05/06/2008 REPORTS: IA, NE, KS, OK, TX, NM

[Tony Laubach]

Chased the Finney County, Kansas cell and found a fun little hail core (what else is new). Measured mostly quarters with a few meatier stones just shy of golfball. Pretty much what I expected on a close-to-home chase. Looks like the most tornado-warned cells were even north of me, even as my cell was later tornado-warned near Great Bend as it formed a mean bow echo. Was following the southern target and it looked like it hosed a bunch of people. Fortunately my self-tied leash prevented me from heading down there. Guess a close-to-home restriction does luck out from time-to-time, otherwise it would've been a long drive home as I would've been there myself.

Vid caps of the hail later... just nice to have a chase start from Denver and end in Denver in the same day for a change.

 

[Daniel Christianson]

Not really a good day mood wise, but went out on a last effort from Hwy 36 West of Bennington NE, and headed towards Arlington NE. Saw a gravel road and took a left and watched the line move in, i was praying for hail or something spectacular.. Ended up getting blast by dust/gravel in the face. Visibilty was getting poor so i turned around and made my way back home, something caught my eye at this point, and i thought gustnado? but more of the wind just sucking up dirt in the field... it was a fun little jog. Took som pics but had to in black and white with no flash on digi ..

 

[Mikey Gribble]

I dabbled with the idea of chasing for 48 hours leading up to today. We had been planning on leaving town by 1PM for western Kansas, but it just didn't look that great this morning. I couldn't get myself motivated to do it because I just didn't see much if any tornado potential. Finally motivated by the fear of missing a tornado (as opposed to being motivated by the idea of seeing one), I called up Ryan Shirk at about 3:30 and told him to come on over. Well after we both dragged our feet and debated in front of my apartment for 20 minutes we finally said screw it and left.
We headed out to Greensburg and watched some towers along the boundary that had been moving north through the afternoon. We even got a little rain out of some of the towers that tried to get going. After about 20 minutes of that we decided to head North and intercept the cell that had moved into Kansas from Colorado. The storm went tornado warned just West of Great Bend, which was shocking for a moment before I realized it was that bookend/comma head wrap around on the bow's North end that likely prompted the warning. We weren't about to try to weave our way back into that mess so we stayed ahead of the bow instead and watched a nice shelf cloud develop as the bowing segment accelerated. At times it was a pretty good shelf cloud with a three tier structure to it. I have some good video during that phase, but all I have loaded on the computer right now are pictures I took with my phone to send back to the station. The picture below was early on when the shelf cloud started to take shape. Once it got good I stuck to the video and digital camera. We were flying down the highway trying to stay ahead of it so I didn't have much time for pictures anyways. At one point we were slightly violating the speed limit to avoid getting pounded by the accelerating bow when a cop came by going the other way. Ryan was driving my car and he looked at me (with that "uh oh") look on his face right after the cop went by us. I think we both thought for a second we were getting pulled over for sure, but then I looked back to see if the cop was turning around and saw the overwhelming shelf cloud bearing down on us. It took me a second to process the information then I told Ryan there was no way in hell a cop was going to stop you in front of that thing. If you didn't know what you were looking at I imagine it would be pretty damn intimidating. I was a little scared of it and I've seen them before and know it doesn't pose much of a threat. Anyways, he didn't pull us over and I at least got a little chuckle out of the deal. It wasn't a good chase, but the shelf cloud was a nice pay off.
Again the picture below(from my phone camera) was right after the shelf cloud started shaping up. I would say I'm going to post video soon of the shelf cloud after it reached the three tier stage, but I probably won't.

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

After an exciting final this morning, raced SW and chased the storms near Great Bend, watched an "awesome" shelf cloud. Once it hit the better moisture and air to the East it started to intensify, about the time it went tornado warned it developed a nice little notch. It was pretty sweet to watch the strong outflow winds hit hit the moist East winds and curve back around, creating a nice little area of strong LL rotation. At one point had a nice rotating bowl and subsequent power flash, tough to verify if it was indeed a tornado or not (no condensation and a lot of dust in the air), though provided location and the bowl above, quite possible it was indeed at least brief tornado. Still on the road so haven't got all my pics uploaded yet but here is just a couple, will have the rest and hopefully some video grabs of when the storm looked better on www.severechase.com by tomorrow.

Not an overly exciting chase, but a nice break between finals.....

 

[Jay Cazel]

I was on the Barton County Kansas storm that did go tornado warned as I just got south of Great Bend. Very mean, dark looking storm and lots of lighting and wind. The area where the tornado was reported was north of Great Bend so I never got a chance to see it. This storm was moving very fast around 40 to 45 mph, had a hard time staying in front of it and also getting hit by the 70mph plus winds never had time to get the video camera set up. Not bad for a last minitue chase close to home. Here are a few pics of the storm.

 

[PeteMcConnell]

I left Hastings, NE after finishing the kid's paper routes with them. I had just recently wired my power inverter to the battery so I would stop blowing fuses. Little did I know that I jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. Don't believe everything the people at Radio Shack tell you. They suggested the wrong gauge wire. I'm driving along toward my target when smoke starts billowing out from under the hood of my van. After a trip to Napa Auto Parts and a 1 hour pit stop replacing my melted wire with the help of a good friend, I was back on the road. I ended up west of Holdredge, NE trying to intercept the storm that reportedly put a tornado down in Frontier County, NE. I got a few pictures I'll be posting shortly.

 

[Bill Doms]

Iowa

Total crap storms. Talk about outflow dominant...darn near froze to death standing outside taking pics and video.

The Story county IA torn cell was junk. It also was totally outflow dominant with the updraft area undercut. Not a chance for a torn. The only interesting thing was looking south towards Nevada IA from our location south east of Roland. A dry mircoburst hit with enough force to send a pretty fair dirt plume into the air which got caught in the elevated inflow. Not as good as Andy Revering's smokenado from a few years ago, but was still the highlight. I'll try to get the video up sometime as it is kind cool watching the dirt get churned up then watching it outline the outflow.

Few more pics on MY BLOG

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

Unfortunately, the TOR for Story was partially my fault. I debated about posting this here in a REPORT thread and also for exposing my shame to be seen by all, but this did occur on a local chase, and despite the time I've put into this hobby I'm still a rookie and I shouldn't sweep my mistakes under the rug.

My ex and I hopped in the car at 7:00 and headed ten miles to the north of our home to take some gimme footage of the approaching shelf cloud. She'd never really seen one, and I let the suspicion catch - even though I explained to her the squall we saw could easily fool newbies with all the suspicious-looking scud, I paid for running my big mouth like a know-it-all by getting fooled myself.

Reviewing the clip I took, I kept returning to a base over and over again even though I can hear myself say on the video that I thought it was just part of the shelf (after a while, though, it really feels I was telling myself that rather than her). At around 7:30, winds really picked up, flowing into the area that I was viewing. I was getting nervous but rationally I knew better, and when we heard a nearby clap of thunder we decided to get out of the lightning risk, pack it up, and return to our evening duties at home.

That's when I noticed the spin-up. On my clip, I saw it rotate quickly before I dropped my Hi-8 in my lap to watch it outside of the lens, since it started around a half mile away and was headed in our direction. I have some cutting and uploading duties to do tomorrow, but I will include the video link on the DISC thread to show what I captured - unfortunately it isn't much visual aid to my case, since what was videotaped was pretty clearly not tornadic but what I ended up seeing off-camera was a pretty tall, narrow, apparently rotating thing that prompted me to call it in at 7:35.

Reviewing the call-in recorded on my videotape, I retained a lot more caution than I remembered after the warning came out and subsequently colored my glasses rose, and I stated toward the end of the call that I thought it was a gustnado but still felt suspicious enough to report it - after all, thirty minutes earlier when I left, the same approaching area had rotation on my radar, although I pinned it for junk at the time.

Unknown to me throughout all of this since I was already out taking photos of pretty clouds over a cornpatch, a local TV channel had cut in to say there was rotation and reported funnel clouds some fifteen minutes or so before my call-in. Additionally, when I called KDMX much later to shamefully confirm it was likely only a gustnado/downburst after reviewing my own footage and speaking to someone on GRL2 (Scott here in Ames), the representative stated that another call in from a different person came in from the same area at the same time, and the rep insisted that the radar backed our reports. I don't know whether he was covering his tracks or just assuaging my pretty obvious embarrassment, but all of these unfortunate factors - myself playing probably the most responsible role of the back-breaking straw - probably led to two small towns seeking shelter from junk as the TOR was issued some ten minutes after my call.

Although we were on our way back to our nightly duties, hearing the warning excited us, and we turned around to follow what I'd left behind. Over the radio, the warning was originally listed as a radar-detected thunderstorm capable of producing, but later as we were catching up to it, the warning was updated to state that the radar continued to detect a tornado. There were plenty of fire trucks and sheriff cars milling about and blocking off roads, curiously not the road that actually ran through Roland and into the stated path of the storm, but I looked over and saw a couple of the neat downbursts, and I now guess those may have also been mistaken for something more, this time by law enforcement rather than a newb hobbyist. But by that time, the outflow had turned ridiculous as Mr. Doms mentioned, the air had cooled so much that our windows were fogged beyond the reach of our defroster, and a new SVR came out staking claim of 70+ mph wind heading our direction, so my ex and I ended up moaning and arguing as if we'd just busted a 4000 mile chase. We waited in Colo and never saw that 70mph wind (or even half the speed) at the time the WX radio said it was coming through, so I headed home.

I arrived back a full two hours later than my originally assumed free shelf-picture grab, and instead of presenting a nice local chase report I'm here exorcising a great deal of guilt and feeling every inch a rookie. The pictures themselves were actually worth saving from our vantage, as was part of the video grab, so once she uploads the pictures and I cut down my video I will post them.

 

[Tim Marshall]

SHORT: Long haul to West Texas to see garbage storms, except for a nice barber pole storm about 9:30 PM northwest of Aspermont, TX.

LONG: Departed Flower Mound about 9:30 AM for my target of Turkey, TX. About half way there, I noticed the upper system was moving slower than anticipated. Also, low-clouds covered the target area and the dryline was held back west to the NM foothills, as feared. So, I adjusted the target to Brownfield, TX (southwest of Lubbock) and a long chase ensued. While driving through Lubbock, the sky went to broken building cumulus with blue sky above. Surface temperatures rose from 70 to 81 degrees and the dewpoint remained steady at 61 degrees. However, while temperatures increased to the mid 80's in the Seminole-Lamesa area, surface dewpoints mixed down to a paultry 54 degrees. So, I stayed north of that in the Brownfield area and watched high based, backward storms (updrafts on the north side of the precip) then gave up about 6:30 PM and started to head back to Dallas on Rt. 380. While approaching Jayton after dusk, an LP supercell developed on top of me. Upper air support finally made it into the area after dark. The storm had a barber pole (striated) updraft with beaver tails extending to the southeast and a crisp anvil. I stopped to take occasional lightning picts. A pretty storm, but not worth the 750 mile, $150 fuel bill. TM

 

[Shane Adams]

Chad, Mick, and myself ended up getting on the storm southwest of Andrews, TX early into its life. We were hopeful this multi-cell storm would eventually congeal into one massive supercell ala Electra April 7, but it simply was not to be. We had great surface inflow, with nicely-backed winds around 20mph sustained for a while. We moved north and northeast with the storm(s) as it(they) continued to push towards the area west of Lamesa. North of there, we encountered a classic west Texas dust bowl storm, with visibilities reduced to near-zero for a 1-2 mile stretch along US87. We finally managed to get out of the 1930s near Tahoka, where we went east as we realized the storms weren't going to do what we wanted them to do.

We were stopped earlier in the day by a THP, who was a training officer with a trainee. I think they stopped us just for an excuse to train, because the officer told Chad immediately "I'm not giving you a ticket" and basically just ran all three of our licenses, while the trainee stood by the car with us. He asked us a ton of questions about chasing/spotting, because it was part of his duties (he had only recently discovered) to go out and spot when weather threatened his areas. He was very apprehensive about it, so we told him about Skywarn training and how it was used to get people started in and around severe weather situations. By the time we'd finished our explanation, the training officer returned with our licenses, thanked us for our courtesy, and sent us on our way. We gave them a quick briefing on what to expect later wx-wise, and took our leave.

I've never had a bad experience with the THP, and this latest encounter only solidifies this. Another great example of LEOs and chasers working together smoothly.

Currently trying to pull a "Neo" and see the code inside the matrix that is today's extremely freaky setup. I'm liking the US82/US70 corridors from I-35 through US75, with possible shifts westward depending on how fast things evolve.

 

[David Wolfson]

As others, was pretty happy with the target east of Lubbock, elated as the cap broke around 22Z, and increasingly frustrated as the storm motion (from 220 or worse) and lackluster inflow (20 or less) suggested what came after. The LP corkscrew I mentioned in the NOW post north of Lorenzo corkscrewed itself to a quick death in the face of the approaching UA-driven mess. I escaped getting stuck on back roads and was chased all the way into Vernon. Whoopie.

 

[Rocky Rascovich]

Michael Ratliff and I departed Yukon, OK a little after 1300. Initially I targeted the general area along the I-27 corridor in the TX PH even though I knew the best area's for potential storms was further south toward LBB. I was noticing the pressure falls progged by the models in SW KS. with the NAM most aggressive with an 8mb. drop in 6 hours. I wasn't totally buying that but other models had 2 to 5mb. drop which did verify based on the SPC mesoanalysis site. Also, enhanced area's of Cu and increased helicities drew us to the north out of Elk City on Hwy 34 through Woodward and on into KS. east of DDC.

What we were treated to was a linear line of garden variety outflow dominant garbage that we intercepted in Kinsley to Stafford. There was a TOR warned cell that had an interesting radar presentation for Barton Co. What looked like to me to be a classic "bookend vortex". We were a county away from that and it was getting dark so we bailed on that, tried our hand at taking some lightning photo's until the rain drove us back into the vehicles. We did drive through a cell in Pratt that had 40-50mph outflow winds and quarter sized hail around 2130 (estimated time). That may have been the highlight of the day for over 450mi. of driving (or more?)
and between Mike and I, around 90 bucks in petrol. Between my trip back from Fla. on Monday and yesterday's chase, I'm finally feeling close to 50.

Rocky&family

P.S Check out the Announcements section for the date change of the picnic.

 

[Mike Umscheid]

My chase target on Tuesday, May 6th was west-central Kansas somewhere with a starting point of Scott City in mind. I set off for Scott City around midday, reaching the Scott City area around 2:30pm. There were already storms developing between Lamar and Holly where convective temperature was being reached in the 83-85F range. A cluster of small storms had eventually evolved as they moved into the Syracuse, KS area. This activity was moving into 2500-3000 J/kg surface-based CAPE environment with dewpoints around 58-59F or so. I expected an organized severe storm to form out of this stuff.


After monitoring things for a while just outside of Scott City, I drove south to intercept the primary strong updraft north of Highway 50 between Syracuse and Lakin. I eventually reached a stopping point about 5 miles north of Holcomb where I got a pretty good view of the high-based updraft at around 4:00pm. The storm rapidly strengthened by this time and took on supercell characteristics. Inflow was excellent into the storm with south-southeast winds around 25-30 mph. A high-based wall cloud showed periods of interesting rotation to my northwest, and as long as the rear flank downdraft wasn’t cold enough, tornadogenesis would be possible. Of course, that wasn’t to be. Around 4:15pm, I started to get nailed by cooler west winds denoting the more stable rear-flank downdraft. Once I felt this, I knew tornado prospects were done. I drove east a few miles before noticing a number of dusty spin-ups (RFD gustnadoes) at the inflow-rear flank downdraft interface. I was fairly close to a couple of them and got a few photos. It was time to keep heading east and focus on the structure of the storm.


Around 5:00pm, the storm developed another classic RFD clear-slot, albeit still high-based. Around this time, looking to the north-northwest, the rotation in the wall cloud was probably about as good as it ever got with this storm, and a nascent funnel (albeit quite brief!) developed beneath this rotation. This feature quickly fell apart, and I continued east along Hwy 156. By 5:30, several other storms were developing immediately northeast of the initial supercell…all spewing out cold outflow as well…so it wasn’t long before this whole system was severely outflow dominant. Around 5:45, I manged to stay far enough east to get one decent set of images of the original supercell updraft with a long high-based shelf cloud extending northeast. I wallowed about western Hodgeman county through 7pm photographing the storms along and north of Hwy 156. Another strong updraft surge developed northwest of Jetmore around 7pm or so which revealed interesting structure, of course about 10-12 miles north of the outflow boundary.


I drove back to Dodge, but instead of heading home, I continued west to Cimarron then north a few miles to photograph some lightning at the west end of this complex. Not much success with the lightning, but managed to get a couple images. I was back home by 9:15pm or so. Below are a few images. A few more can be found on my blog.

Mike U

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

When I left for this chase, my expectations were not high. The near future wasn't looking terribly exciting on the models, so that helped me out the door. I liked the stronger mid-level flow prog'd in nc NE, as well as the fact it would be cold. I also liked the fact there was a large area to the south that would see sun, so the moisture issues would at least get some heating on the way up there. When I left, I felt I'd be happy just going for a long drive, which is odd this time of year.

As I near Taylor NE I could see the target storm forming sw of Valentine. I head it off driving to Brewster where I lose any cell service. That sort of sucked, because it was just north of the outflow boundary and going ene towards Ainsworth. I didn't think that would continue and actually feared it'd backbuild and go south on me. So what to do at Brewster, go north or sw to Dunning. I flew north towards Ainsworth on that long desolate highway. I found it about 10 miles south of town, still looking like it was going east, maybe not as much ene...but still not turning that hard evidently. I wanted to jump up into town and top off as I am paranoid about gas out there. But I needed to drive back south as it crossed the n-s highway well south of Ainsworth. It took about as bad as path as it could there, splitting those long n-s highway options and roaming no mans land. Above is it crossing south of Ainsworth as I go back south. It would NOW start to organize...figures. And I need to go 30 miles south then a bunch east to ever get ahead of it again. It was highly green right up and behind the base the whole time it was moving across that highway. Surely the most obvious green I've seen. Or turquoise I guess.

I had no idea how good it was doing till I reached Taylor again. I was like, DOH. Had a nice hook and had turned se...and been getting tornado warnings now. Seemed each time I'd look at the hail indicators it was saying 3.25 or 3.75 inch hail. Then the one hook weakens as a new updraft and hook formed just se of that one. Those two sort of messed with one another as they marched towards Bartlett, where I was headed for an intercept. Meanwhile, there was another supercell right behind it to the west dropping se that kept looking like it might stretch one down at any moment.

Above is the storm from north of Bartlett. The inflow notch would form towards the right side, north of the curling gust front. Surprisingly it really tried here. I'll have to get a video clip online showing it as it moved overhead. There was some strong ene to wsw motion in that e-w band, as a big wall of rain wrapped around to the south of me in the hook. I was actually looking for the 3+ inch stones if it had any, but I couldn't find them(looking as in for them to hit me, not looking as in later on the ground). The reflectivity let up a bit as it hit this location.

As I punch east back ahead of it, this intense dust devil crosses right ahead of me, and spins up a bunch of crap about 100-200 feet to my south. It was actually behind the gust front quite a bit.

It briefly got a little horizontal tube in there.

Got a coupe bolts once back into town.

Full account with a short video later.

2 hour North Platte radar
It's the ne most storm, and the radar ends as it is approaching Bartlett. You can also see the sw NE storm which produced a tornado. It jogs hard sw for that short bit.

 

[edward oneal]

05/06/08

Chased storm in Hodgeman Co. with my daughter did not get out of Dodge until after 5 PM. Targeted what looked like a small inflow notch NE of Kalvesta that had a area of moderate rotation while sitting under this feature, a small rapidly rotating funnel formed and lasted for about 40 seconds. After this followed the storm east to Hanston and let it over take us there. Ran in to Mike Umscheid from the NWS office out of Dodge City while getting gas in Jetmore. Mike does a great job keeping people safe out of the DDC office. The people of Greensburg Know this well. Keep up the Good work Mike.