06/04/05 REPORTS: Plains

[Kevin Polston]

I had a short but interesting chase today. I ended up around 530 pm in central Andrew county MO (just north of Savannah) and had a perfect approach into the storm that came from Hiawatha KS. Saw the tornado...it was a white slender cone against a backdrop of dark blue-gray and black ....and lasted for a couple of minutes. Very nice wall cloud associated with the storm as well. My niece was with me today (it was her first chase) and she took a couple of pics of the tornado as I was still driving to get a better vantage point. Later, on the return home I asked her to let me see the tornado pics.....and she accidentally deleted them!!!!!
So while it was a fun and successful chase.....there still is a feeling of "unfinished business".

Later in the evening I was in Platte City MO when the storms came through there. Was watching very heavy rain and marginally severe hail along with some really intense lightning. All of a sudden the sky lit up from a big lightning bolt and stayed lit up for about the next 15 seconds! The lightning hit a transformer or electrical line....it was glowing hot like a welders torch and you could see some flames start to move down the power line. Very impressive to say the least. It took a few minutes for the spot in my eyes to recover from the bright light.

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

My chase sounds almost identical to Philip Flory's.Basically just hopped down storms S from El Dorado. Well we know how that went. Missed the Arkansas City tornado, although we did see a nice base for awhile. Rain was everywhere and once the initial storm by El Dorado (split?) stuff started firing rapidly to the S... I knew we were hosed.

Pictures + Brief Log:
http://www.convectionconnection.com/CHASE-060405/

*note* WRF from 0z had precip breaking out all along the dryline to TX. I thought it was out to lunch... guess not!

Overall... just another dissapointing chase to add to 2005. The big highlight of the trip was a large snapping turtle crossing a road NW of El Dorado. I tried to pick it up, but it got pissed. I gave up since it was pretty slimy. It even had a leech on it!

Aaron

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Yawn, 540 miles later and what a tube that was!!!! Oh wait that is right I opted to not try and catch it a county west of it. Randy Chamberlain and I could have caught it before the tornado, but no decided to drop south at Marrysville KS. We looked it over and it was getting better on radar but figured since we were in such a nice enviroment with lots of convection sw down the line and a tornado warned storm at Salina that the wisest choice was to not try and play catch up with something heading into crap area and instead drop south and see what happens down there. A while later and hey look big hook on the storm we would have been to by now. A few moments later large distructive tornado reported on the ground....SIGH. I felt motivated and focused to find another good storm. What we found(JB now with us and soon RyanM) was an area that reminded me of nw MO!!! We tried to catch the only other real show sw of Manhatten and had to take some windy crazy road. Blah blah blah from there on out.

MikeP you have no idea how jealous of a drive home I had after I was informed of just how cool the tube was you caught. Great video(if that is yours on twc) and big congrats to you and Damon and whoever else caught it.

Is it next week yet? Will persistance pay off in 2005? I'm really starting to wonder. Missing that has really motivated me but all the money being spent lately is starting to add up. Mother nature has her hand cocked back and is ready to slap any of us that let her get the best of us. The second you get sick of busting is when she smacks you with something nice while you sit at home on your duff. The last 2 days have really blown(3 for many) but I'd much rather have tried than missed them from home. I was thinking on the way home how hard this year is being(sure it has its moments...for some..) and just remembered one crazy event can sort of make a person happy.....just one. What I thought about was images of the Columbus 98 tornado footage. That is now my goal. I don't need but one good day like that...lol, that is all. Anyway....that day and tornado is still out there. I think it is next week at some point. Jinx. I need to just quit talking about any good things.

 

[Melanie Metz]

Congrats to Mike, KP, Bill Doms, and the rest of you on who caught the elusive tornado today. Of course, it is unfortunate that farms were hit. In response to a comment... I did read in an SPC tor watch status report that there was a subtle boundary in the vicinity of the tornadic cell in NE KS/ NW MO. It seems to me that cell rode the subtle boundary and thus produced the tornado of the day.

Peggy and I watched initiation in Manhattan, KS and slowly followed the Northern cell (the one to become tornadic) from about 30 miles to the SW waiting to see if the southern cells would take over...trying to keep both options open since it was still early. Well, the cells to the SW began to look great on radar so we dropped down to the southern most cell thinking that would be the best option. Apparantly not on this day!

We watched a nice wall cloud develop on the SW cell just south of I-70. As soon as we pulled up under it outflow took over and cut it off. We moved NE along the line of cells and saw another very low base with an inflow band almost on the ground wrapped in rain. The rain quickly obscured this interesting area. So we kept moving NE and watched the sunset, a rainbow, and some nice CGs. An interesting, fun day for us but not tornadic.

On to the next chase!

Melanie

 

[MartinKucera]

Started the day driving from Colby, KS to initial target of Topeka, KS.
After the initiation we deciced to follow the very first good looking tower to a nice view point on a nearby hill top. A few minutes later lightning activity rapidly increased and a suspicious lowering came into a view right ahead of us. Followed and well documented the cell from there all the way to the point where it produced the nice white cone. Saw a damaged house with trees snapped in half, power lines down, a car completely destroyed covered in mud, residents trying to come out of the house and recover while somebody /hopefully not a storm chaser/ was snapping pictures of them
The damage itself left more marks on my mind than the tornado itself.
Later reconnected with the same cell just north of St. Joseph but it became outflow dominant and visibility was just bad so we decided to cut south onto I-35 towards Kansas City for the night.
Today was a day of some major decisions between the northern or southern target and also seems like the PDS TW didn`t play out the way many of us expected. Good luck to all of you in upcoming days.

BTW who is the chaser driving the grey Chevy Blazer with "CUNOZ" on a licence plate... we have been seeing you around for two days now

Martin Kucera

 

[fplowman]

I was south of Manhattan in the Council Grove area..Rendevouzed there with Marc Grant and Wayne Slesky hooked up with Ptak and Shane and some others from Canada. Ron Gravelle and gang..All great guys always a pleasure fraternizing and meeting other chasers.

We were heading to our storm when Shane and Mickey and their crew hit a Turkey in the road.. it dented the front of their car good and then flew up over the hood and knocked their mesonet off the roof.

All of the sudden everyone started pulling over. And Im thinking.. I see this turkey.. Im thinking why the hell are we pulling over?? Does Shane like to film wildlife???? lol It wasnt until we were helping them with their mesonet that I discovered hey.. " We hit a turkey" Funny stuff.. Im sure the owner of the vehicle isnt laughing but added to the excitement all the same..

Of course no tubes but a couple wall clouds and some beautiful structure and landscape..

Yawnnn off to bed i go...

Fred

 

[John MacKay]

Same area Phillip and Dan were in for the most part.

I had no choice but to go after the cells firing in Butler county. I didn't want to use 77 in case the storm would intensify rapidly, as I would be behind it in all likelihood anyway. I started out toward the eastern part of the county and go toward Eureka, but after seeing the first storm N. of El Dorado getting further north out of my view, I tried to get to Cassoday, but missed my turn to get there. Went on to Leon, then El Dorado as the next cell developed to the SW. I stopped for some things in El Dorado, then the warning came out for S. Butler/ N. Cowley. Beelined back to Leon, talking to my sister for the radar, as the TOR came out with rotation near Douglass (so I lost my contact with radar as my sister went to the basement). I was heading straight for the rotation, but the area of greatest concern didn't look too good, so I shot toward Atlanta, and then west to Rock (passed the area I photographed the third tornado I saw on June 12 of last year) to avoid the ugly cores to my south.

Decided to go to Winfield just as they issued TOR for the tornado E. of Ark City. Stuck around Winfield hoping for something out of Oklahoma and saw a cell just develop over me and thank me with sporadic pea to 1/2" diameter hail. I called it a night afterward. I did see a rainbow (sometimes two) on my way back to Douglass.

As the others have said, a day where visibility was the reason many were out today quickly became a convective mess that you hoped to dodge for fear of large hail.

 

[Shane Adams]

Chad, Mickey, and myself convoyed with Angie Norris and Jo today. We targeted the Arkansas City/Winfield area, but a quick data check showed the RUC had gone to the Dark Side, now agreeing with the ETA in supressing any convection south of east-central Kansas. So, we moved northeast to Emporia. There we met several chasers, including StormTrack's own Fred Plowman and Marc Grant, along with Canadian chaser Ron Gravelle and a host of others. Big thanks to these three as well as the rest of the group for stopping to help us put Chad's wx-station back into place after a wild turkey impact ripped it off the roof - unbelievable impact. There's a dent the size of a bowling ball on Chad's hood from this crazy bird that came out of nowhere. After we re-attached the wx-station, we targeted a storm in Morris county and followed it northeast until it turned into total crap, then backtracked south and east to try and get in front of what was now mostly a squall line. We ignored every storm to our west that was tracking into the same areas as where we'd been before, fearing those storms would ingest cold outflow funk from the previous failed attempts. We had made it down to northern Elk county when we called Dwain Warner, to see about storms near OUN. He told us the storm to our southwest had been tornado warned and still showed rotation, so we targeted it, heading south on KS99. The storm had nice mid-level inflow bands, twisting cyclonically into it, but visibility was horrible because of rain. We moved back north to the intersection of KS99/US400, as I loudly proclaimed, in frustration, "I give up, I concede, I admit defeat...Mother Nature, you win again." About a minute later, after we'd pulled into a service station parking lot to face west toward the storm, a base came into view through the rain. It looked suspicious, but we were pessimistic. We started rolling video as the lowering took shape and produced a rather large tornado, that hovered above the ground visually (way too wet for debris at that point), and gradually narrowed into a classic, Wizard of Oz type tornado. I haven't watched the video yet, but I remember calling out the time twice, once at 8:07pm and again at 8:12pm, so I'd put the tornado's duration at around five minutes. The report of 3 WSW Severy is what we saw, though IMO this was closer to Piedmont. After the tornado ended, we moved east, seeing a posible second tornado north of the highway (will have to review video to confirm or not). However, we couldn't find our mystery north option, and got cored by a new storm with heavy winds and rain as darkness fell. After the storm passed, we decided to call it a day. A very difficult and frustrating chase overall, but a sweet payoff at the end. Getting ready to dub video, then get a few hours' sleep before doing it again tomorrow in southern OK/north TX.

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good, and this tornado is Dwain's. Great call bro, and thanks for the always-incredible nowcasting.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

That was a long way to drive to see a wall cloud! Started in Kearney this morning (well, yesterday morning, now), zipped over to Lincoln and started south to Manhattan, KS. Along the way, convection started to fire in Marshall County. I corepunched a developing supercell (very quickly -- didn't look like much on radar, but lo and hehold, marble sized hail and lots of it), got south of it, parked, and asked myself: "Self, do you want to try to chase after that thing?". The answer, of course, was no, and so I missed the one area of the state that actually DID tornado today. Instead, I opted to continue south to Manhattan, where the setup for supercells looked better and I didn't have to worry about pesky river crossings. :roll:

Headed south and west of Manhattan to try to catch that world-eater (on radar) over I-70. Of course, my digital cellular coverage died when I most needed it, leaving me radarless. I ended up nudging up torwards the storm, but turned around eventually again to the south and east to try to find some radar coverage again. Luckily I came aross a pair of chasers in an SUV who let me poach their XM data for a minute or two. After that I headed back towards the storm, caught a couple of pictures of a couple of wall clouds that lowered and fizzled, then threw my hands up in frustration and headed back southeast. I ran into Mike Hollingshead, Randy Chamberlain, & J.B. Dixon along with what became an Oklahoma-style convergence up there and, without much else to do, we sat around and prayed to the weather gods.

Fun things: Literally feeling the warm surface winds battling the outflow. 10+ degree instantanous shifts in temperuature. And, of course, driving into outflow and having all the car windows fog up.

Funny things: Watching chasing groups/tours race back and forth north and south on the road next to us.

A few pics:

The only really interesting lowering I saw all day.

What year is it again? Oh, yeah, it's 2005. Why are we all the way out here?

XM radar is pretty awesome -- it has a habit of making things look more powerful than they are, though. Likely it's something that you learn to read, as a lotta good chasers swear by it. IMO XM radar would be immeasurably better if they didn't smooth so much and clip the dbZ.

Back in Manhattan. Found this great example of why it's usually not a good idea to try to drive through standing water, especially in your low-clearance compact car! :lol:

All in all, I'm a bit bummed I saw no tubes, but I did get to punch a hailstorm, meet a few chasers, and check out yet another rural part of Kansas I'd never seen before. After 2004, it only figures we'd get 2005. Dear 2006: I think after this year the slate is cleaned. You can resume the production of tornadoes.

 

[Jonathan Whitehead]

Shane Im wishin I didnt abandon you there in Emporia. I think you went north out of Emporia initially then back south. Well I think by the time you passed HWY 50 on that north/south road that goes to Cassoday near the Tollway I hit it and went north toward Council Grove at around 5p. toward a storm that was just exploding with this big humongous area of sunshine and no clouds that have to have been at least 50 miles south of that cell so at the time there was no other cell nearby to destroy it. Well just as I reach it that area of sunshine had filled and destroyed the parent cell and went shelfy.
From there I went east toward Alta Vista on 4 b/c I saw a classic wall cloud out of nowhere to my east. Well someone on 4 I ran into chaser group shane and I met back in Emporia. Followed them east to the tollway then back toward Emporia where I almost got into trouble and became surrounded. Luckily I was able to avoid core punching b/c the cells missed Emporia to the south or died on the way into Lyon county. It was getting dark then so I basically called it a day.


EDIT: SHANE!!! WTF!!!!! YOU HIT A TURKEY!! OMG.
Why am I flipping out about that?
Because I chased w/ you to Emporia and left ya. Well Guess what I damn near hit as I rounded a curve on the road to Council Grove. I swear to God I almost hit it. I had to hit the brakes and fishtail like a mother to avoid it. How ironic.

 

[Sheila_Ward]

Same story as most. Today was truely the definition of "chase". I was all over over the place. Got to Topeka about 2:30pm, then I think I was on every frickin' road in eastern Kansas at least once, some twice. Saw a couple lowerings but that's about it.

Then the line of storms decided to chase me back to Arkansas. And it did a real good job. When I got home the line (very weak now) was only 45 minutes behind me.

I don't think I have any pics or video worth anything. These storms had great lighting and put on quite a show. Wish I could've got out of the grunge to enjoy it more.

Not what I expected today, but I still had fun!

 

[Darin Brunin]

First of all my thoughts and prayers go out to all of those whose homes and personal property were damaged today. I was honestly worried throughout the day because when you have family all over NE KS the hit and miss probabilities of tornadoes doesn't seem very high. In fact there was a reported tornado six miles north of where my parents live. It really gives you a respect for storms that you don't get when you chase away from your home territory and that is the truth as today was a perfect example of that for me.

Second, congratulations to all who were successful. Great photos, great video, and atleast one amazing tornado.

Disgusted...Disgusted...Disgusted. I have almost never kicked myself after a chase as much as I am tonight. After reading Amos' post I had to question whether I was in the same vehicle as him. Doug Mitchell, Andy Ashley, and I were on the supercell that produced the photogenic tornado south of Hiawatha, KS. We had been on this storm from initiation and waited patiently for it to get its act together. A while after it crossed over highway 75 we watched it for a few mintues as it looked to becoming a little outflow dominant and weakening on radar. Still having faith we thought that the storm was making a right turn to the east and finally looked like it was strenghtening a little. So as we thought we were putting ourselves in good position by moving E/SE we actually screwed ourselves over becuase the storm continued on its track to the northeast at a moderately fast pace. The contrast by this time was bad from the angle that we were at and we knew the storm was going to cross the river soon so we decided to break off and head southwest towards the Manhattan area. The rest of the day was spent chasing outflow dominant storms around the Manhattan area. Not much more needs to be said about that.

I am not disapointed that we busted on a high risk day. I could care less about that. I am disgusted that we were 8 miles from a tornado that beautiful and made one wrong decision that took us away from possibly the most photogenic tornado of 2005. This one will not be easy to get over. I guess on the bright side we all learn from our mistakes and today was certainly no exception to that.

It just goes to show that very strong instability and very strong forcing are not always good things as this allowed for non-isolated storms today that kept competing with each other. Not to mention weak low level winds that were over estimated by the models.

Again, congrats to those successful.

Darin

Also....I wonder what was up with the turkeys in the area today. We had one about fly into Doug's car near Alma only missing it by a couple of feet.

 

[George Flickinger]

My wife and I and David Williams observed this small tornado in Southern Cowley county just north of the KS/OK line. It was about 14 miles E/SE of Arkansas City. It occluded quickly and was hard to see.

It looks a little better on video:
http://www.flickingerweather.com/060405.html

 

[Brandon Clement]

congrats to all that caught a nice storm today!

I wasn't so fortunate. We started off in OKC after two days of cap busts and headed to Emporia. There we met up with a group of other chasers. We had sups firing to our south and the line to our north. After seeing the sups that were firing down by wichita really taking there time we took off after the line and were going to try and cut it off just north of Topeka. That is were today went bad. We had a series of bad data feeds, wrong turns, detours, construction and closed roads. Finally we got on track and crossed the river just north of Topeka and caught a NE highway and we were about ten miles southwest of the sup that kept dropping twisters. This is were I got pulled over for driving while chasing, lol. The cop said I was going 72 in a 55 but I was actually going about 50 because we didn't want to get in the core and had a good intercept point only two miles up. I was so furious! My radar detector never even came on, he was driving the same lane and direction as me and had two cars in between us. After he pulls me over he wants to check out my gadgets, writes me a warning and then tells me he is going to follow me to the storm that already past because he wants to see the tornado!!!!! He did not understand about the whole 55mph storm motion and sitting on the side of the road for 15 min.
We called it a day and luckily i got caught under the line from Topeka to the hotel I stayed at in between KC and STL driving at about 40 with some serious winds. Worse chase ever. I would have rather had a cap bust than be as frustrated as I was today.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

I encounters a number of flooded roads as I made my way up towards Paola, had to turn around a number of times. My target for the day was Emporia so decided to stop in Paola to look at the forecast discussions, after staying there for a while I made my way to I35 - had to turn around 3 more times due to flooding - and made my way to Flying J's in Emporia.

At Flying J I met up with Chris Hayes, William Blumenthal, Brandon Clement and some others and we hung out there hoping to get some convection going closer to us. Ben Prusia and Scott Weberpal was also at Flying J's as well...

Eventually a couple towering cumulus started going out but it was too capped at the time so nothing came of them. We watched the storms on radar that developed to our west-northwest but the storms were moving way to fast for us to catch up to them..

We did head up towards Council Grove and then eventually made it to Topeka. Once in Topeka I decided to break off and head back south closer to home. Hopefully Chris and them got something...

Once I was closer to Girard Kansas a line of storms came through, I recorded gusts of about 56 MPH winds with very intense CG lightning that was just awesome. Though th estorms never made it to severe limit.

It was nice to get out and chase and to meet other chasers out there.

Here's the few pics I took.

This is flooding I encountered just east of Osawatomie Kansas, this is why I ended up going to Paola instead.

I watched this guy attempt to cross the flooded road, some people..

This is William Blumenthal's chase mobile.

A towering cumulus tries to go up, but never makes it due to the cap.

We decided to stop in Council Grove and decide where to go from here.