05/29/04 REPORTS: KS, NE, MO, OK & Northern Plains

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Overall a pretty decent day... Started near Enid, learned of a nice cell in Roger Mills county... Intercepted a nice storm which rapidly developed a nice wall cloud near Putnam. However, a storm to it's south cut this one off just as it was starting to go tornadic... We, with some luck, punched through the southern storm, and made it to 1 mile east of Thomas as we heard of larger than baseball hail breaking windows in Thomas. Whew, that was close...

Rapidly rotating very low wall cloud near Thomas tried a few times to put something decent down. Saw several brief spinups with this, but nothing real concrete. The only road to get east of the river now that didn't include the town of Thomas was I40... So, had to take a brief detour to I40... Ended up back on the storm near Geary... Very strong rotating rain curtains here, but again, nothing sustained as far as tornadic circulation is concerned. Finally, near Calumet, a quite photogenic anticyclonic tornado dropped north of town. From here to Piedmont, things were pretty crazy. There were several instances where there were 3 rotating wall clouds in sight. The HP nature of the storm was quite evident, as the main meso stayed wrapped in precip most of the time. To the southwest of the main meso, however, we saw numerous rotating wall clouds, and saw a few brief, yet quite violent spinups. A couple more anticyclonic wall clouds also developed and persisted for a few minutes mainly south of the monster main meso. Followed the storm northeast of OKC where we had to give it up for gasoline.

Overall a pretty good day. Was disappointing that it didn't pan out exactly as I was expecting (e.g. no long-track signficant tornado), and the HP nature of the storm (most of the time it was HP at least) made seeing tornadic circulations pretty difficult at time. However, still can't complain with 2-3 tornadoes... Really looked like it was going to put together a large on near Thomas, though.
 
Oklahoma Chase 5-29

Here is a summary of my chase in western Oklahoma today, which began early from our vacation base in Santa Fe, NM. I will eventually post a complete report with pictures on my Web site.

7 a.m – Out the door from Santa Fe. Stop at Allsups for coffee and breakfast burrito, got sausage, egg, cheese sandwich instead.

12:20 – Data, lunch, pit stop in Amarillo. Situation pretty much unchanged, high CAPE just east of dryline, jet max coming over panhandle and W. OK, good convergence, 986 MB low projected over W. KS at 0Z. High risk over central, N OK east of about Weatherford.

1:30 – Cu field evident along and just ahead of dryline ahead as I’m between AMA and Shamrock

2:00 – Cu have grown to TCU, I’m just west of Shamrock looking E

2:20 – TCU to NE is now CB as I’m about to cross into OK. Other weak CB form SSWrd next few minutes.

Around 3 – Data stop planned for Sayre becomes quick radar check. PDS tornado watch now in effect until 10 p.m. for central, western OK; also parts of KS, TX. Radar shows two storms, in NW of Sayre moving NE or even NNE, other about to cross from TX into SW corner of OK. Both strengthening; weaker convection between. I decide to target the southern storm figuring easier to intercept plus “tail end” storm usually better.

3:30? I’m west of Willow. Southern storm appears to have weakened; radar confirms this. I head back N on 34 to intercept northern storm north of Elk City.

4:00 I intercept storm, now SVR warned, turning W from 34 onto 33 at Hammon. About 6 miles west of there I see nice rainfoot as storm produces golfball hail NNE of Cheyenne at 4:20, then later a small rotating wall cloud, as storm goes TOR warned. Other chasers, TV vans also on the storm.

Visible rotation ends for a time; I follow storm N and E on 34 and 47, just after it produces 70 mph gust at intersection of 34 and 47.. New TOR issued as I’m on 47 between 34 and 183. Storm looks better again; DOW also watching it. Nice rainbow forms in east; around Burmah I hit heavy rain from next storm S being pulled into my storm by inflow. Meso becomes hidden. I turn N on 183 to try to get out of it and approach meso again, but rain is so heavy I have to turn back west at Putnam. Blinding rain w/ 50 mph(?) Wind from S, with sun shining. Finally break out and see retreating meso to my NE about 1-2 miles W of Putnam. 4 miles N of Putnam, storm produces 2.5-inch hail just after 5:30. Southern storm now looking awesome, straight, rock-hard tower with increasingly backshearing, knuckled anvil. 2 other storms are now between, so almost entire area to E between the two main storms is filled with other storms, rainbows form as dominant storms draw in rain from 2 weaker storms, northern storm pulling rain to N and southern storm to S. I return to 183, go north toward northern storm for a while. It’s looking OK, but moving into difficult road area (and also making my return to Santa Fe more difficult the farther N I go, while souther storm looks better and better.) I decide to return S on 183 to try to catch southern storm.

Heading S, lots of cloud motion in E, nice rainbow, flanking line of southern storm directly ahead of me. As I approach 47, I see lowering form under tilted updraft of storm to my SE. Minutes later, TOR is issued as tornado is reported 4 mi SW of Thomas (time?) My lowering was diffuse but somewhat funnel shaped and in the right place – not more than halfway to ground, if that. Tornado?

I pursue the storm east to Thomas. West of Thomas, I see 4-inch hailstones, and stop with lots of chasers just west of Thomas to watch storm and photograph 2.5 inch hailstones. Talk with spottern who had windshield broken by hail. Lowering has quickly become hiden by rain. Major street flooding in Thomas.

I turn S just E. of Thomas on 54, then East on E0950 Rd, which goes east, then south, then east, then south again ending up at Hydro. Perhaps 4 mi. S. of Thomas, I come to 2 emergency vehicles where tornado appears to have crossed road. 3 or 4 power poles are down (luckily on E. side of road, toward E so not across road) and branches are also down. This is between locations of reported touchdowns, so likely tornado was on ground for some distance. In the second place where the road goes east, I see chasers looking NNE and looking there see ropy funnel at least halfway to ground, probably more, at 7:30 p.m. Because at least halfway down, I’m calling it a likely tornado. Being under the flanking line, it’s probably a landspout. It ends in less than a minute, before I can stop and turn on video camera. Likely location: just west of American Horse Lake. I start up again, only to see two short narrow funnels form simultaneously around 7:33. Again I stop; again they dissipate before I can video. Main meso is now over Geary (it reportedly caused a rain-wrapped tornado about 6 miles west of there at 7:25.) I briefly see distant lowering; no idea whether or not it was associated with the Geary tornado. But storm is getting away from me.

To catch up, I have to go to 40 and blast east to 66 and 270 to re-intercept near Calumet. Storm produces multiple tornadoes N of Calumet just before I can get to it. I pass DOW again, scanning east into the darkness. Now I’m getting play-by-play on radio from Gary England, Val Castor, and others on TV chase teams. I see (and they report) anticyclonic rotation just NE of Calumet. This was quite photogenic, and I got some nice video. Couldn't confirm a tornado, though some say there was. Spotters also report tornadoes without condensation/lowering NE of Calumet and near or just NE of Concho. I watch numerous lowerings, including what looks like large wall cloud to NE, from 3 mi ENE of Calumet. But I can’t confirm any tornadoes from this location, although TV teams are reporting power flashes just NE of Concho which I can’t see. This is in the OUN LSR as a tornado at 8:20. At 8:45 I call of chase, b/c it’s getting dark, storms are about to enter OKC metro area, and I’m nearly out of gas.

I gas up in Calumet, buying gas from young woman who says she’d rather be chasing, and start long trip back toward Santa Fe, listening to Gary and his team report the storms progress through the NW parts of the OKC metro.

Day’s total: 2 (or maybe 3) possible tornadoes, at least 3 funnel clouds, cyclonic and anticyclonic rotating wall clouds, 4-inch hail, floods. Had I stayed with the southern storm all the way, I might have done better, as once I switched back to it I was too far behind it to see the rain-wrapped tornadoes or even some that weren’t. Still, an amazing day.
 
Dang, what a day. Got to my initial target of Enid about 3:30. After hanging around there a bit I headed down 81 to catch the storm west of OKC. Intense storm pretty much sums it up. Got a couple good windshield cracks from baseball size hail.

There were so many frickin' people out it was crazy, not to mention unsafe. Down 3 east toward OKC people were parked everywhere. Even in the section of the road that you swing through to make a U-turn. These were totally blocked by people watching and filming the storm. I don't know how many doors I almost took off.

Might be some severe weather close to home tomorrow. If I can chase around the crowd that was out today, the Ozarks will be nothing. :wink:
 
Saw 2 tornadoes in western Oklahoma today north of I-40. No good video as touchdowns were brief and only video is while driving:

http://wvlightning.com/2004/may29.jpg

Did manage to stop and grab a couple of 35mm slide shots of this tube, albeit the funnel had partially lifted. Great contrast though.

Highlight of the day was from tornado #2, mostly invisible except for a brief condensation swirl on the ground along with several airborne trees and small debris. We were less than 1/2 mile south. We heard an amazing sound from the vortex as it touched down briefly, sounded like the reverse thrusters on a jet airplane.

Little scare by a blast of RFD winds in Geary, recorded a gust of 114 MPH on my anemometer as garbage cans and tree limbs fly around and the vehicles rock. We turned around fast and got out of it, thankfully didn't lose any windows.

Managed to squeeze by the same storm before it crossed I-40 into Tulsa. Staying in Joplin, MO for a last-vacation-day-long-shot-chase in MO and AR on the way home.

Detailed report to follow eventually.
 
Got first cell north of Hammon - was pretty high based at first, but produced a few decent wall clouds. Eventually the base lowered a little and inflow really got cranking - then precip from new cell to the south started feeding into the updraft. Went south on US 183 in heavy rain - then got 1" hail just south of US 183 and Hwy 47 so stopped to let core pass by to the south. Went south to I-40 then went east to reposition. Went up to Geary just as HP monster was closing in on town. Left as soon as inflow jets hit which created blinding dust storm - was amazing to see dust getting drawn into the updraft. Went south to I-40 again then up through Yukon to Hwy 3/Hwy 4 intersection to try another intercept - was a bit surprised at how much the storm slowed after going through Geary so I was well east of it while it was tornadoing in the Calumet/Concho area. No matter though as this storm was showing some amazing structure. Lost view of the storm for a while I was going through the northern part of OKC, then kept going after it after dark through Arcadia, Luther...and finally giving up around Chandler. Saw some lightning illuminated wall clouds but that was about it.

No tornadoes today but just an amazing storm. This storm's dust filled inflow was just as intense as the Portales NM storm from 6/4/2003. Also it was great to see amazing supercell structure in the western suburbs of OKC for the second time in four days. This supercell has to be right up there with the 5/29/2001 storm and the 5/9/2003 storm in terms of long lived supercells - today's storm pretty much crossed the entire state of Oklahoma and finally died at the OK/AR border around 3am! The radar pics from tonight's storm as it tracked along the Turner Turnpike remind me a lot of the radar pics of the 5/9/2003 supercell as it tracked along the Turner Turnpike!
 
Probably got more than a half dozen tornadoes from the Harper County storm including the huge Argonia area storm. We navigated through some tree filed dirt roads and saw at least F2 damage. After driving 500 miles and heading back to Tulsa, I had to do on-air work at the TV station as that supercell came up from OKC and rotated over my house...fun today....Will post some pics Sunday....
 
I intercepted the Harper-Sumner County storm from its inception in southwestern Woods County, OK. The first rotating wall cloud was observed northwest of Alva, OK, but this didn't last too long and the storm became high based and looked very non-tornadic...until it crossed into Harper County KS. I observed the first thin tornado from a few miles northwest of Anthony looking northwest towards the Attica-Crystal Springs location. This was on the ground for at least 15 minutes, maybe longer. This was a violent, thin shaped drill bit, that intermittently threw what appeared to be structural debris several hundred feet into the air. Classic debris cloud with this tornado.

The next tornado formed to my east-southeast, then after that all hell was
breaking lose. Soon, two tornadoes were occuring simultaneously, doing the Fujiwara act with a third weak tornado on the rear flank gust front. The dominant tornado became a large cone w/ dark dusty debris cloud and then morphed into a big dusty cylinder. I was hanging back west too long by this point and missed the initial wedge. I hopped on 160 and drove east with the rain-wrapped wedge in front of me apparently. It missed Danville to the east by a couple miles I think. Once I reached east of Danville, the very large tornado was to my northeast, then eventually north when I could pick out both sides of the condensation funnel. It was very large. Probably the the largest tornado I've ever seen. I continued east on 160 through Argonia ultimately stopping at a location 8 S of Conway Springs when the next significant tornado
occurred very near Conway Springs. This was a very ominous, "tornado cyclone scraping the ground" type feature initially with multiple suction
spots. At times this feature would become one dominant earth-grinding wide stovepipe, then back to multiple vortices again... eventually, this tornado wedged out, and I was worried about its proximity to Conway Springs. I think one house was destroyed just outside of Conway Springs by this tornado. My tape eventually ran out and I had to resort to just taking stills (darn!)... as the tornado become a significant trunk as light was diminishing.

What a day. Most of my video was mounted on my suction cup mount on the driver side window. I can't wait to review it. I zoomed in a lot at ground level of the first thin drill bit northwest of Anthony (the first long-lived tornado).... Many digi stills taken as well, which in time, will be posted on my website.

Mike U
 
From Tulsa,Ok to Buffalo, OK to Derby, KS back to Oneta,Ok just as rotation was arriving then on to Locust Grove, OK. Thought this was going to be a less mileage day..... lol

Have start to end of this first Tornado and video of the snake funnel (last photo)Shane described. it had some wicked moves to it

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[Broken External Image]:http://videodave.web.aplus.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/.pond/img0679.jpg.w560h420.jpg

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Cloud County, KS wedge and other tornadoes

May 29, 2004 Multiple Tornadoes including wedge.
Cloud County region near Concordia, Kansas

Links to images at then end.


Saturday was a high risk day for strong and long-lived tornadoes. Unfortunately, the area affected was large and making a forecast was difficult. I initially had two targets. One was in the Concordia area of north-central Kansas and the other target was along the Kansas/Oklahoma border south of Wichita. I decided on the northern target and it was close to Tim Vasquez’s target. I drove north from Hutchinson and met Jason Persoff, M.D. for lunch in Russell, Kansas. Warm moist air was flowing northward and to the west, there was an approaching dryline. During lunch, scattered Cu (cumulus clouds) had already formed across the area. I was worried that we could be too far from our target. In this environment, storms could explode rapidly. We drove east and then north to the town of Beloit, Kansas. Tim called and stated the best area of cumulus was to the west of Beloit. Initiation would occur soon. In Beloit, the clouds became more vertically developed and “turkey towersâ€￾ were forming by 3PM. At 3:25, Tim called and stated that a storm was forming to the southwest of Beloit. We drove south on 14 and west and could see a storm literally exploding before our eyes. The storm was initially disorganized and high-based as it moved northeastward toward Beloit. As it moved into air with deeper moisture, the storm intensified and began to rotate. At 4:38, a wall cloud and brief needle tornado formed. While I was getting more data, Jason talked with a group of farmers in Beloit via Ham radio and gave them updates on the approaching storm. We drove north and east on a dirt road to follow the storm. The storm cycled in intensity and there was some backbuilding. At 5:45PM, the storm produced a very large wall cloud and inflow dramatically increased. A brief cone-shaped tornado formed along the edge of the wall cloud. Contrast was low as we were blasted with dust from nearby plowed fields. We drove east and north county road 360 for better viewing position of the huge wall cloud. At 6:03PM, the wall cloud lowered and became a wedge. There was violent rotation. I was able to get video (on tripod) before the wedge became rain-wrapped. We were about to head north when suddenly a beautiful back-lit tornado formed to our west at 6:10PM. There was some anticyclonic rotation (opposite of most tornadoes). I was able to get a close-up of the rotating debris cloud. We watched the tornado carefully as it was initially approaching our location. (escape route was already planned). The tornado dissipated and a narrow white tornado formed to our north against the black background of the main storm. We also saw another weird rotating wall cloud and adjacent funnel to the northwest. Jason and I headed back west on Rock road and north to Jamestown. Unfortunately, the tornado had damaged some homes. Our way was blocked by the police. I talked to Jim Leonard via cell phone. Jim was also chasing the storm. He said the damage path was a mile wide. Jim, who was ahead of us beyond the road block, had stopped to help a family trapped in a house. Jason and I drove south and west to see if the storm was backbuilding. We saw an interesting back-lit wall cloud but no more tornadoes. The main storm was moving northeast. Jason and I didn’t want to chase a rain-wrapped tornado in the growing darkness. Along the backside of the storm, we found hail that was two and a half inches in diameter (after melting for a while). I later heard that Scott Blair, a friend of mine who was on the storm, found four and a half inch hail stones. What a wild day. I saw five or six confirmed tornadoes and beautiful storm structure. Thanks to Tim Vasquez for nowcasting and forecasting along with Jason’s GPS. I am saddened that homes were damaged in this outbreak.


Image links:

Approaching the storm from the south

http://www.harkphoto.com/temp052904storm.jpg

Low contrast cone tornado

http://www.harkphoto.com/temp052904cone.jpg

Huge rotating wall cloud

http://www.harkphoto.com/temp052904wall.jpg

Almost mile-wide wedge tornado

http://www.harkphoto.com/temp052904wedge.jpg

Unexpected tornado to the southwest of the wedge

http://www.harkphoto.com/temp052904unexptor.jpg

Debris cloud from unexpected tornado

http://www.harkphoto.com/temp052904debris.jpg

Beautiful white tornado

http://www.harkphoto.com/temp052904white.jpg

Wall cloud and adjacent funnel

http://www.harkphoto.com/temp052904funwall.jpg

Big hail (it had already melted for a while)

http://www.harkphoto.com/temp052904bighail.jpg


7eaf8d19b9e4c059e980059b98ec6abd.jpg
78116a476b2a958b31b335dcb19f8218.jpg


Bill Hark
http://www.harkphoto.com
 
Not much to add...at least 7 tornadoes for me. I will have to review the video next week to see if there were more that I didn't notice (I was on the radios a majority of the time calling in reports). I will get some captures up as soon as I can.
 
Will post in more detail later - in a hurry to get back to the airport - We met up in Salina with a sizable chaser convergence at the Wendy's at exit 252 - Matt Crowther, Al Moeller, Mr. (I can't remember his first name!) Moore and their chase teams.

Tagged along with Matt and his caravan to the first cell NW of Salina until it exploded near Concordia. We are eternally greatful that they didn't try to shake us and that they got us into great position! We got 6 tornados on video near Jamestown, and then almost had one drop on our heads in Belleville, but more on that later. I am glad that the storms danced around that little town and not through it! It was our last day for our trip and we hadn't seen a tornado yet, so this was a great way to end it!
 
Report: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Mother-nature decided to hand me my ass...then she'd hand it to me again...I told her to stop but she just kept at it...... In hindsight, I should of just closed my eyes and plowed south through Belleville KS on 81. Wasted about 40 minutes just trying to get ONE radar image to finish loading...what a freaking joke. Too many looking at radar yesterday(the others I talked to were having the same problem). As I was plowing south through the core my laptop and GPS shut off due to the battery being low, even though it WAS connected to my inverter. Stopped plowing to mess with the gps as I thought I was really going to need it shortly...could not get it to work. Could never get a clear idea on the storm, cause radar would NEVER load....driving into a "Hallam" rainwrapped wedge was stuck in the back of my mind...the view of nothing but stupid raindrops hitting my windsheild was 3 hours OLD...finally got pissed and said screw this damned day and turned back north about 1.5 hours before sunset..lol. I actually even finished this off with a nightmare last night where I could not get any cams to mount and get the laptop running as a tor was developing over my old house. I might of even started to cry while "laughing" lol.

Congrats: Big ol congrats to ALL of you who bagged today.

Mike
 
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