06/10/09 REPORT: TX/CO/MO/KS

[Graham Butler]

My girlfriend woke me up this morning at 7:30 (much to my dismay) telling me to go lightning chasing. I was hesitant to go out, since I need to be working on my thesis, and I needed to go shopping since today is our three year aniv. But, since I was told to go, I went.

I headed SW of LBB towards the MCS/mess. I stopped at the county line on Hwy 62 and found a gap in the precip just north of a NW/SE oriented convective band into the MCS. After no luck with the lightning, which sucked because as I was setting up a MASSIVE strike occured 1/2 mile away which I was still able to see sparks/flames from that distance, I packed it up since precip was coming.

As I was loading up the truck I looked NW towards where this moisture band intersected the MCS and noticed a scuddy rotating wallcloudish mess. Next thing I know a "psudo-RFD" wraps around this mess and this occurs:

As far as I can tell it never touched down although it did get 1/2 way to the ground and was farther down than when I was able to photograph/video it. I will try to post video later.

What a gem in a craptastic year!!

Graham Butler

 

[Michael Carlson]

MODS: Add CO to the Thread

I went out and chased the tornadic supercell that went through Greeley Colo. as soon as I got there it went outflow dominate and only produced small hail. There were a few tornadoes reported on this storm but from what I could see they were scudnadoes.

MORE PHOTOS AND VIDEO

 

[Brandon Sullivan]

MO Tornado

Well as Michael O'Keefe said I was on the MO Tor along with Steve Polley.

I had spent most of the day analyzing hardcore after a major bust the day before.. Long story short anyone knew that if a storm could root on the boundary it could produce.

We watched storms begin to fire, and were almost on them immediately, as we had been tracking the boundary all day. We saw some rotation on the initial storms that fired, but things really went crazy when I noticed another storm fire to the east of us, ahead of the line.. It quickly took on a kidney bean shape and exhibited rotation on radar. When we broke clear of the trees, we could see a beautiful needle funnel. We watched it for a bit, and then it hit us that we should get closer ( we were way out )

As we got closer we continued to battle the trees of MO, the tornado developed as a tall needle tornado.. After dissapating once, it came back again, with a nice stovepipe shape, it was hard to get pictures through the trees, but I do have video of it as we are coming through trees. When we emerged from the trees it was a nice cone tornado that turned rapidly to a needle shape below... The tornado did the craziest things I have seen! The rotation got broad again, and then tightened back up, and a beautiful cone shaped funnel formed, but by now the storm was getting cut off by RFD, as it started to congeal into the line..

There were reports of damage although we did not see any after a quick run back through.

I will put pictures and video up later tonight.. This really helped the burn of yesterday's bust... Was awesome... Bag a tor, dinner by 6:30, home by 10...

Edit: Russel, Nice Pix! Clearly got us smoked! We got on board a little late, and cant get as many cam grabs as I thought.. I will put some vid caps up 2moro..

 

[David Reimer]

I went out expecting to get some nice shots of shelf cloud's today in North Texas. I sure got more then that. I headed to Weatherford, TX to get some shots of the incoming storm's structure and maybe some hail and shelf clouds. The storm had a different idea. After the storm took a more northerly turn, I blasted north just as the Tornado Warning for Parker County was issued. I could never get ahead of it, rather, I was stuck in it and its 70+ MPH Crosswinds. I followed behind the storm checking for damage. Here is one photo I quickly got uploaded this evening. I have about an hour worth of video and a few dozen pictures Ill have to look over and edit, but another severe storm is approaching from the west at the moment so this is all I have up for now.
Click the image for the high quality version.

 

[Russel Parsons]

Schell City, Missouri Tornado

Wow, its been a long time since I've posted about actually seeing a tornado on here. Today I started out targeting the Ft. Scott, Kansas area, and it paid off. I ended up seeing a storm about three miles south of Schell City, Missouri in Northeast Vernon County drop a couple of different tornadoes. I saw quite a bit of debris with both of them including some type of outbuilding being destroyed. I didn't follow the storms any farther east into Missouri, since there's too many trees and too many data holes. I guess I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

The rest of my photos can be found here.

 

[Tony Laubach]

Chased the area between 2% tornado probs today in southwest Kansas and pulled out this gem looking west from 15 miles south of Subtle from US-83 @ US-160..

More details from this very gratifying chase on my blog..

CLICK HERE FOR THE BLOG...

 

[Bart_Comstock]

Vernon County, MO tornadoes

After a awful day on Sunday when my transmission blew up this day was a nice change of pace. All in all I spotted three tornadoes with only this one being able to be filmed due to the trees.

 

[Stephen Levine]

Chase Garland TX to Wichita

Hungry to see some action and having only 24 hours to chase before readying to report to my job on Tuesday morning, I my objective was to find the best show possible as close to home as possible.

I aimed for Southern or East Central KS, and got detoured in northern OK distracted by and chasing the "tail end Charley" centered near Nash, of a line that had sprung up and had continuous new features building into the cells moving on.

However this storm eluded me due to a combination of poor road options, an unexpected harder swing of the storm to the NE and a bridge closure.

After this bust I retraced my route back to I-35, and filmed some nice sun/anvil interaction photos.

Towards dusk I drove N. into KS and intercepted a wild lightning show that danced across an elevated storm. After driving 400 miles, it was a joy and profound relief to be rewarded by nonstop frenetic lightning.

Photos and additional story to be found on my blog site www.joyfulstormhunting.com

 

[AndyGabrielson]

Chased with Tyler Costantini, had great luck near Schell City, MO... close up video twice in 5 days is alot of fun! Heres the Video from this one!

CLOSE UP VIDEO HERE!