2/23/06 REPORTS: TX / KS / OK

Here are captures from the video I shot of the McLean Tx tornado..

mclean1.jpg


mclean2.jpg


mclean3.jpg
 
Targeted just west of Childress and decided to intially chase the northern supercell. Intercepted it near McLean and it was fairly unimpressive with a flat unactive base. At the time this cell was weakening and we were watching with great interest the intensifying southern supercell. We decided to go for the southern storm and during this time we had view of the middle supercell that would produce the tornado others have witnessed. I mulled over quickly whether to go for the middle cell since it had a little more life to it's cloud structure and inflow. I saw the intial lowering but I didn't think much of it because of it's ragged appearance and how the little the shape changed while we were watching it. The last radar update we looked at for that storm showed some weakening so I thought it would continue weakening as the first storm had done intially (the first storm's outflow cooled air being in the vicinity as well).

We proceded south towards the southern supercell. As we came south on 273 we saw an antisupercell split from the southern storm. The updraft on it was my the favorite part of the chase. It had a thin tubular top with a bulb like bottom, similar to a dradle. We ended up going just east of Hadley and witnessed a possible funnel cloud briefly before it was completely occluded by rain. This is consistent with Bobby's previous report. Night fell pretty quickly after that and we followed the storm north until reaching I-40.

It wasn't that bad of a chase considering we got on three different supercells and saw a funnel cloud. But we missed out on the tornado and the storms we chased had lackluster structure and seemed to not be persistent in intensity.

VIDEO OF SOUTHERN STORM
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Watched this coming towards me , i was in Englewood KS, the sun was setting and i hadn't been feeling all that great, as it came closer it was dark by then, i ended up following another storm that was tornado warned moving towards Dodge City KS, was anyone else on or near this storm, a tornado was reported by sherrif's and a stormchaser, they said the tornado was on the ground for 5 minutes at the time the report was coming out it was 7 Miles NW of ENSIGN KS
7:14pm. I was 3 miles from the report and i couldnt see anything resembling a tornado, the lightning lit up the whole area and there were some low scud type clouds but i didnt see any rotation in that... i gave up north of Dodge City KS.

0223071805.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Scott Olson and I got into position just in time for initiation of the three Texas supercells near Mclean. We raced back and forth between the 3 storms, trying to stay with the one that looked most likely to succeed. We saw a brief funnel with the southern cell. Kind of a tricky chase.
 
One more McLean chase entry

This day was one of the greateat catches since my storm chase hobby began in the late 70's (early 80's on the plains). I met Charles Edwards in Yukon, Ok. where he promptly threw his gear in my truck, hooked up his laptop which had the latest GR level 3 software installed.. and we merrily hit the road westbound on I-40 in hopes of at least seeing a good storm with some lightning, I knew the chances were there that tornadoes would be present somewhere within a hundred miles of us, but being it was February, and minimal chances of daylight convection... I expected to just see a couple of good storms and get into the mindset that chase season was close at hand.

We decided on Shamrock, TX.. many others had thought of Childress and with moisture advecting northward and slighly warmer temps, that target was reasonable. We decided on Shamrock thinking that cells would fire first somewhere near Clarendon and race northeast where we would intercept them. Besides, the 18 and 21Z RUC both broke out convection a little below I-40 west of Mclean, so we thought that going west was as good as any place to point toward. As expected, we went through about 60 miles of a stratus field with occasional wind whipped drizzle, we broke into clearer conditions west of Sayre, we stopped at Erick around 1615, where we examined the latest data, satellite photo's indicated bubbling Cu and congestus all across the eastern PH of TX. with an enhanced area of convection near Clarendon which quickly showed returns on radar, I figured it wasn't surface based but within a few scans was exhibiting 40+dbz returns just north of Clarendon moving hastily to the northeast.

The chase now on, we saw the first convection just west of Shamrock, I wasn't too enthusiastic over the cells as they were soft with glaciated tops. these storms were of multicelluar nature, but as we proceeded west, a couple of these storms had some crisp updrafts. We made it to Mclean Tx. just past 1700cst where we watched several of these storms graze our location. We became pretty excited when the first storm just passed us around 1720 and had a very pronounced mesocyclone with scud clouds screaming into its updraft. Winds backed as this cell just missed us, gusting to around 35mph, some very small hail fell with moderate rain, most of which came from the anvil. CG's were occasional with one close bolt about 3-4mi. away.

Then, the next cell came up from the SSW.. the radar indicated a meso with this as with the last one, so we went a little west of town by a couple of miles where we sat as this cell did virtually the same as before, a spattering of rain, winds would back almost to the east.. 20-30mph, and "graupel" sized hail. Within literally a minute, the rain stopped. and we could see the base with attendant meso to our west.. there was no lowering, I could see little rotation, but there was a pronounced clear slot, cloud base was flat and about 1700-2000ft. agl .. Charles remarked there was rotation, but at that moment to me, it was insignificant. I thought about blowing off this cell and heading back toward Shamrock to intercept the next in the string of pearls gracefully spinning there way across the prairies. As I was about to turn around, I noticed a small area of chaotic motion in the cloud base just north of the clear slot. We started watching that, it immediately developed a bowl shaped lowering... well alrighty then, I thought, the cynical part of me saying this won't last long and it would bait us in staying there as we would miss something to our south.

The next ten minutes commencing at 1800cst, my jaw would hit the ground as moments after the bowl shaped lowering happened, it developed a perfectly tapered funnel that within a minute skipped across the ground from about 7mi. or so west of McLean to about 10mi. to the north. This funnel which was a fat pencil shaped vortex for the most part continued and developed a classic dry slot. The contrast was great and the video I took was for the most part, steady. At times, I zoomed in close revealing the swirling condensation eddies at its base and as it made contact with the ground. Other times, I zoomed out exposing the entire updraft and dryslot. It definitely was a chase for the books... and February! and a mere one day before my birthday... a fine present indeed.

We quickly went back east after the funnel disapated, hoping to intercept the next cell to our south. As it turned out, alot of these storms temporarly weakened at sunset, and the show was over for us and I was faced with a barrage of phone calls from fellow chasers and... media outlets that got wind of what I caught (!!)

Below is a link courtesy of Charles Edwards and Cloud 9 of his video he took and pictures.

http://www.cloud9tours.com/bear/2007/index.html for pictures
http://www.cloud9tours.com/video/McLean.html for video

Rocky&family
 
Just a quick report. Left Houston at 5am and made it to Shamrock around 3:15. Drove south and then west towards developing supercells. I was on the storm which eventually produced the tornado near I-40 of which others have posted pictures. However about 30 min or 1 hour before the tornado occured the storm weakened significantly. The updraft looked fluffy, and the structure just didn't look good anymore. Visually it appeared that the storms further south were adversely effecting this storm.

Meanwhile the southern storm was taking off, showed rotation on radar, and I could visibly see a low-level inflow band feeding into it. Based on all that information I dropped the northern storm and went south. The southern storm had spectacular mid level rotation, but that's about it. Beautiful storm.

Apparently well after I dropped the northern storm it produced a tornado! Oh well, can't win them all. If I had to do it all over again I'd still drop that storm. It was the least likely at that time to produce. Sometimes mother nature just does what she wants! In the end it was a very enjoyable chase. My first solo chase in a couple years and a nice way to kick off the 2007 season.

cheers,

Jim
 
All in all it was a good day i can day radar helped us get to the storms but it did little or nothing to help us find the tornado! thats was just luck i wanted to go the other way, matter of fact i was already moving and we got "tornado on the ground" so i stoped at the top of the next hill and started shooting!

http://www.tornadonerds.com/ < for more pics and video!

20070223McLeanTX03.JPEG
 
Last edited by a moderator:
My wife and myself (with our puppy) headed to our initial target of Elk City, OK at 1230pm. Upon arriving there and retrieving some data, we saw that a little farther west was a much better target.

struc1.jpg


In Shamrock, TX we got some more data, and decided we were in a good area, so we set up near Lela. We watched the storms from a far at first, then decided to try to follow them a little North. We headed north to Kellyville. There we saw the base of the a northern group of storms that seemed very uninteresting. Deciding our chances were better with the southern storm, we headed back south. A few miles SSE of Kellyville we looked west a saw a small lowering. We stopped, and BAM! It was rotating!

torn1.jpg


We took some video and some pictures of most of the life-cycle of the tornado.

torn2.jpg


After that, we headed to Shamrock for gas and a little more data, and we decided that it was time to head home. Night chasing was not something I was ready for with the amount of data I had.

Got home at around 1030pm, so not too bad!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Randy Jennings
2024-03-24 REPORTS: TX/OK/KS/NE
Replies
4
Views
679
Mikayla Norris
Mikayla Norris
JamesCaruso
2024-06-04 REPORTS: OK
Replies
0
Views
187
JamesCaruso
JamesCaruso
Jeremy Perez
2024-06-21 REPORTS: AZ/CO/NM/UT
Replies
1
Views
274
Ryan Schwartz
Ryan Schwartz
Brett Roberts
2024-03-24 EVENT: TX/OK/KS
Replies
11
Views
1K
Andy Wehrle
Andy Wehrle
JamesCaruso
2024-06-01 REPORTS: TX
Replies
0
Views
190
JamesCaruso
JamesCaruso
Back
Top