10/17/07 REPORTS: KS / MO / OK

[Scott Roberts]

Started out from ICT in a driving rain about 1pm, headed south. I was hedging the bets a bit at that point, thinking about PNC area or staying up toward ICT. Obviously out way too late to catch the leading-edge stuff 2 hours east of me.

When the MD came out for western/central KS about 1:30 or so, we took off west on US-160 through Wellington, target area Medicine Lodge. I thought the outflow off the earlier activity might interact with the dryline at about that point, or a bit south of there.

After a fairly long stop in Medicine Lodge, we decided to go north on 281 to get out of the river valley and watch what appeared to be a hail-producer southwest of town. Ended up sitting another 20 minutes or so 5 miles N of town, and sat there until a TVS showed up in the VNC radar at right about the point we'd been watching rotate for 5-10 minutes. It never really breathed out any funnels at this point, but it appeared the rotating area would go right overhead, so we pulled east.

Arrived at Isabel Road (a couple of miles east) just in time to catch the storm as it evolved into a pretty healthy rotation that lasted about 20 minutes. It spit out several funnels as we watched; I took a call from ICT NWS during that time asking what I was seeing, as they showed me pretty much at the dryline/outflow intersection, and weren't getting much info from DDC at the time.

Looking back at the video, it appears there was an area of horizontal rotation on the leading edge of the storm that briefly got stood up. It formed a really-nice looking classic funnel that lasted about 45 seconds or so, but never reached the ground.

Just did the vidcap, and I count 4 funnels in the shot....

 

[Rocky Rascovich]

10/17/07 Reports: KS/OK

Another semi successful day.. I traveled with Charles Edwards and basically stuck within the confines of Canadian County, OK. for the best part of today. After the gungefest from thismorning cleared out, cells fired along the dry line to our west and we set up just north of El Reno. Watched a storm develop a nice rain free base with an attendant lowering that at one point developed a nice dry slot with the wall cloud by around 1530cdt. Rotation at times was moderate with rising scud tags close to the base. As this moved closer to us, the cell took on more of a linear shape and the wall cloud became more diffuse.

We elected to head east to intercept the next cell that was moving up thru the OKC area. As we came close to Piedmont Rd. to go north then east, our original storm briefly intensified and quickly produced a funnel which we saw clearly very close to my farm NW of Piedmont. It descended at 300-500 feet or so from the base. By the time we pulled over to videotape, the funnel dissapated. A few minutes later at around 1600, a wall cloud developed with scud tags developing and rising at a very rapid rate, I was sure this was going to produce, also of note, winds increased substantially a few miles south and west of Piedmont. At one point, inflow winds were sustained at around 30kts with gusts easily to 40. As we got up to Waterloo Rd. which is 3 mi. north of my farm, the wall cloud again diminished and inflow winds became a non issue. My wife Dee got some nice pics of this wall cloud as it developed rapidly but she was not aware of the funnel cloud that I'm sure was very visible (and probably quite close) to the farm. That storm never regained the strength that it had earlier, so we focused on the storm that had come up thru Edmond and east OKC. We finally intercepted it a little east of Luther on Hwy 33 around 1640, winds to 35kts and hail up to nickel size was the predominate feature with this.

Overall, I believe the chief failure modes for more tornadoes today was the dry punch at the 700-850mb. level which ate away the updrafts during the afternoon storms... also, perhaps a little bit of subsidence from the morning convection contributed to todays results as well. I'm sure a much more indepth discussion concerning today will follow. All in all, I was pleased to be out and as has been the case a few other times this year, another close one for the farm today.

Rocky&family

 

[Angie Norris]

I made a quick run up I-35 on the OKC storm as it headed northeast toward the Logan County area. The OKC storm put out a fairly decent shelf cloud as it exited the east side of the city. Further up I-35, I ran into some moderate rain and gusty winds that were pushing tumbleweeds parts ahead of the storm. Turned east onto Seward Road where I was treated to an exquisite double rainbow and a developing tower that I think went on to the Coyle area.
For those who have heard the hail roar before, I have a question...would you describe it as a "grumbly waterfall"? I heard that sound as I was watching the storm move on to the northeast.
I agree with Rocky...I think that dry punch, plus lack of insolation helped keep storms from being as intense as forecasted...it was just too cloudy for too long today.
Big thanks to Bob Schafer for nowcasting today
Hey Rocky, if you move, I want your place...talk about a storm magnet!

 

[Brian Emfinger]

I held closer to home in the party cloudy skies south of Tulsa. I nearly took off after some storms developed just a few miles to the north of me and of course that turned into the long lived supercell that tracked through NE OK, NW ARK and into SW Missouri. Of course even if I had tried it wouldnt have worked out due to the fast pace and bad roads. Well after that another storm came out of Texas and I waited too long to head that way. Finally I gave up on more storms firing in Eastern Oklahoma and I jetted south to the storm which of course began to lose strength. I got to it when it was still Tornado Warned in Western Ark but it didnt have much lightning and soon it completely died. Another severe storm developed just north of it and I got some lightning.

I am definitely not disappointed though since this morning I had become pretty pessimistic about this setup.

 

[AndrewLee]

10/17/2007 Reports: MO

I got a late start and left downtown Kansas City at 3pm. The clearing and backing winds in SW Missouri gave me hope that I might be able to catch a discrete storm as it raced out of OK. Stopped in Butler and saw that there was a beast of a cell that crossed the AR/MO border SE of Joplin. Long story short...I intercepted the storm at mile marker 46 on I-44 near Mt. Vernon. I only got one picture of the tornado (below). It's not a great photo as I snapped it while i was driving. I bumped the contrast ratio on it to make the tornado more visible. I would have more pics and video, but the engine in my car blew out. The car stopped at the bottom of a hill with trees obscuring my view to the NE so I couldn't even watch the storm.

[insert long list of expletives of your choice]...Ya know my whole 2007 season has been about me picking good target areas but getting there just after the parties over. Today, I was in the right place and in perfect position to observe this storm as it tore through SW MO. All I can say is that God has a sense of humor. I am tired and cranky and still have to get back to KC.

I will say that this storm had some very nice structure and I'd be happy to see it in May let alone October.

Andrew Lee

 

[Jeremiah Rosson]

Post-Chase Report....

This is my first Storm track post......

However, it was a great day to go and hang with some friends we were able to see some interesting stuff.... all which we have seen before but all in all it was nice to punch a core in October and pick up a few new hail dents.....

 

[David Schuttler]

This is about the best I came up with in the Northern areas of Tulsa.
Settings are somewhere between 10mm and 20mm

And then the junk that came in earlier in the afternoon(taken at work)

 

[mike scantlin]

I stayed in Stillwater last night due to empty pockets and empty tank. I woke up late, and headed out the door to look at the line coming in. Very ominous on the underside of the leading edge.


Ominous underbelly of the leading edge.


Me posing with 'ole Blue


My buddies Matt Hagy and Randy Rhea picked me up, and we opted to go south towards Shawnee, hoping to chase one all the way to Tulsa, see some friends, then come back to Edmond. Curveball.

We were in Shawnee hunting for wifi when Daniel Neal called with a radar update. said to hed west immediately as a discrete cell was starting to show up. we couldnt see it thanks to the lingering clouds. so we hopped on 40W. as we passed just south of OKC, we saw this


Yay! A REAL SUPERCELL! NO LINEAR CRAP.
We drove to the East side of the river to get a clear view. when the best part of our chase took place.

A red car pulled up, and a "weird" looking lady jumped out angrily. my first thought was "prostitute" but who knows. the guy drives off. turns around, comes back and says "do you want a ride or not?" She replies "F*** NO!" His response was along the lines of "F*** YOU B****!"

She wanders about baffled by the drugs in her body...

http://i24.tinypic.com/29wx0yw.jpg
We chuckle, as we are about 20 feet from the whole ordeal, holding cameras and video cameras, and i knew she would say something. We decide to get moving as the storm is quickly picking up speed. Here is the conversation that took place.

Lady(under the influence slurring):w w w why were ya takin picatures uhv meh?
Me:ummm, you see that storm? its could drop a tornado at any time.
Lady(obviuosly not understanding): WHY WERE YA LOOKIN AT MEH!?
Me: please go to rehab.


I'm a *****. I know. Do what you want behind closed doors, as long as it doesn't affect anyone else, but seeing people like that in public bothers me.

Onward. We try to keep up, and barely succeed. We got some nice pictures from one vantage. The we hit a dead end and kissed the storm bye bye. So we went home.

More pics.


Metro chasing sucks


Updraft base. lots of movement, but nothing too persistent.


As close was we got to organized Wall cloud



The end.

 

[Mikey Gribble]

That was another kick in the nuts. We were on the tail end storm in Oklahoma. The one that developed just SW of OKC and tracked through just North of town. Anyways, we followed it all the way up to Tulsa. It looked like it was struggling with outflow the entire time. It had the long skinny gust front kind of updraft to it, which I always hate to see. It just never got going. I haven't looked back on data yet to try to figure out what went wrong. That definitely sucked though. I really can't feel bad about where we were. If I were virtual chasing, that is the storm that I would have picked. I would have bet it was going to be the storm of the day for sure. It looks like that storm by Springfield Missouri was instead though. After getting kicked in the junk for six years, I'm used to it.

edit - a longer and more boring report can be found here http://loadedgunchasing.com/blog.html

 

[Tim Marshall]

SHORT: Race chased a non-tornadic, low-topped supercell that formed near Chickasha, went through the northwest OKC metro, and let it go north of Cushing.

LONG: Carson and I headed north to our target town of Ardmore. A squall line developed apparently on the moist axis and we let that go awaiting redevelopment on the dryline farther west. After a leisure lunch at Two Frogs, we sat in an open field for a couple of hours before seeing the tail-end storm form near Chickasha. It was off to the races and we fortunately had I-35 to take northward meeting the storm in Oklahoma City. The storm had a flat, linear base and low top. The updraft was quite tilted, as typical with such high speed shear events. The anvil was serrated on its south side and there was no backshear. A band of cumulus clouds extended southeast from the storm base. Some towers farther south actually had their tops ripped apart. We followed the storm northeast of the city, zigged northeast on the turnpike, then zagged north on Rt. 177. The storm cycled twice with clear slots and wall clouds, but the base could never tighten. We gave up on the storm north of Cushing then headed back to Dallas stopping in Norman for a nice dinner. As expected, the storms had too much speed shear and not enough instability or directional shear for tornadoes. TM

 

[fplowman]

Fred drives all the way from Kansas City to near Oklahoma City. Observes storms firing. Storms never get going. Fred drives all the way back to KC.

 

[afischer]

My chase mirrors Tim Marshall's pretty closely. Chased the tail-end charlie storm from south of Mustang to Cushing and then let it go. I was too busy driving to get good looks at it for a steady period of time (it was rather tough to keep up with). It started to look fairly impressive just north of Edmond as scud began rising into a lowering base, but went linear and cold-looking thereafter. I'll have to look at this disappointing event more closely in the future, as I chased after a mid shift and then crashed for 12 hours. The 19Z OUN sounding looks like it was launched before temps mixed into the mid 70s, and it still had a ML LI of -8! Impressive considering instability was something most folks were worried about (I didn't expect quite so much clearing). Definitely surprised that discrete cells couldn't do a little more in this environment, unless the veering backing pattern was a problem.

 

[Shane Adams]

Chad, Mick, and I managed to get on OK33 east of Watonga and kept moving east through Cimmaron City and eventually to Guthrie, keeping three storms in sight as the weak string of pearls storms tried to become bonafied sups. The middle storm (the one that moved through El Reno) managed a nice wall cloud for several minutes, with good rising motions and some interesting differential/turbulent motion. But it gradually became stretched into outflow mess, so we booked it east through Guthrie onto OK105 and went about 30 miles further east before giving up, as everything we could catch was crap. All in all, despite the blah storms, we were satisfied with our chase because we stuck to our plans and made good strategical decisons throughout the day. We seem to do pretty well when we stick to our guns.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Similar story to most folks who chased in Oklahoma... I left OUN with Mike French, Jana Houser, and Howie B. upon seeing initiation down near Chickasha. We got in good view of that storm as we passed through Moore (driving nearly alongside Roger E and company), and we ended up chasing it to Cushing. It was apparent to us that things were not going to go well upon feeling cold, westerly outflow after stopping between Tryon and Perkins miles southeast of the primary updraft base. We meandered southward towards sunset to see if anything coming up from just east of OKC would do anything. The storm(s) appeared to have weak rotation on radar as they passed S and E of Stroud, but it was then getting dark, so we called it off.

As a little note, my wife called me from our house in northwestern Arcadia as we were driving N of Wellston on 177 to tell me that quarter size hail had fallen 10-15 minutes earlier. She took a few pictures of some of the hailstones -- some were very spikey, and many were quite irregularly-shaped, something I don't remember seeing a lot with hail only the size of quarters. I supsect that some of those oddly-shaped stones were likely larger at one time, but had melted (either falling through the storm or on the ground in rainwater).

 

[Brian Stertz]

The chase yesterday was pretty much a zero as Rich & Ryan Thies and I tried to make lemonade without any lemons. The supercell structures were not as epic as I would have believed they would be...and dealt with some seriously outflow dominant sub-supercells. We caught the storm as it moved into Payne Co. Got into some lower end severe hail and watched the storm head off into the nether-regions of Osage Co.

Saw an interesting gust front bowl near Claremore and it had THE look for a few mins. before the outflow blast sealed the circulation's fate.

Bust yes...but at least we saw some storms, and low-end supercells. This appears to be my last chase of 2007. The time window for chasing gets pretty grim the rest of the way, and don't want to deal with those fast movers anymore....at least not until March or April !! Here's a toast for 2008...

Know the feeling Fred...well stated. Got to see the aftermath of the Coffeyville KS flood disaster. That poor town may never be the same. Very chilling sight even months afterwards.