05/23/07 REPORTS: MN/WI/NE/IA/KS/MO/CO/OK/NM/TX

[Mike Kovalchick]

Just a few comments to add about the Canadian valley storm.

On a reckless whim, I decided to core punch it on West/East route 281 to get over to the business end of the storm so to speak. I noticed that the chasers that were stuck on Route 70 had no easy way to get over to route 83 area and had to sit and wait a bit for the storm to move.

I found myself at the head of a caravan of vehicles attempting Route 281. Wow! We encountered ZERO visibility in hail/heavy rain..with winds estimated around hurricane force out of the North. We had to stop many times as the sound of the hail impacting my truck was getting rather scary. (upto golfball size) I believe I picked up a few more hail dents on my truck to add to my considerable collection there already!

In the space of just a few hundred yards..the winds switched 180 degrees to right out of the South as I broke clear of the rain/hail curtains and could suddenly see the throng of chasers vehicles that had been watching the storm from the East on Route 83. Quite the chaser convergence indeed.

Video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7Ba8Dfqcs0

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

http://www.extremeinstability.com/07-5-23.htm

Full account finally up.

 

[Dave Chapman]

Roberts County, Texas:

Just catching up on Stormtrack and it looks like nearly everyone was stopped near Highway 70. Here's the view from 8.5 miles west of the highway:

The road was a little slippery but nothing my 4-Runner couldn't handle. (Although I never would have approached this storm on a wet dirt road in Kansas or Oklahoma or some other parts of Texas...I've seen enough 4WD vehicles unable to drive even twenty feet back to pavement when a couple of inches of mud is covering hard-pack dirt.)

Here's my report:
http://www.kickbully.com/2007Storm/storms75.html

 

[Patrick Kerrin]

I have finally got a usable workflow in place for dealing with mpeg2 video (at least for YouTube posting), and have also honed a post-processing methodology for converting mpeg2 video to pseudo time-lapse.

I have uploaded a post-processed time-lapse video of the Roberts County, TX meso from 23 May, 2007. To recap: started in Woodward, to Canadian for lunch, up 83, W on 51, noticed explosive development to S/SW, blasted down 70 (encountered a few loud hail dings during the decent into the Canadian River valley - even tough I was going through just developing - or should I say just collapsing - precip), SE on 283. Video shot about 1 mile SE of the 70-283 junction. The time lapse is followed by a real-time zoomed in segment from the same sequence as the time-lapse.

Only saw one other chase vehicle until after this occlusion when a few others showed up (including meeting Shane and Mickey for the first time).

This is not in HD so it is best viewed by selecting the "Watch in High Quality" link just under the video.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=KMBqhT0iBuE


Patrick Kerrin
London, Ontario

P.S. have also updated the stills (colour and contrast tweaked to more closely resemble what I saw with my eyes) from this day at:

http://www.patrickkerrin.com/2007Chasing.htm