04/29/10 REPORTS: KS / NE / IA

[Paul Sherman]

Fun Chase for our first day out here, Targeted Salina with quite a lot of other Chasers. Messed around with a few of the early Storms and then got onto the Washington Supercell, jumped back West and North and got the Sick structure on the Fairbury Supercell. Alas no Tornadoes.

 

[Skip Talbot]

4/29/10 REPORTS: KS/NE

Had a fun structure day in SE Nebraska today. I intercepted a couple of tornado warned supercells, both exhibited some nice lowerings. I intercepted the storm the produced the brief tornado in northern Kansas about an hour after it produced (as I was messing around with cells to the east that refused to organize) and it organized a nice a little wall cloud for me briefly before it completely fizzled. I moved onto the HP beast near Beatrice and followed that storm well after dark. Best lightning I have seen yet this year, and amazing after dark structure. I'll have to edit my video to pull the structure off of that one. Here's a shot of the first storm:

 

[William Reid]

I had some luck on my first chase this spring, catching the brief tornado in Washington County, KS. This was a relatively weak spin-up with some debris flying around for about 30 seconds, beneath a very impressive wall cloud. Some pics and a chase account here:

http://stormbruiser.com/chase/2010/04/29/april-29-2010-washington-county-ks-tornado/

Bill Reid
Westlake Village, CA

 

[Brian Stertz]

Back from a fun solo chase in the Washington KS & Fairbury NE area. Very pretty structured supercell near Bremen KS and then got the arcus cloud from hell moving into Jefferson Co. NE causing all kinds of mayhem as it swept through. Had a great vantage spot on both occasions, but somehow missed the spin up in NE Washington Co. between Bremen & Hollenberg. It was great to see Darrin Brunin and Shane Adams
& g/f Bridget. Also had a Jon & Shawna Davies sighting on the road and on way back near Marysville. Did not get to say hey to them though sadly...best chase of 2010 for me on chase #3. Pics to follow ...turned out very nice.

 

[John Lavin]

Had a late start to chase so a few fellow ATMO majors could join me but it appears we ended up seeing the best the night had near Washington, KS right before it dissipated.

some other selected pictures of the chase here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/storminskies/sets/72157623960641500/

Also quick write up of the chase: http://www.storminskies.com

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Wow, what a GREAT day.

I started out at 3:30 from KC, and when I got to Topeka at 4:30, could already see mature storms anviled out on the horizon. My heart fell a bit that things were popping so early, and I actually TURNED AROUND to go home. Then I thought, "eh, I don't have anything better to do tonight," so I turned around AGAIN and made it up to Washington County in time for the show. I'll post the video with the debris cloud tomorrow probably, but here are some shots in the meantime. In this one you can sort of make it out, but I had to whack out the contrast for it to show up.

Booked it on over to Fairbury to catch the show there, which was just mind-blowingly cool. Knew I had to stay ahead of THIS, so I kept it on my back door for about 40 miles or so. In Beatrice it reorganized and I got caught in an inflow jet, I'm thinking ... I was really thinking it was going to produce a tornado right in front of the car for a bit.

So then I high tailed out ahead of it again and got over to Nemaha County as the storm was approaching the Neb City area. The lightning was strobing and completely ridiculous, so I stopped for shots ... when lo and behold the thing totally got its act together with this SWEET beaver tail feeding into an amazing structure. After seeing this shot, I'm thinking this was very likely a tornado at this point. Who the heck knows. Talked to fellow ST'er Justin there.

This was such a great chase, loved every dang second of it.

 

[Danny Neal]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA_Ncz7aUlQ - Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBHb7GlrrjM - Part 2

Brief tornado southwest of Hollenberg, KS, my video didn't really show the ground circulation, because I didn't have it tripod-ed but here is another video from Scott Bennett that shows the whole event 10x.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlBHzL-6Y38 Co-owner of CHASER-TV.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Yay for April being over, well almost I guess lol. Was on supercell west of Washington after giving up on first crapper north of Marysville KS. I wish I had just sampled that core on the highway west of Washington. Structure was ok, surely not great.

Watched the rotational fun from directly in its path north of Hanover. This is why it really didn't produce(short-lived dust whirls aside), I was in position for it if it was going to. I can't believe it even did what it did. There was jack for an updraft above that portion of the storm just before that. Then when it was spinning, with the longer flat base to the ne of that....you know it had a small window to do it or it would fill with cold air like it did. Like ok you're going past your window storm! Puke on itself. Ok structure there again, had a lot of junkus blocking the updraft view which from what I could tell wasn't all that great up there anyway. Fast moving stringy congestus.

I then went west once again for the one moving towards Fairbury. I had my doubts on the thing going ne behind the two before it and some intense mammatus suckered me south at Steele City, rather than up to Fairbury like I was heading. Figured I could drop south and salvage the day with some sort of structure with mammatus above....and potentially lightning in the twilight then. Well, hell if there was anywhere to stop on that road. Flip around come back north and stop on the one gravel road that didn't look like it would swallow you. Wound up talking to John and Shawna Davies there, really the only people I saw on that road. Turns out I shouldn't have dropped south for structure hope as it might have cost me the tornado in NE east of Fairbury...which I hear wasn't bad lol. Ah well probably wouldn't have seen it anyway. Structure sure as hell wasn't worth the chance swap.

C'mon June.

 

[Tyler Burg]

First solo chase of the year and without data, got on the Washington, KS Supercell and it had a very impressive looking wall cloud, really surprised it didn't produce right after this image...

soon after this storm crapped out, I got on the HP supercell to the west and followed it all the way to Nebraska city. More images on my website tomorrow.

 

[Brandon Sullivan]

A great chase day for me..

Pondered most of the morning about whether or not to dive southward toward the central KS target.. No model really seemed to want to generate any precipitation over that area..

The dryline/triple point area immediately northeast of the secondary sfc low continued to look better and better, and thus I headed west on 36 towards marysville, KS.. As the CU field began to show up, I dropped south..

The first two storms went through, but after a quick look at them I let them go, and was interested on the storm that went up to the southwest of them.. I dropped south and came in on the southeast side of it..

I followed it, and it was incredible to witness when the storm really rooted itself in the boundary.. what was a almost non existent lowering quickly became more and more impressive..

Overall, very happy with the pictures that I came up with.. Stuck with my gut and with some good positioning through the day, got some shots worth taking!

 

[jshields]

had a pretty good chase today. left omaha after i saw the first storms going up in kansas. briefly got suckered east by the first cells that were seemingly headed towards a better environment than the ones coming up towards the border, and went almost as far as tucemseh before i decided to try and get to the other cells. those storms that produced the first tornado in kansas were much weaker by the time i got to them near odell, ne. i briefly started to head back towards beatrice thinking i would just follow the remains of the cell and head back towards omaha. at this point i wondered whether any storm would make it across the border into nebraska with the 40s dewpoints that were all over eastern nebraska. i saw the storms once again nearing the border in kansas and they were just looking too good, so i turned back around and thought i should be able to get some good shots if nothing else. at this point i noticed the amazing mamatus clouds and snapped a few shots. as i headed west on hwy 8 towards steele city, i would find little county roads to pull of and take some pics of the shelf could coming into view. i must have been too busy looking at the maps and stopping to take pics, that i didn't notice the storm really get its act together on radar. the last place i stopped to take pics was near steele city just east and i could hear the sirens blaring. i knew the storms were moving fast but man did it come up on me. had amazing structure and motions! after the storm weakened some after passing through beatrice, i started to head home. i stopped 2x for the amazing lightning, the first place i could hear a dog barking at a farm down the road and it sounded like he was getting closer, so i got back in the car and took shots out my window! the next place i stopped and got out, i could hear a whole bunch of dog-like sounding animals somewhere out in a field. it reminded me of a story mike h. told once about there always being crazy animals at night out in the country at the last stop i was just in front of severe storm that had an amazing shelf cloud and inflow band. the lightning was amazing, but unfortunately by the time i got my tripod and camera set up i had to get in the car bc it started raining and the wind was howling. ran into some REALLY dense ground fog along some of the highways too. it was absolutely pouring in spots but there was still this fog, which im guessing was just steam evaporating off the highways, but it was amazingly thick and dense in places! i'll add some pics and have more on my blog prob tomorrow.

 

[Ryan Pfeifer]

Didn't decide to go for this until 5:30 in Omaha. As always, alone and without data. Managed to hear of a T-storm warning on the radio when I was near Tecumseh so I headed for it toward Beatrice. Looking back at the radar I actually ended up on the cell out in front of the Fairbury one. I thought my chase went great until I got on here and heard everyone raving about that cell. Still feel pretty good though, this cell cycled twice putting out some odd wall clouds. When I got on it it had a somewhat normal, though tall and skinny wall cloud, which turned into a cone shaped one before it dissappated. Almost looked like that one had a funnel for a bit, but there wasn't much organized rotation at any point. Next one was a twisty tube shape and came way down from the cloud base. Couldn't believe how far away the wall cloud was from the rain. Seemed like a good 5 miles between them. I've never seen a wall cloud situated very far from the rain, but I've only been on about a dozen chases and most have been HP situations. The storm motion really didn't seem that fast. Tracked for almost an hour no problem. Great drive back with all that lightning around and only used 1/2 a tank of gas. All these pictures are taken from NNW of the cloud. Not the best structure I've ever seen, but the best I've seen w/ my camera working. If this storm had felt like producing though it probably would have been a looker.

 

[Verne Carlson]

Chased the Washington and Belleville, KS storms as well then dropped down to Wilson, KS on I-70.

>> Full report and pics here <<

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

Not a bad little chase, better than I was expecting given Morning sfc obs and the trend of the RUC throughout the Day. I was extremely nervous about the day going crazy as I had an 8 p.m. meeting for work in Beatrice that I had no way out of, so I was SUPER restricted on time, I filmed the circulation North of Washington and then RACED back to Beatrice and made it a mere 30 seconds after the hammer went down...Ironic as I'm sitting there talking about Static Water Levels the sirens start to blare in the background, though the meeting continued on as if nothing were happening...Afterward we were having a couple drinks and one of the guys got a call that his place had been hit down by Diller, still no word on how bad the damage is down there...

The timelapse I have of the flat base SW of Washington looks pretty awesome in Full Res HD, that flat base was super turbulent and taking on inflow from all directions. JUST North of Washington the storm really started spinning hard, I thought it was seconds away from an awesome show, as it was, still pretty darn entertaining...That dust plume would have likely been much more evident and subsequently the "tornado" much more evident, had that area not already been drenched by earlier convection...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yjliEZqEcM

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Just some raw video clips from last night's chase ...

http://vimeo.com/11359355

Since I'm solo and just chase because I like to (and not to market video), pay no attention to the sound track ...