5-12-04 was absolutely one of my favorite chases of all times. Driving along the back edge of that incredible meso as it was producing the Harper wedge was an experience I will never forget.
I was with Bill Reid and Tempest Tours and I think we started the day in McCook NE after a bust the day before. I was pretty excited for the 12th, seeing some similarities to 5-7-02 which was another significant tornado day. We headed for Liberal KS to be in position for the triple point or to blast west into Colorado where easterly upslope winds were forecast to provide some marginal instability.
When it became evident that a mesolow near Woodward OK was pushing the dryline east, we also went east on 64 in the OK panhandle and caught up to the CU field forming along the bulging dryline. The building storm was incredible to watch from the west in the clear air, I don't think I have seen such explosive development before.
Saw the first tornado to the southeast (Sharon) then drove up to the back side of the Attica tornado, watching a beautiful dusty red rope out. The RFD winds on the back side of the meso were the warmest juiciest RFD winds I have experienced. Continued east out of Harper on 160 after a detour towards Attica and drove up to the largest, darkest, meanest, most amazingly beautifully large striated spinning meso I have ever seen. Did I say huge?? Along with the occasional golfballs and baseballs bouncing diagonally across the road in front of us, the occasional tornadoes that dropped here and there from this meso made the whole scene very surreal.
We stopped on 160 where the roads goes north into Attica and watched the wedge tornado move slowly north where it would do extreme damage to a home. I captured several pictures of this wedge using my digital rebel set at 1600 ISO and a fisheye. You could hardly see it in the fading light but my camera managed to pick it out fairly well.
Dropped south a couple miles north of Anthony and just sat on a side road watching lightning and talking excitedly in the darkness about the past several hours. We soon noticed the cool outflow winds became quite moist inflow winds and looking back to the northwest could clearly see a base with a developing clear slot forming thanks to the frequent lightning. We soon had a beautiful tornado that put on a show for the next 20 minutes as it slowly drifted east just to our north.
We went back to Harper a couple days later to take a look at the damage. We were able to walk the site of the F4 damage and I was amazed at the destruction. I thought the place had been an old junkyard but whole intact vehicles had been literally pulled in pieces and scattered about the countryside. The damage was extreme and I can see why it could have easily been rated an F5.
My pics here:
http://www.f5hunter.com/5-12-04/index.html
. I am too broke to chase and I would hardly know how to target an area that is prime for tornadoes on any given day. Yeah there were some pretty nice tornadoes that day and I am awe-spired by the video of the tornado that picked up the house and sucked it into the vortex.
