09/15/10 Reports: NE/KS/OK

[Jim Saueressig]

I decided nearly too late to head South as I was going to try to get on the back side of this cell but I ended up face to face with it from just East of Severy. All of this was shot at 10mm Super Wide.

(Click any for a bigger version.)





This was one of many close strikes that moved me back East towards Fall River.



A couple of you fellas in white chase wagons were sitting on the right side here at the Fall River road.



I started the day with last nights left overs.

 

[Rebekah LaBar]

First Fall Tornado

Long story short, saw one tornado about a mile east of Mulvane, on the Sedgwick County supercell.

I was chasing with Jeff Makowski...we didn't leave Norman until 3:18pm, and watched the supercell blow up on our drive up I35. We saw this particular tornado at 6:52pm, from less than a mile southeast of the tornado. The funnel cloud in these photos was most of the way to the ground, and I do believe I saw some dust briefly kicked up underneath it.

We followed the storm to just northeast of Winfield, where we suddenly got hit by RFD. The CGs were so frequent and so incredibly close it scared me. We were driving south, away from the storm, but got hit by blinding rain and had to pull off the road into a driveway.

We decided to wait it out, as we could barely see the road and it was starting to hail. The biggest stone I saw fall was over golfball size...I'd estimate about or just over 2 inches in diameter. At this time we were hearing reports on the radio of rope tornado sightings about 5 NE Winfield and 12 NW Dexter...pretty much right where we were! (Too rainy and dark for us to see anything.)

The storm passed to our east, and we went on our way home. Here are a few of my photos...didn't get any very good ones of the incredible structure (a lucky but bright one of the lightning, though), but looking forward to others' pictures of the supercell and tornadoes!

Will post more (and higher resolution) photos at a later time on my website.

My first fall tornado!

 

[jshields]

09/15/10: DISC: NE/KS

had a beautiful supercell come through omaha with 60 mph winds and penny to quarter sized hail. the rotation on the storm, although very broad was intense! i just drove up the street to get some of these pics as it was coming into town. i wish i would have been able to leave a little earlier to set up someplace and take more pics as it came into town, but had to work til about 10 minutes before it's arrival. driving back home, came across a 18" diameter tree that had been uprooted, broken off below ground.

 

[Scott Bennett]

I took these shots about 6 miles to your west just before it entered Elkhorn.
I had planned to intercept the northern storm by West Point however it started to die so I came back home. When the Elkhorn/Omaha storm went warned I ran up to the "Antenna Farm" NW Of Elkhorn about 5min from my house. Did get some hail for a while but nothing to write home about.

 

[Chris Allington]

Got on a brief supercell that developed near Fremont, Nebraska and gusted out Southwest of Omaha, Nebraska. Here are a couple shots!

 

[Rick Schmidt]

Here are a few images from Wednesday's chase in southern Ks., where I did not see any tornadoes, but did capture 3 tornado/funnel look-alikes. The first is from the Butler Co. storm early on, about 5:28. The other 2 were taken from Hwy. 400, looking northward, at 7:00, and 7:10, respectively. NONE of these features were spinning. While I did see a lot of chaotic movement, and occasional rotation, I did not see any tight, rapidly spinning features. Maybe I was in the wrong spot, but if there was a touchdown with this meso, it must have been very small, and brief. I did, however see what I thought were several greenish power flashes, around 7:33, but it might have been a beacon, or lightning.
Did ANYONE get any images of the tornadoes that were reported from this Greenwood Co. storm?

 

[Rebekah LaBar]

Jim, not sure if you saw it or not but it certainly looks like you have a tornado in the above image just to the left of center....looks like a smaller needle/funnel type tornado. Maybe you have already seen it but I was not sure. At least thats what it looks like to me.

Lanny, I saw that and thought the same thing!

Did ANYONE get any images of the tornadoes that were reported from this Greenwood Co. storm?

Rick, see post #2. I saw a tornado, and a number of other chasers saw tornadoes as well. The tornadoes were all small and brief, from what I've heard and seen.

If we hadn't stopped where we did, just before going around a bend, I would not have seen this tornado. We stopped for a bit and looked back, and saw this quickly rotating funnel cloud come down, briefly saw a bit of a ground circulation, and then it dissipated, all within a minute or two.

Edit: Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought you were speaking of the main supercell that tracked through Wichita, but you must have meant the other supercell, as the big one only put down tornadoes south of 400 (in fact, all of the tornadoes were reported south of 400 with the exception of the Severy one).

This is more appropriate for the discussion thread, so I'll end here, but if you want to know about the reports, the Wichita NWS has a page up for the event: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=ict&storyid=57687&source=0

 

[Stephen Locke]

Mulvane, Kansas (3 west) 6:56 pm.

.

 

[ScottKoenig]

I started out late and wasn't sure which supercell to chase, ended up on the cell that developed near El Dorado KS. These shots were all near Severy, Kansas.

I'm wondering what time and the location of the photo taken by Jim Saueressig? The NWS report shows 0702 PM TORNADO 2 NNW SEVERY 37.65N 96.24W.

Based on this google map of the area I was less than 2000 ft from where the Tornado had a brief touchdown. The shot with the car was taken just west of 99 Highway on Township Rd 454 around 7:00 PM.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=101394982552516558982.000490625b5ff58e629ea&t=h&ll=37.650325,-96.244354&spn=0.014203,0.022273&z=15

 

[Nick Biermann]

Please add OK to this thread.

Left work in Norman knowing that I would have a hard time making it up to the Wichita storm before dark, so when storms began developing in NW OK, I opted to put myself in position to intercept one of them instead. Got in front of the storm west of Enid around 7pm and saw some fantastic mammatus under the forward anvil. When I got around to the south side of the storm, I saw it had a relatively high base but was beginning to take on supercell characteristics. At one point around 755pm, while I was located between Waukomis and Bison looking due west, a mini-RFD cut started to eat away at the cloud base and a cone-shaped funnel developed. Then the storm crapped out altogether.

 

[Brian Stertz]

Started the chase from Andover and wanted to avoid the nasty hail so opted to move over to Augusta and drop south on US 77. This maneuver kept me in good shape from having to find the jumbo hail in a worng way. I could see lots of good cloud motions to the sw of Douglass so knew I had mastered some good positioning on this one. The supercell (now a Kansas history maker) was making it's turn to the right and was headed southeast from Mulvane...and headed for THE Rock....hmmm could it be bonanza time again?? I pulled over just north of Rock in a nice open area and watched the large wall cloud approach (great structure too I might add). I got a pretty decent view of a funnel that appeared for a couple mins. I could not see any real organized ground debris lofted, so will keep this at just a solid funnel. This funnel would have been about 3 miles nw of Rock (Cowley Co.) Time stamp shows 6:53pm. I watched the RFD strengthen, and the outflow from the nasty core pushed things south-southeast right at me on US 77...east of Udall. Yes I was on a historical tornado city tour on this chase. The updraft looked strongly outflow dominant as it moved across US 77. The circulation looked really wrapped up to as it moved east towards Floral where another tornado report was made by EM. The chase pretty much ended and took shelter in Winfield from the nasty blast that was coming in. This was a very impressive supercell, and if it had just a bit more LL inflow,certainly seemed capable of producing a strong tornado between Mulvane and Rock. Felt good to get in a chase...my first since hanging things up in June... pictures to follow.

 

[D. Hayes]

I was on the cell heading from Andover KS to El Dorado following a nice wall that disintegrated when the fronts collided.

I shot down south towards Udall KS when I heard of the tornado west of Derby hoping to intercept that cell. We've all seen the reports of the hail and my truck took some nice baseballs damage lucky no glass lost. I had to stop short of Udall cause the hail was getting way to dangerous and winds was a sustained 40MPH with unknown gust (I wasn't watching the anemometer)

Here's some damage I spotted just north of Udall. Tree's ~6" across broken over.

 

[Steve Worthington]

Our chase started off around 3:30 in the Pretty Prairie, KS area. We chased all the way to Winfield, KS when it got to dark to see and missing some glass so we called off the chase. Ran into "large" hail around the Garden Plain area just north of Hwy 400. Not much more to say that hasn`t already been said.

I dont know how big this hail had to be to make a dent this size but I will say it was LARGE....lol

 

[Bart_Comstock]

James Hilger and I chased the Greenwood County, KS supercell with some success. Although I didn't have my HD camera on this impromptu chase we did have a small point and shoot Casio camera that I used while James drove. Bellow is one of the images I got.



To read my full log and see my video and more photos go to my write up on my blog.
Here is the url to my chase log on my site: http://svrwxchaser.com/?p=358

 

[Dick McGowan]

Pretty amazing day I chased solo...and was very ill. I intercepted 3 supercells...briefly viewing the other two, before choosing the more dominant right-mover that affected the Wichita area. Saw at least softball-sized hail...if not 6" or more in diameter in Goddard for at least 15 minutes. Saw countless gustnadoes, one formed just south of Goddard about 50 feet from my car and was fun to watch. Saw a brief spinup west of Haysville before a tornado warning was ever issued...by the time I pulled over, it had wrapped in rain. Continued into Mulvane where I saw a brief cone tornado that roped out as an elephant trunk almost in the town of Mulvane. I'd guess it was more north than east of Mulvane. The old circulation passed over/into me and threw a few tree branches around before it completely occluded. Continued east after the storm kept pushing wet RFDs around the meso and decided it was too wet for my liking....so I headed east for the structure, which was nothing short of amazing! Will put up video of the hail/gustnadoes/tornado up as soon as I find a program that will edit Canons 5D video files!

Video capture of gorilla hail impacting the ground and bouncing upwards in Goddard, KS:

East of Winfield, KS:


Winfield_web by Stacked Plates, on Flickr