Mike Peregrine
EF5
EDIT - reports coming in now of at least two touchdowns very early on with this storm ... apparently just before we arrived under the base, dang it ... Roger Hill even reports one multi-vortex tornado that became a truncated cone at 5:07 (as we were struggling to get through traffic in Leavenworth) ... another soon-to-be Stormtrack member, Andrew Lee, has emailed me and mentioned that he was also on the Oskaloosa tor ... Congratulations to all on the catches tonight - I knew we should have been out the door earlier!
----------------------------------------
Disappointing but beautiful chase tonight. We were on the Leavenworth/Jefferson Co. storm. We arrived under the base in the city of Leavenworth just as the tor-warning was being called on the cell. Leavenworth is the worst town on the earth to try to get through in a hurry. The storm sat over the hills and trees just west of the river and messed around for the longest time. We were about 5 mi. east of Oskaloosa when reports were coming in of a sighted tornado ... if there was one, we sure didn't see it. We swung south on the storm as it back-built in a nearly stationary position. There was some decent rotation initially ... in fact I'll post a pic of a nice rotating lowering and a funnel or two (wonder if this was what Jonny R. was getting in the copter actually ... he was flying above us quite a bit today). As we turned around to leave realized that Jeff P had been right behind us watching it the whole time as well. Made me feel like we were in a good spot at least. At times notches would develop and form horseshoes in the inflow as the storm would struggle to balance and form some sort of RFD, but no well-defined RFD could really get established ... and this storm remained highly elevated during almost its entire lifespan that we observed, forcing us to continue moving south and west as our position would gradually get downdraft and the storm backbuilt. This was the first time in a long time that I was turned around with my directions while watching this storm ... the storm motion kept throwing me way off.
Now the best show was after the storm finally started moving east ... great gust front in KCK by Cabellas kicked a wall of dirt into the air ... wow - very cool. And then the fireworks started. Got some really neat lightning shots tonight. And this was the most stunning sunset I've seen in a long time ... going to have to spend a lot of time editing pics, I think. Took about a couple hundred of lightning at least -
I'll post a link to the sunset/lightning pics whenever I finally get a chance to work on 'em.
Couple of the sunset - neater ones later -
----------------------------------------
Disappointing but beautiful chase tonight. We were on the Leavenworth/Jefferson Co. storm. We arrived under the base in the city of Leavenworth just as the tor-warning was being called on the cell. Leavenworth is the worst town on the earth to try to get through in a hurry. The storm sat over the hills and trees just west of the river and messed around for the longest time. We were about 5 mi. east of Oskaloosa when reports were coming in of a sighted tornado ... if there was one, we sure didn't see it. We swung south on the storm as it back-built in a nearly stationary position. There was some decent rotation initially ... in fact I'll post a pic of a nice rotating lowering and a funnel or two (wonder if this was what Jonny R. was getting in the copter actually ... he was flying above us quite a bit today). As we turned around to leave realized that Jeff P had been right behind us watching it the whole time as well. Made me feel like we were in a good spot at least. At times notches would develop and form horseshoes in the inflow as the storm would struggle to balance and form some sort of RFD, but no well-defined RFD could really get established ... and this storm remained highly elevated during almost its entire lifespan that we observed, forcing us to continue moving south and west as our position would gradually get downdraft and the storm backbuilt. This was the first time in a long time that I was turned around with my directions while watching this storm ... the storm motion kept throwing me way off.
Now the best show was after the storm finally started moving east ... great gust front in KCK by Cabellas kicked a wall of dirt into the air ... wow - very cool. And then the fireworks started. Got some really neat lightning shots tonight. And this was the most stunning sunset I've seen in a long time ... going to have to spend a lot of time editing pics, I think. Took about a couple hundred of lightning at least -
I'll post a link to the sunset/lightning pics whenever I finally get a chance to work on 'em.


Couple of the sunset - neater ones later -

