04/15/06 Reports NE KS IA

[Mike Hollingshead]

http://www.extremeinstability.com/06-4-15.htm

Account and images there.

The Beatrice storm viewed from somewhere just west of Sterling.

Turning around on my gravel road north of Sterling.

Something west of me as I head back south to Sterling. According to the damage survey it was still producing a tornado then and there. That is wrapped back in there. I get smacked with high winds and rain seconds after that. Some guy coming south in a truck was flashing his lights at me when I was still trying to go north. I really wish the area had less hills and actuall options east that were showing on the GPS. That trip north and back south was a bit stressful.

 

[Dick McGowan]

Ben Beilsmith, Darin Brunin, Garry Wellman and I targeted Beatrice NE in the morning and made our way to Marysville KS, to check on data. We decided to go north and noted a cell firing to the south of the other ongoing convection. As we were approaching Beatrice, a very crisp, long anvil was now stretching from the storm. We headed north out of Beatrice, and east on 41 highway. Garry then called Scott Kampas who was observing a cone tornado on the ground, so we pulled off. Have about 5 seconds of video that, far away. We were starting to get hit with a little precip and decided we needed to get further south for a better view, and this is the first image shown. Precip soon filled in this beautiful sup, and we slowly trailed it, visibility was horrible. We ditched this storm and decided to try and catch a few more cells to our south, and didn't have much luck either. It was then decided that the Brown/Doniphan county tornado warned cell was our best bet and we raced to it. We caught up to it near I-29 where a rotating wall cloud was visible. Our location says : 3.5 miles west of savannah MO on SR CC at 7:28 pm. Contrast was horrible, but we witnessed our second tornado of the day, and were shortly blasted by the junk to it's south. After we managed to get out of that, we then headed for the torn-warned cell that was approaching the north side of Kansas City. Noticed a wall cloud, and possibly a funnel heading over the the I-29/ 169 highway. It would later go on to produce east of the metro. All in all a good day, SICK of storms moving 50 mph plus, and had a great time. First time using wx worx and street atlas for me, and now wanting those for myself really really bad.

Congrats to everyone.

Photos, are mine, Darin's and Garry's combined.

 

[Tony Laubach]

FULL CHASE REPORT CAN BE FOUND HERE!

CHASE SUMMARY FOR APRIL 15, 2006
Tom Dulong, James Caust, and myself intercepted a number of storms starting from Grand Island and working our way into Sidney, IA. We chased in convoy with a load of Colorado chasers including Chris Rozoff, Verne Carlson, Katie Burtis, and several others from the Colorado area. Between the four cars, we covered a lot of ground today. Meeting in Grand Island, we hung around as the dryline approached from the west and began our eastward movement which turned out to be a bit too late as storms fired well ahead of the advancing dryline and put us in a position where we originally thought we were ahead to having to play catchup.

We intercepted our first storm near Polk, NE where we observed a rather unorganized wall cloud and a brief but convincing RFD notch. When it faded, our group split as we continued east in a hurry trying to get in better position to drop south and intercept the growing storms out of Beatrice. We had an intense core intercept near Wahoo where we took some golfball hail being driven into our vehicles at 50mph where our two vehicles (Verne's and mine) spilt again in Ashland where Verne dropped straight south and we stairstepped our way along NE-66 where we spent a good bit of time fighting driving rain and serious hydroplaning.

We converged again near Louisville where that small town of less than 2,000 created the biggest pain-in-the-arse way to get through town. Delorme said we could cut straight through the town and we ended up having to go north out of town, the looping back in on a road less than 50 feet away where we finally we able to get back on NE-66 toward Plattsmouth where we paid our $1.25 to cross the bridge into Iowa where we went one county in before calling off the chase. Verne and crew continued east as Tom, James, and I dropped back down to Hwy 2 and fired back into Lincoln where we opted to stay the night and enjoy dinner at Crackle Barrel.

Definately a fun chase today, but disappointed to see how things ended up evolving. No one in our crew caught any tornadoes today even as the four vehicles ended up in various areas at various times. We rounded out a 684 miles on Saturday and tacked on another 500 heading home from Lincoln for my 15th chase of over 1,000 miles (missed the top 10 by 7 miles).

FULL CHASE REPORT CAN BE FOUND HERE!

 

[Chris Wilburn]

I too chased the Beatrice area Supercell. I almost did not go chasing but decided to at the last moment. Sitting at the Super 8 in Beatrice storms started to fire Southwest along the Kansas/Nebraska line. I dropped southwest of Beatrice and intercepted the southernmost storm at that time. Rotation was weak when I first saw the wall cloud but in just 5 minutes picked up very rapidly. Just a few minutes after that a tornado was on the ground. The tornado lifted after about 5 minutes and the path of the violently rotating wall cloud that was left over was headed quickly in the only direction I could go. The storm quickly got away from me and when I tried to catch back up taking another road I noticed a flat tire and that ended my chase. I guess that is what can happen sometimes when chasing, but at least I got to see a tornado. I ran into a few chasers at the Super 8 in Beatrice. Kurt Silvey and Fred Plowman were two of them and I never got the names of the others, however it was nice to see some people I have never met before, esp. since I was chasing solo this day. Also thanks to my chase partner Tyler Costantini for nowcasting for me. Here is a pic of the tornado and all my pics of this day can be seen at the following link.
http://pittkans.com/index.php?module=pnGal...=1606&g2_page=2


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[Mikel Shively]

This was a pretty frustrating chase for me, mainly due to decisions made by me. I missed the beatrice tornado by 30 minutes, missed the jullian tornado by 10 minutes, even though I was on the same storm that produced it, at the time, it really didn't look like much and proceeded south to try to get the storm in Doniphan Co. KS. I ended up taking the wrong road and being in a place I really didn't need to be at.

Full chase log can be found here 04/15/06 Log

 

[Jim Cross]

Left home around 7am for a target area around Beatrice and arrived around 2:30pm.Went to the Super 8 to collect some data.Met some of the folks from stormtrack while gathering data.Was nice meeting everyone and to put a face with the name.After gathering data and seeing the storms southwest of Beatrice decided to move southwest of Beatrice and intercept the second of two storms moving northwest.As the storm approached from the southwest i decided i needed to get a little father south.At this point is where i ran into Fred Plowman again which i met earlier at the Super 8.The next few minutes was amazing as the storm went overhead while a funnel started to form.As the funnel passed the circulation on the ground started about 100 yards to are northeast (see fplowmans post earlier).As the tornado moved off to the northeast it became a beautiful white cone with a large debris field under the cone.The next hour or so spent trying to catch back up to the storm which was not able to do but did drive through some of the damage path.Looked like F0 to F1 damage mainly in the area we went through.Thanks to Fred and his crew for a enjoyable day.As i headed back towards St.Louis seen a nice wall cloud west of St.Joe and barely beat the storm that went through K.C at night around 9:15pm.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Wow, I wasn't even planning on chasing on Saturday! I was stuck in Omaha until around 4PM -- and when I was free for the day and saw the storms building to the south, I hopped in my car, checked GRLevel 3, and drove down to just east of Nebraska City. Here I sat up on a hill waiting for a supercell to roll in. Obviously not the best place to snap pictures, but I was more in my "document what's going on" mode than my "take good pictures mode". Looking east:

Nice wall cloud with what appears to be a bit of a funnel forming. That's about as good at it got with this particular storm. Sitting here, I was expecting the meso to slide just to the north of me if I stayed put. It was a bit tricky, as there was second storm trying to develop just to the south of this one, and I wanted to stay out of the precip of both. Eventually I gave up and proceeded east to Nebraska City, then into Iowa.

When I was in Iowa, I was a bit irked to discover that I can't get cellphone data. Apparently, data connections via Alltel don't work in western Iowa. Without radar, I just kinda sat there and watched the sky. It seemed like everything was going linear, so I drove back through Nebraska City, punched the line, and went back atop a hill to try to get some photogenic shots of the backside of the line:

Then, of course, I hear on the radio that supercell is dropping a tornado just south of Nebraska City. GrLevel3 seems to agree. Sooooo, I drive back through Nebraska City, cross back into Iowa, just to see the line of chasecars coming back into Nebraska. Greeaaat. I pull over to take some more pics of the backside of the storm, which is now long gone (what's left of the supercell is in the lefthand side of the frame; all the stuff to the south is new linear convection trying to fire):

I talked to another Nebraska chaser who told me his tales of great 'naders south of Beatrice and south of Nebraska City. Made me sad that I missed the show, but I still got to see the storms, so no worrys.

Since I didn't have anything else to do with the day, I followed the storms a bit into Iowa on the backside with the idea of maybe getting some lightning shots when the sun set. The lightning shots looked like junk, but the convection towers at sunset were quite beautiful:

All in all a pretty fun chase day. Wish I could have caught the tubes, but given that I wasn't even expecting to get a chance to do anything at all, I'll gladly take what I can get!

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

Sorry for the delay!! here are Links to a few of my video grabs all of these are as wide as the video could go no zoom at all they are very poor quality there was no time for cameras All of these are from hwy 77 just S of Beatrice
Pics arent in order according to time

http://s66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/dwu...rrent=zcxzc.jpg

http://s66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/dwu...nt=vvzxczxc.jpg

http://s66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/dwu...urrent=vvzx.jpg

http://s66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/dwu...ent=Tornado.jpg

http://s66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/dwu...ent=zxcxczx.jpg

 

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi,

Absolutely awesome images have been posted - of the tornadoes, the structure and beauty of the updrafts.

After a long a tiring trip, I arrived in Texas mid-afternoon 14th April from Australia.

I checked the models and agreed that there was a probable exciting scenario for southeast Nebraska. Fairly powerful wind shear dynamics were to be in place with rapid destabilsation as a short wave ejected across from western Nebraska. Only one issue: we had to get from Dallas to Nebraska. One solution - 4:00am start. Will moisture be sufficient?

We made it across the border by 2:30pm and had a long awaited lunch. Simultaneously, towers finally erupted with anvils streaming east. We left Aurburn and headed west. Storms were observed to the southwest and west. We took interest of the southern storm - the storms typically moving at 50 to 60 miles per hour and was moving northeast as compared to north based on the warnings!

After observing the storm which was noted as severe for about 15 minutes we decided to head back to town to fuel. No fuel in town so we found a vantage point. To our astonishment, a wall cloud was visible in the distance. Given the windshear, every effort was taken to head to the storm as quickly as possible knowing it could drop a tornado quickly. Whilst in transit, we observed major funnel (more than to thirds of the way to the ground from our perspective) and this was reported on the NOAA radio as a confirmed tornado with a dust plume rising. my friend Ray saw the dust plume and the funnel. Yes a tornado on the first day! Unfortunately, Ray's video footage was too shaky. I met up with Bobby Eddins as he came down off a side road. He had filmed the tornado.

The supercell structure was very nice though transitioned quickly into an HP probably because it was high based. The inflow was quite strong in the beginning but intensified as the storm was situated NW of our location. Raindrops finally spoiled the party.

Heading east, another storm developed in amongst several others with a consolidated base. Thinking that the outflow from a storm directly to its south would interrupt the inflow to this storm, it was dismissed. We could have intercepted the tornado it produced east of Auburn but were intent on chasing a larger tornadic storm further south. Storms were moving too rapidly so the best position we got to was of a tornado that was rainwrapped in northeastern Kansas.

After this, we enjoyed a lightning show just west of St Joseph.

I call this a photo and video bust for us.

 

[Shane Adams]

After hearing of Garry, Dick, and darin's late-day tornado west of I-29 in MO, I went back and looked at video. My hunch was right - we saw the same thing except we missed the actual tornado. Our view was south of the tornado looking north, and in my video, we can see the lowered area to the right of the tornado in Dick's picture, but not the tornado. The heavy precip core (seen left of the tornado in Dick's pic) was blocking our view of the actual tornado (which is further west than the lowered area to its right. So while we didn't actually see it, we mentioned that there probably was a tornado in the rain. Oh well.

 

[Bobby Eddins]

I left FTW for Wichita, KS friday evening to be within range on Saturday.

Took the turnpike to Topeka Saturday morning then Hwy 75 north into Nebraska, stopping in Auburn to gas-up. By now storms were firing in a NW-SE arc down to the KS/NE border so I took off west on Hwy 136 towards Beatrice. With the speed of the storms I jogged up to the St. Mary/Sterling area hoping to stay in front but quickly realized I need to get back to Hwy 136 and found a gravel road that did the job.

As I drobe west on 136 I could see the wall cloud and it looked ready to produce. I took Hwy 43 in Filley to get just north of town for a view. Just as I found a spot I could see a truncated cone with debre lifting to meet it.

Here's a wide view with the tornado still on the ground. Note the new wall cloud to the right.

After the 1st tornado lifted the new wall-cloud grew larger and appeared to produce a larger tornado just before wrapping in rain.

 

[Justin Teague]

Here are a few photos of the Beatrice, NE tornado.

Wide Angle

 

[Tim Marshall]

I want to make everyone aware that Jimmy Deguara has set what I
believe is the LONGEST CHASE EVER on record. On April 14-15, he flew from
Sy dney, Australia to Dallas-Fort Worth, rented a car, took a 4 hour nap, then
drove all the way to Beatrice, NE to film two tornadoes. I don't know the
F-scale ratings of the tornadoes, but I calculated the average velocity of Mr.
Deguara towards the tornadoes was about 350 MPH or F6 range. I figured 10,000 air
miles in 20 hours plus 700 ground miles in 10 hours. Crikey. TM

 

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hey Tim,

Here is a picture report of my chase looooonnnnngggg chase!

http://www.australiasevereweather.com/phot...jd20060419.html

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara