11/05/08 REPORTS: OK, KS, NE, SD, TX, MO

[Jason Bolt]

Started out in Caney, made a poor decision to go down to Bartlesville and head west. Be advised Alltel data cards are worthless west of 75. Made it back up to Sedan in time to see a beautiful wall cloud just west of Sedan on 166. At the time, the cell just south of the border was warned and that cell was not. Got a little scare when lightning hit about 100' from the car. Followed the wall clould north of Sedan. Never saw any tight rotation, and when the warning came out for the next cell that moved into Sedan, we never saw anything but ragged scud. Between the lightning, the wall cloud, and the structure it was a nice chase for November. Pictures to follow.

 

[Kiel Ortega]

Started my day off running the phased array radar at the NWC in Norman. Followed the Grady/Canadian Co. storm through it's good part of it's life. Watched a really pretty downburst on the TDWR feed (the downburst was just 2 miles from the TDWR)--forget what time that was at. Air conditioner failed at the PAR, so I called it quits around 5:30 and wandered up to where the downburst occurred. Hail drifts were still on the ground in the vicinity of 48th NW and Tecumseh in Norman when I got up there (this was at least 40-50 min after the storm). While looking around for damage, a left split from a supercell to the SW of Norman came my way...so I put myself in the hail and found some 1.5" at 72nd NW and Tecumseh at 6 LT. Finally found damage from the earlier downburst...snapped power pole and a barn with it's roof ripped off and tossed about 300-500' (this was in the area of Franklin and 60th E)

editted: I was on 48th NW and 72nd NW...put E accidentally

 

[Shane Adams]

Pretty much what I expected today....

Storm #1, outflow beast west of El Reno that really got cranking as we let it slide by to our north, and then bailed south. Missed tennis ball hail by a few miles/minutes, and ain't complaining.

Storm #2, the treat of the day. Got on Santa Fe after ditching the first storm, then hit Indian Hills rd and got chased by this beast as it roared across the northern outskirts of Norman. It developed a great hook/notch, and cycled repeatedly for over twenty minutes. At one point the rotation was so intense I actually called it in. For a few minutes we felt we'd get a tornado, but alas, the excitement was short-lived. We'd get a few minutes' view into the notch, and then rain would fill it up as it cycled back down. Saw some crazy rotation in the scud detached from the RFB, quite unlike anything I've seen before. Later on as we moved north, we noticed a horizontal vortex above us by a few hundred feet, writhing like a white snake. It started out vertical and we just thought it was an area of shear, and then it stretched into the horizontal and we could see it was an actual vortex, very wild. Eventually this storm did like all the others, filled with rain and lost intensity.

Ended up near Shawnee at dusk, and briefly flirted with the idea of making a run south on US177 to Asher to wait for the then-monster coming up from the Lindsey area. Though better of it and headed home. 197 miles and back home by 7pm, beer in hand. Not bad for November.

 

[Patrick Romans]

Got a late start today and didn't make it to my initial target of Blackwell in time. Took second target of the Cedar Vale, KS area and south. I was about 3 or 4 miles from the TOR warned cell in Osage County OK but the precip killed my view of anything. I was quickly reminded of the lack of roads in the northern Osage County area. We trailed the storm back into KS and then jumped on the second cell as it hit the Elgin area. Saw decent inflow on that cell around the precip core but I couldn't see any rotation. I fell into a line of other chasers SW of Sedan as the hail core passed. I did manage to get some great pics of the hail covered roadways and fields. The hail fog was thick around the Sedan area. All in all not a bad chase day for Novemeber.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Left Lincoln Nebraska at around 8AM, headed to Kearney Nebraska to pick up my chase partner Darren, then dropped south of York Nebraska until we got to Wichita. About the most interesting part of the day was crossing the cold front; rather fun to see such a sharply define boundary in the sky. Mostly, we missed the action to the east of Wichita, but I don't think we missed much. Drove through a few storms off the cold front on the way back. Not bad for November; convection, lightning, downpours, mammatus -- can't complain!

A quick pick of some mammatus on the back end of the dieing storm east of Wichita. Click it for a 950px version.

 

[Damon Scott Hynes]

Like a lot of others, I pinballed along US-166 near Sedan and Cedar Vale. Ton of lightning, best I've seen this year. I wonder if the storms were having to eat their own rain-cooled air, every anvil I saw had lots of rain falling out.

Now in Joplin, and even the promised squall line looks wimpier by the hour.

 

[Lanny Dean]

11-05-08 storm pics

Caught this cool wall cloud just east of Perkins OK, looking back west on HWY 33...
Have Fun,
Lanny

 

[Chris Vagasky]

Started in Perry. Driving to Perry, looked out my window and saw a building cumulus, that was rotating as it was growing. Figured that to be a good omen. The first storm never got really organized, so worked my way down to Storm 1 that Shane mentioned. Followed that storm to Perkins, where it showed some really good rotation and vertical motion, but never really tightened up.

Dropped south on 177 and intercepted a storm. As I approached it, saw some very good rising motion into the storm and watched it form a nice wall cloud. Followed the storm to Prague, watching the wall cloud the whole while. Nothing really developed from that.

Worked my way back to Norman, saw the supercell coming up from Lindsey. Watched that the whole way along Highway 9. Was a beautiful storm.

300 miles, and a great chase for November. I am thoroughly pleased.

 

[Connor McCrorey]

I left Plano at about 2:30 and headed up I-35 as fast as possible. I really wanted to catch that storm that moved through the OKC area. It looked nice as we approached, but we decided to ditch that attempt as it was moving too quickly with sunset so early, and we placed our bets on the messy storm moving out of Stephens county towards Lindsay. Turns out we made the right move, that thing was beautiful! We watched it develop from that messy patch of storms into an amazing supercell. We saw several funnels, and there were times I was sure we would see a tornado, but it just never managed to get one down.

As everyone has said, it was great to see such a beautiful storm at this time of year. Hopefully it can get me through the winter!

 

[ABlaser]

ended up intercepting storms moving NE out of osage co. into kansas near sedan. lots of hail up to quarters, some drifts were 2 inches deep with hail fog. we had some wind with the tor warned cell..but there was no organized low-level rotation. it was pretty obvious from early in the afternoon that with DPs around 60 and all that speed shear, that temps were going to have to be at least 75 for any cells to survive the shear --the better storms near OKC were in temps near 80. that was the key. so--for november, it was a pretty good run to end the chase season.

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

Caught a nice little wall cloud north of Omaha, then followed the storm, falling behind the cell when it went SVR near that bridge across the Mizzou a couple dozen miles north of Omaha (can't remember the road number) and then ditching out when it went TOR after dark and our data was out and nowcaster was proclaiming it quite unlikely to actually be producing.

Lovely weather for November. Final feeling of being at least potentially near a tornado has passed for 2008 and won't return for four months unless I'm twitching enough to chase Arkansas ...

 

[afischer]

Intercepted a pair of tor-warned supercells in Chautauqua county KS this afternoon. Had to approach the first one from the back side and encountered quite a bit of pea-sized hail near Cedar Vale. Came out of the rain 7 miles east of Cedar Vale in time to watch a decidedly blocky wall cloud with weak to moderate rotation cross the highway at ~425pm. Only moments later the wall cloud started looking ragged/trashy as precipitation from upstream convection began to overtake it. Jogged a bit farther east to near Sedan, and looking southwest could already see the trailing supercell approaching (~445pm). This storm's updraft remained disorganized and relatively high-based for much of the time I viewed it. North of Sedan it got a temporarily interesting and quite picturesque look to it though, with a well-defined tail-cloud and localized rotation at the occlusion point as the rear flank gust front began to surge forward... and typically "pretty" coloring with sunset as well. The gust front then developed a beautiful laminar banded look. Anyway, not to shabby for a fairly local chase, and was nice to see that part of KS as I'd never chased there before.

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

After waking and looking at the RUC and then 12Z NAM I originally opted to stay home, and maybe play with whatever crap the Northern end could produce, though a stupid last second call had me flying out the door at 9:45, I FLEW south and positioned myself near Arkansas City, shortly before initiation. From the start I was never impressed with the cells, though I never am in low instability high shear events, so I gave them a chance. I was on the first tornado warned storm coming out of Osage Co. then followed the next one in the line that later went tornado warned (not sure exactly why). I suppose you could call it an OK day considering it is November, it was nice to at least get out and make sure I still knew how to chase, I managed to cover 900 miles in 14 hours including all stops for chasing...

My camera is being repaired so I was without the SLR today, thus all pics will be vid grabs, just a quick one for now, I'm tired.

I think the early convection stuck around just a little to long, coming South along 135 the area of destabilization between the old convection and the DL/CF was really narrow, and even at that, much of it was blanketed with a layer of cirrus. I was actually a little dissapointed on the way as I wanted to get SW of OKC but didn't have time, I'm not sure what happened down there, not all surprised the KS crap didn't do anything, but I'm surprised there wasn't at least a couple of tubes down that way...

 

[Connor McCrorey]

Here is my video from today. The quality is low, the camera is shaky, and it's shot through a window the whole time, but you can still get an idea of the storm

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

 

[Joey Ketcham]

Tyler Costantini, Bart Comstock, Russel Parsons and I left Pittsburg, KS about 10:00 and headed west towards the Sedan area where we eventually met up with Jay Cazel. We intercepted the storms that came out of Oklahoma, one which prompted the tornado warning in Chautauqua County and later in the evening we dropped south towards Tulsa where we ran into some more storms that produced dime size hail and gusty winds.

All in all it wasn't a bad chase, no tornadoes but we got on a tornado warned cell in November and got some good lightning pictures and plus it was a backyard chase for us.

This little appendage was attached to the tornado warned cell that came out of OK into Chautaqua CO and did have rotation to it.

The rest of my pictures can be found at http://www.kschaser.com/pictures/thumbnails.php?album=62