgeoning of hail. Headed back home with an annoying crosswind that totally sucked on my mileage getting back to 29 from 90. My arm began to hurt after a while because I was pulling against the wind. Will post the few pictures I got later.

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[Mike Peregrine]

Wow - drooling over some of these shots! ... congratulations to the baggers in Washington Co ... Made it over to Marysville in time for the southern tor-warned Marshall Co. storm, which we followed up to Beatrice, but not in time to see the northern, more prolific tor-machine on the ground. Got some neat shots of the meso along with a pretty cool funnel (along with lots of other chasers) that I'll post later. Thanks both to Mike Johnston and Dr. Dewey for their help. Going to keep reading these awesome reports in the meantime.

To top my evening off, the U-joint went out of my rig on the way home ... nice. We managed to get the car to my brother's body shop, which I'm glad is now located right on highway 36 in Kansas ... but I'm without a chasemobile for a couple days! ... By the way, he is inundated right now with hail jobs from 3/12 hail in St. Joe, so sometimes the weather really is good for business -

Just a couple pics ... funnel is on the vidcam and I don't have time to freeze it -

Lots of rolling, boiling gust fronts - -

 

[Jason McKittrick]

Washington, KS was my target today. Got there about 1:30PM, was getting a little impatient having to remind myself how early it was. Went to the Washington county reservoir for a little while, quite a beautiful lake but more or less requires a 4WD to get to. Waited there until cap broke around 3PM. We then headed back to Washington, paved roads. Tried to bring WXWORX up to get an exact position on the Salina storm. Murphy law is alive and well 'ERR Deactivation signal received'. Called XM everything on there end was set up properly they sent a new activation signal but that did not do anything. So I guess we'll have to rely on my nowcasters. Called Bill Turner in Amarillo, Oops fire warning he has to go in to work to give evacuation orders for Amarillo. Well I still have Steve Sempeck in Omaha but he was unavailable at the time so instead of heading south to Clay Center we went west toward the updrafts we could see by Beloit. When we got to Belleville we didn't see anything that was very well organized. Headed north toward Hebron, still pretty high based, not much structure. Then finally a nowcast call, storm in Clay County KS Tornado warned. We doubled back, going to Fairbury and back south to our original target of Washington. Storm was still south a little ways so we decided to get fuel. There are two gas stations in town, one had a line the other was empty, note to self if one station is crowded and the other is empty there must be a reason. The clerk was a halfwit, it took 4 tries before she figured out how to turn the pump on for us, and after she did it took 3min to pump 1.9 gallons of gas, the clerks response, "Well maybe were out of gas, I've never been here when we ran out of gas". So with Murphy in our back seat my chase partner, Don Bonfiglio and I hopped back in and headed for Maryville to get on the east side of the storm. Just as we reached the county line the rain bands pulled back and revealed a beautiful Meso, wall cloud and funnel. After watching along highway 36 for 5 or 10 minutes, we headed for highway 77 to follow the storm as it moved north, also said a little prayer that there wouldn't be a train where we encountered one earlier in the afternoon north of Maryville. I guess we must have left Murphy along the side of road in Washington county, because it appeared that our luck was changing, no train. We got about 10 miles north of Maryville and then it appeared, our first catch since May 29th, 2004. A beautiful cone shaped tornado about 3 or 4 miles west of highway 77 near Breman, KS. We moved slowly north and watched it rope out near the Nebraska boarder. We continued north following the Meso the best we could on some back roads which proved to be halfway descent. Last dramatic view of the meso was over Beatrice, no tornado bust some tremendous rotation. We continued north northeast along the back roads in Gage county paralleling the wall cloud, which was hard to see at times due to the numerous cell mergers that were now occurring. We went through Adams, NE, no damage when we were there, but news stations here in Omaha had damage video on the news last night. We definitely didn't see that tornado and we were in perfect position. I'll be interested to see what they determine in the NWS survey, since the storm by that time seemed to be becoming more outflow dominant.


I will try to figure out how to add photos later today.

 

[afischer]

I too was fortunate to intercept the NC KS tornadic supercell. The storm surprised me NE of Salina in how quickly it organized into a major storm. I headed north on 15 and first spotted the "Manchester tornado" in low contrast to my WSW at 4:15pm. It looked like a dark blue truncated stovepipe at this point. I promptly headed west on Bob's road for a closer vantage point, concentrating on driving.. thus I came away from this with marginally good video and no photos but for the segmented rope out (4:21pm, by then one mile west of my location). The structure of the meso at this time was a sight to behold, including a stumpy tail cloud feeding into a small, cylindrical, ground-scraping low-level meso... with the "tall" tornado emanating from behind this feature as noted by someone else. The stark white collar cloud also had some wild motions, including an anticyclonic funnel. I stayed with the storm a bit longer.. very nice structure remained (as shown in Scott Currens' photo) and things got a little hairy as I passed thru Clay Center. I broke off south of Green to try and intercept a 65 mile-an-hour tornado-warned supercell approaching Manhattan. I'll have some pix online after a while.

 

[Brett Roberts]

This was my first halfway "serious" chase attempt -- at least in terms of distance and time -- and was hindered (much like last week) by the fact that Thursday is the one weekday I absolutely cannot afford to miss an afternoon class from 2-3. Walking back to the dorm from class right after 3, it was apparent that the dryline had just swept through OUN with clear skies and low humidity but plenty of cumulus just east. After grabbing the weather radio I immediately headed out with Kristina Kelley (another freshman here) up I-35, east on I-240 and I-40 to Hwy 377 (at which point we'd overtaken the dryline but nothing of any significance was visible except for the supercell well northeast that eventually became TOR-warned for Osage/Washington). Then up 377 to Stroud, where it appeared something was trying to get its act together almost directly overhead, so we headed quickly northeast on I-44 towards Tulsa (admittedly still somewhat intending to catch up with the existing cell at least 30 miles off -- yes, I have a lot to learn ), staying underneath the developing cell for the duration. Finally, upon reaching Tulsa we rode up Hwy 75 for about 10 miles before pulling off on a side road and watching the storm pass over us. I saw and photographed what I believe to have been a wall cloud (attached) from this location, though there were certainly no signs of significant rotation and no funnel. After about 20 minutes there the view towards the east was breathtaking, at least for a native Easterner new to Oklahoma like myself... three distinct, explosive supercells lined up from southwest to northeast (the northernmost being the Osage/Washington Co. one) and beautiful mammatus under the anvil of the one that had just passed over. Though we didn't see anything tornadic nor did we experience high winds or hail, I considered it a greatly enjoyable first stab at chasing thanks to the photographic opportunities under and after the storm.

 

[Adam Holle]

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Hanover KS Tornado

Ben Tucker Chase partner(refer to above post)