06/05/2009 REPORTS: WY, NE, CO

[Skip Talbot]

Originally setup in Sterling, CO, but blasted north after seeing CO wasn't going to go. Made it in time for the Lagrange tornado, but got backrow seats north of Kimball. It was nicely backlit from my vantage point though. I got 4 hours of continuous storm footage from my roof mounted camera dome, it should make a nice timelapse, and it was my first fully successful tor intercept with it (since my Kirksville footage was lost). Great chase, nice meeting Stan Rose, and Joel and the Minneapolis crew.

 

[Matt Chatelain]

Curtis McDonald and I left Norman, OK at 5am with a target of Steerling, CO. Little did we know we would end up in Wyoming, but that was the case. We were a bit late getting there but we watched the final 10-15 mins of the tornado from the Nebraska/Wyoming border. It was one of the most amazing rope outs I have ever seen. Definitely worth the 12+ hour drive!! Here are some stills from our video camera:



Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-v0YjUFSFQ&feature=channel_page

 

[Melanie Kern-Favilla]

We - along with everyone and their mother - were also on the La Grange storm. We were lucky enough to catch it from wall cloud to funnel to touchdown to rope-out. The hail was amazing! What a great storm. Here are a couple of pix; more to come.

Lots of pix from the last week's worth of chasing can be seen here:

http://photos.spiffypix.com/p725940296

Melanie

 

[Brian Thalken]

Left Lincoln, NE 6:30am to head out to the Nebraska panhandle. Intercepted the supercell west of La Grange, WY. That cell had some great structure and was really wrapped up. Watched it produce the tornado close by my location. It was a pretty intense chase. Video of tornado and time lapse video of the storm structure have been posted...

http://www.nebraskastorms.com/storms.htm

 

[Eric Treece]

We started out near Brush, CO and headed up toward Kimball after the Goshin County storm formed. We managed to watch it rope out near Harrisburg, NE and waited there in the hopes it would cycle back around. Started heading back to CO and stopped just south of Tail End Charlie and noticed while we were eating it was starting to look pretty good and re-engaged in the chase. Chased this and got caught up in the chaser circus near Gurley, NE. All in all had a great day but woulda coulda shoulda moved a little sooner after the storms fired in WY.

La Grange tornado roping out from near Harrisburg, NE.

Funnel near Harrisburg, NE

Wall cloud near Gurley, NE.

 

[Rick Schmidt]

Here are my pics of the 2 wall clouds north of Dalton, Nebraska on Friday.--Rick Schmidt

 

[Chris Foltz]

Same as a few who have already posted, one tactical error prevented me from being much closer to the Goshen County, WY tornado though I did observe it from the Kimball area as it was roping out. Jogged northwest of Kimball to the southern portion of Banner County where I then followed the cell through many iterations eastward past Dalton. Finally broke off the chase shortly after the storm went HP but managed to observe several funnels along the way. Here are a few images I managed to capture...

Additional images may be viewed here...

 

[Doug Raflik]

I hope this isnt too many pictures.

LaGrange tornado...

Composite of the storm...

Same storm, just southwest of Harrisburg, NE.

Now north of Sydney, Nebraska... near Dalton.

Doug Raflik

 

[Charles Kuster]

Awesome pictures Doug!

We originally targeted Kimball, Nebraska where we saw the Vortex2 armada spread throughout town. Soon after, we moved slightly east to Sydney which turned out to be a mistake. However, we were still able to see the last five minutes of the LaGrange, Wyoming tornado from the Kimball area. The rope out stage was quite impressive even from such a distance! We then moved with the supercell as it traveled east across Banner County through Garden County.

Congratulations to all who saw this tornado including V2!

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Sorry, a bit late to this thread. Finally have a down day to actually process images!

I was shooting the Vortex 2 crew doing their job on this storm -- and I'm glad that I was, as they more or less hit a grand slam home run. Probes deployed, TIV in the tornado, DOW 5 less than 1/4 mile from the tornado.

More pictures (at higher resolution) at bigstormpicture.com

The only photograph in existence of Tim Marshall running away from a tornado. I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I swear it's not a Photoshop. Apologies for the blurriness of this shot -- if I could go back in time I'd set my shutter speed a bit quicker. Wasn't much time to steady myself -- these guys and gals deployed as fast as lightning.

 

[Jesse Risley]

I don't really have too much to add about this storm. We intercepted about 15 miles NNW of Kimball, NE and I've added a few unedited still shots that were taken from my Sony PSR-D150 video as I edit that footage. These stills are looking to the WNW from app. 10 miles away from that parent meso.

 

[Danny Neal]

Adam and I left Chicago at 10 PM on Friday and drove through the night to North Platte, NE. by 12 noon. We booked a hotel and caught a two hour power nap before heading down I 80 for a Kimball, NE target. We neared Sidney, NE, to gas up and a supercell had blown up in E WY. We watched as it headed NE then E and finally SE. As we got to Kimball, we noted a very dark area to our N and NW as the storm was still over 20-30 miles away. When we crested the hill just north of Kimball we saw a large low wall cloud and what we thought was a thick tube coming out of the left side of it. Going through as many hills and valleys as we did it was killing us not being able to confirm.... until we crested one last hill. There it was ..... about 15 miles away a big tube that transitioned into a big rope coming out of the left side of the newly developed wall cloud. At first we thought it was a landspout as it appeared to be coming either out of the side or from behind the wall cloud. But as others have clearly shown... it was indeed a full blown tube. We probably caught the last.....5 minutes of it clearly. But had brief glimpses of what we thought may have been for probably a good 10 minutes. After that we were treated to some of the most amazing structure Nature has to offer. I will write and post more in on my webpage and post a picture or two soon after I get them uploaded. Getting reading for round 2 tomorrow.

24 pictures of the event: http://picasaweb.google.com/NorthernILStormChaser/662009#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAF1nVDbkS0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKQEHKKly5o

I added a couple more videos from this day as I finally got home and was able to quickly upload them

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HePWA-8y8Zk - Beautiful 7 minute video of the structure of the WY storm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LORPfx8hw1k - Impressive structure of supercell thunderstorm near Dalton, NE.

 

[Danny Neal]

http://northernilstormchaser.com/June-5th---NE-and-WY-Tornado.php - Finished typing up my report on this day.

 

[Adam Lucio]

Full log and report with lots of good structure pics and some video of the tornado are up at my site.

 

[Tony Perkins]

My chase partners and I targeted Cheyenne, which allowed us to get on the storm very early. We fought if "this is the typical early red herring" vs "The models trended north, the env is primed, this is the show". Luckily, the latter won. At 3:05 we sat and watched the wall cloud organize and approach, then saw the first funnel about 50 minutes later. After that we repositioned to avoid the hail every few minutes, and witnessed most of the tornado except when it was wrapped in rain for a brief period.

Video of the tornado and chase, including time lapses of the storms later in the day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_sbm8zM3bQ

Some stills:
Wall cloud starting to get organized around 3:20 PM

3:55 PM first funnel. Couldn't tell if it touched down.

The main show:

End of it's life nearly 30 minutes later: