April 10, 2005
Jay and I had our 2nd chase of the year. I am glad mother nature is finally getting her act together. I went up to Jay's work to look at data and to pick my first ever target. Looking at SPC and current weather parameters, I chose Weatherford, OK as my target. Jay had already chosen his target and had posted it on ST and his target was Clinton, OK. I was pretty proud of my choice due to the targets being within 20 miles of each other. As the morning progressed it showed that everything was coming together around Woodward, OK so we adjusted our target area for SE of Woodward in a town called Seiling. At 11:00 am we were on the road headed for OK on Hwy 60.
We got to Seiling about 2:00 pm and relized that we had not past the dryline yet so we once again adjusted the target area. This time we went north on Hwy 281 to a town called Alva. At this time we lots of CU going up along the dryline and some towers did try to form but were ripped apart before they could get going. Bill (nowcaster) called and told us there had been a tornado watch issued for NW OKM into Southern KS so we were getting excited. At 3:30 we decided to camp out at a picnic table on the OK/KS line on 281. We got the cameras ready and deployed Annie (anemometer) in anticipation of a chase. We didn't have to wait long as we had a good looking tower go up to our NW. We went north on 281 to Medicine Lodge, KS. Jay was worried about the storms direction due to the low but we were advised that the storms were moving north and drifting east by Bill. We continued north to Pratt, KS and still had not had a significant tower go up but you could tell it was trying. We finally got a storm west of Pratt that looked could but then it seemed to crap out. Bill was on the phone nowcasting for us but all the tornadoes were taking place to our northern counties. Too far to chase when they were 60 miles away moving away from us at 40 mph. We decided to camp out in Pratt for awhile waiting for the southern end of there storms to blow up.
We sat in a gravel driveway waiting when a storm passed to the west of us. It had some good lightning and thunder. It was nice to eat my frosted animal crackers and enjoy the storm. Suddenly Bill calls telling us that they had issued a Tornado Warning for Stafford county! We had been trying to get a radar on the laptop or the TV but had no luck. The wx radio then issued the tornado warning and named the town of Macksville,KS. We were 20 miles south of Macksville so we went into chase mode. I was driving and Jay navigated using GPS. Big lesson learned today. Just because GPS shows a road as paved doesn't always mean it is. We took 70th Ave. north to try and catch the storm. Jay told me to take 110th east but unfortunately when I turned onto it it was nothing but mud. We ended up having to backtrack to 90th to get a paved road and by then we were losing the base. Now I am unable to give up even when it seems like it is the smartest thing to do. We ended up getting back onto Hwy 281 and went north to catch back up. When we finally caught it again we zigzagged north and east on county roads to keep east of the base.
The RFD notch on the storm was great and the inflow tail was freakin incredible. The wall cloud kept rain wrapping itself and occluding. The rotation would then take over in the new wall. We saw a couple of funnels but never a tornado. We followed the storm hoping for a tornado but it just wasn't meant to be. We were not able to chase far enough north to catch the confirmed tornadoes up here. But we did end up with alot of rain, nickel sized hail, and 4 or 5 rainbows. Not a bad chase in my book!
We decided to break off the chase in Great Bend, KS seeing how it was 7pm and we were 350+ miles from home. We headed south out of Great Bend so we could avoid driving home in the sun. The drive home we paralleled the storms that had finally blown up and had become a line to our east. They had huge towers and nice anvils. I was waiting for it to get dark so I could see some lightning. WELL, little did I know that mother nature had some thing else in store for us. About 9pm near Kiowa, KS we had a storm just blow up right on top of us. I am kicked back listening to XM when suddenly there was lightning overhead. Out of one the lightning strikes we were able to make out a base! After all the miles we had done during the day to keep up with a base one formed right in front of us. We drove through it and had heavy rain and lost visual of the base, but we had a beautiful lightning storm to enjoy. We sat on the side of the road for a good 30 minutes just watching the CG. It was great! What an awesome way to end the chase!!!!
Here are some pics from the chase:
http://photobucket.com/albums/v652/tornado...%2010th%202005/
So final statistics are:
Total Miles: 811
Total hours on the road: 15 1/2
Wow, I cant wait for the TX panhandle to have it's season. I am tired of driving 1600 miles in 1 week!
Special thanks to Bill Turner for nowcasting! Can't wait till you get to get out!
Come on May!!!!
Kanani
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