12/26/08 REPORTS: KS/MO/OK/AR/TX/IL

[Chad Cowan]

Chased the nocturnal rockets from around Iola, KS to Chilhowe, MO. Left KC with the initial target of Parsons, KS but (with the help of Skip's nowcasting) realized the dew points weren't as high as progged and this meant the cap wouldn't be breached as far south as previously thought, so the girlfriend and I hung back in Iola and waited a couple hours for initiation. This surprisingly wasn't far enough north but we were treated to the bubbling towers under star lit skies in 67F temps... on the day after Christmas. We raced up to Paola to try and keep up with the developing mini-sups but were too far behind from the get-go. We did get a good view of the back of the Paola/sKC LP that Dick and Darin saw before our northeast hwy turned north and we had to cut east into the wooded hills of Missery. We got in front of the broken line just east of Harrisonville and thought our chances of bagging a tornado were pretty decent at that point given the semi-discrete nature of the storms and the fact that they were lined up about five deep to the south of us. Nope. Too much shear, too little CAPE, veered 850's.. take your pick. Oh well, it was a rare treat for a couple of Chicagoans, especially after standing outside in Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday in a -15F wind chill.

EDIT: Woah, just got video of an estimated 75mph gust here in the KC south suburbs... big branches down and multiple power flashes. I would expect widespread damage reports in this area. There was a weak outflow boundary draped W-E just south of here and looking the base velocity scans, the SVR warned cell's gust front was aided by this. I smell a Jon Davies' case study! Here's my video of the event: http://clcimages.com/122708wmv1.wmv (14 MB)

EDIT 2: This has been the weirdest weather day of my life. Shortly after the 75+ mph gusts the temperature dropped over 25 degrees, then we were put under a severe thunderstorm warning at 38F and got some pea sized hail (or maybe big sleet??), now the temp is 31F and it's still storming.

 

[afischer]

Very similar story here. Targeted Chanute/Neodesha/Parsons area, left at 430pm and even that was too early. Stratus completely scattered out by the time I was about halfway there, and by 9pm I could still see stars overhead as I sat in Chanute with temps holding at 70F! I moved northwest toward Yates Center and then things began firing to my northeast. Gradually caught up with the Paola cell and continued to be surprised by the great visibility, with little in the way of stratus obscuring the structure. Lightning activity was sort of limited, but the glow of the city lights offered some illumination. The storm was semi-high-based but still had a nice compact structure and a flanking line trailing to the SW. Lost it shortly thereafter as it jetted northeast through KC metro at about 60mph. Took County Road Y back to the metro between Louisburg and Belton... what a nightmare of a road with hairpin turns, steep hills, and even more ruts than your typical Missouri state highway.

I think Chad's observations above are right on, as profiler data showed 0.5-1km winds veering significantly in northeast KS/northwest MO between 00 and 06Z... reducing hodograph size a bit. Also, the storms were not rightward deviant, more or less moving with the mean wind and thus barely to the right of the low-level hodograph, with 0-1km SRH probably 200-250 as opposed to the 400-500 I'd been hoping for. As for why things struggled farther south and/or were more strung out on radar, haven't looked into it yet... hodographs seemed to remain a lot more favorable down there through and beyond midnight.

 

[Stephen Levine]

Report, 12/27/08, East Texas

Not long after dawn, isolated storm cells began to spring up and race northward, about 30 miles east of the main broken line of storms along the front, not far west of I-35/Denton-Dallas.

One storm developed right overhead and raced northward, exploding with thunderheads. This was enough to inspire me to drive east of my area to intercept more such storms that might produce something intense, especially as our region got declared under a tornado watch as I was loading up my car with gear.

Within 1/2 hour of the storm that developed overhead, a 2nd line of streamer storms and showers developed as a NE/SW "street".
The mid level and upper level explosiveness of individual cells was visually apparent by the vertical filaments developing above the towers as well as the rapidly blossoming mountains of thunderheads above.

After about 45 minutes of travel, I finally punched just east of the street of showers and storms, and parked in the Sulphur Springs area to watch.
Heavy showers and very rare lightning bolts ensued, nothing else.
I noted the veering winds backing towards the SE considerably further east towards Texarkana, but an upcoming mid-afternoon meeting plus an intuition that tornadoes would be highly unlikely there precluded any further chasing.

Driving west back to Greenville, I greeted the pulsing squalline (pulsing in and out of intensity) Lightning was disappointingly sparse with these systems, however to chase at all in December is a rare treat.

 

[Steve Sherrod]

I agree, chasing in Dec. is a rare treat in Ks/Ok. I was inspired to get my camera, computer and wake up my wife and kids to tell them I was heading to Ok, at 1am for this storm prediction. Wichita was having t storms, and small pea sized hail. I got 30min down the road and realized that I was crazy and it was hopeful thinking for storm season. I sat in S. Wichita and watched. Some lighting, thunder and a good fast moving storm. That was my Christmas Present!!!!! Looking forward to Spring.