2007-03-28 REPORTS:TX/OK/KS/NE/CO/SD

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Reviewed video and saw 7 tornadoes from what I saw! I have some video stills of the better tornadoes from yesturday.

3 tornadoes on the ground at once looking NW on US160 east of Meade KS. Contrast enhanced.

A cone tornado descends looking N south of Dodge City, KS. Sorry for the crappy quality.

The cone from the image above to the left and a wedge back in the cell on the right.

Going to work on the chase log a bit later as I need a brake after reviewing the video for a few hours.

 

[Adam Atkins]

I've finished a 7 minute clip from the chase yesterday. Awesome storm, HOT DRY RFD, I can't stress this enough. Have video from wall cloud to multi-vortex to skinny needle, to truncated cone to cone to stovepipe. Longest tornado I've witnessed on the ground. The structure was incredible, unfortunately we didn't get a great shot of the mothership meso because it was very dark when we stopped chasing the tornadoes and got enough room for a wide angle storm shot. Total of 5 tornadoes, 2 after dark which were very ominous and damaging up along I-40 near McLean.

Enough banter, here's the link:

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

 

[Eugene Thieszen]

Walt Gish, Eric Sipes and I left Cordell, OK at 1pm for Childress, TX and a brief data stop after which we proceeded to our target area at Quitaque. We paused there for a while watching towers go up and monitoring radar until we made the choice to intercept the storm that was rapidly developing near Plainview. We were in position on SR 378 just S of Lone Star when it dropped its first tornado at 5:15pm. The tornado dissipated rather quickly and after 6-7 minutes a second developed from the same wall-cloud. Then road options forced us to backtrack a bit and we caught up with the storm again at Silverton, filming the stovepipe that passed to the NW from a point just E of town. Heading E on 256 we intercepted the storm coming up from Floydada and filmed the entire life-cycle of the Caprock Canyon tornado, much of it from the jct of 256 and 70. Following the storm N to Clarendon we blasted ESE to our next N option near Hedley and followed 273 to McLean, filming several tornadoes on the way as darkness fell, including a very large, partially rain-wrapped wedge. At McLean we quickly drove E on I-40 and headed N on the Kellerville road and stopped to film what appeared to be yet another large tornado with satellites. Broke off the chase at around 9pm. Review of video shows we filmed at least 9 tornadoes, perhaps more--in the darkness, illumined only briefly by lightning, it isn't always easy to determine exactly what one is seeing.

Heres the weblink to our chase account and pics. http://www.geocities.com/genet_99/wxtreme_2007_032.htm
Gene
WXtreme Chase Team

 

[Brett Roberts]

Crazy day, easily my best chase so far. Caught the Brice tornado and watched it from touchdown to roping out from the backlit perspective - about 5-6 miles to the east (2 E Brice). Wish I would've gotten closer before setting up the camera and such, but coming down towards the US-70/TX-256 intersection we ran into some sizeable hail and I decided I wanted to get a bit east and avoid it - bad move in the end, as it would've been well worth some dents to get a closer vantage point! Pics to come shortly.

 

[JR Hehnly]

Similar story as everyone else. We stayed in Childress until initiation, then intercepted the storm near Silverton. Followed it as far north as possible before breaking off to go back and catch the southern storm. At one point we took a short dirt road that was actually just mud. Gravity pulled the vehicle sideways into the ditch, which was full of water. I was able to keep the vehicle moving and drive out of the ditch about 1/4 mile later, but I thinkthe 2 ft deep water or something in it we hit damaged the engine because about 9pm the engine started knocking and died. We were towed back to OKC. It was worth it, though!

http://www2.okstorms.com:8080/images/chases/2007-03-28/index.htm

I think the red is water from the Red River.

 

[Shawna Davies]

Like a lot of people that posted, I was (with Jon Davies) in NW KS and saw at least 4 tornadoes with the Sherman - Cheyenne County supercell, including the Bird City wedge off in the distance. Lighting conditions weren't the best, but here are a few video grabs.

Brief rope tornado S of I-70

Weak tornadic circulation approaching I-70

Tornado backit by lightning just west of Edson KS

Tornado just northwest of Edson (in foreground)

Distant wedge tornado near Bird City KS backlit by lightning

 

[Mark Farnik]

All I can say about Wednesday is WOW! WOW! WOW!
This is a brief summary of my chase. I will post my full report on my chase blog later today.
I left home at 11:15 a.m. and made it to my preliminary target of Ogallala, NE by 1:30. I spent the next one and a half hours gathering data at the City Library and watching and waiting and talking with Brett Adair, who was nowcasting for me. I started noticing convection beginning to develop along the DL in extreme eastern CO, so I decided to head further south, so I left Ogallala at 3:00 p.m. MST and dropped down Highway 61 through southwestern NE, passing through Grant, Imperial and Benkelman before I saw nice towers going up about 40 miles to my west, so I booked it west on Highway 34. I arrived in Haigler around 5:30 p.m. and drove a short distance south of Haigler on Highway 27 and watched from the top of a hill as a spectacular classic supercell moved out of Yuma County, CO into far western Dundy County, NE.
At 5:40 p.m.,the storm developed a nice wall cloud and dropped a brief, but pretty backlit rope tornado approximately ten miles north/northwest of Haigler around 6:35 p.m. MDT. The tornado lasted about a minute, and I took several pictures which I will post later. This supercell would later go on to produce several spectacular tornadoes near Grant, NE an hour later. I could have chased it, but my truck was running low on fuel and the Co-op in Haigler was closed, so I had to hustle back to Wray to fuel up. While I was filling up, new convection exploded along the DL. Brett informed me about the tornadic supercell moving out of Sherman County, KS, so I hauled ass back east on Highway 34. I punched through the developing line of supercells and caught a few golf balls and some blinding rain west of Haigler. As I got closer to Benkelman,significant anvil blowoff from the tornadic supercell was creating a fog that so constantly lit up by the lightning from the supercells that were literally surrounding me in all directions it was glowing. That made for a very surreal and eerie drive. I arrived in Benkelman and started down Highway 161 but quickly turned around as reports of the wedge started coming in. At Brett's suggestion I decided to move further east to the town of Max, NE, which is about eight miles east of Benkelman. I made a u turn about a mile east of Max and parked my truck. I took video of the lightning backlit multi-vortex tornado as it crossed into Nebraska, just missed Benkelman to the southeast and crossed U.S. 34 east of town at 8:35 p.m. MDT.
After the tornado had crossed the highway, I drove back towards Benkelman and drove through the damage path about two miles east of Benkelman, where parts of several trees and a powerpole were lying in the road.
I drove through Benkelman and observed some significant hail damage on the south and east side of town. While I was on the south edge of town, I observed two more brief tornadoes from a circulation passing about ten miles to the west of Benkelman. It was then that I made a decision to drive south to Bird City on Highway 161. What transpired next was a chaser's worst nightmare, a blunder that could have been deadly...
Tune in later today for the thrilling conclusion!

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

I'm still trying to break down my video of the night time wedge tornado and mayhem, It appears that I didn't get a whole lot of good video of the wedge Tornados even though visually I constantly had a good view; however if I slow down the tape and watch it in slow motion quite frequently you can see it, I did find a spot when there was a power flash that illuminates the huge tornado. I put the 1 second clip which shows the flash and ends quick enough so that you can still barely make out the tornado. Its at the bottom of the page.
http://www.severechase.com/3-28-07.htm

 

[evan anderson]

Started the day in Lubbock (after flying into LBB night before). Parked south of Floydada, TX for a bit before heading to Aiken, TX. Somewhere north of there (Providence?) saw my first funnel within in seconds after getting pulled out of some mud on the shoulder - thank you Glen! The funnel passed almost overhead and I would guess is the same cell that later became the Silverton tornado witnessed by everyone. Spent some time in Silverton -- basically 'cat and mousing' David Drummond's path; and made the same mistake of taking 86 south of the Caprock (instead of 256). Decided to head back thereafter so probably missed quite a bit around Brice and Clarendon. Still my first tornado and catching the funnel at the start was incredible (and lucky).

Pictures with date/time (DSC files) were taken with a cameraphone (Sony K790a) and no date stamp(IMG files) Canon Rebel XT.

 

[Bobby Prentice]

South Brice-McLean Tornadic Supercell

RJ Evans, Gene Rhoden and I saw at least four tornadoes from the Silverton-Brice-McLean tornadic supercell and numerous funnels.

The headline for us is great recovery. We missed the first few tornadoes from the initial northern storm between South Plains and Clarendon and the first tornadoes from the southern storm around Quitique/Silverton, but recovered southwest in time for some great shots. Thanks to Tim Marshall for calling Gene with the initial tornado report that kicked us into high gear.

Our highlight was a close view of a cone-elephant trunk-rope tornado a few miles southwest of South Brice, TX. At one point, the multi-vortex debris cloud was lit by bright sunlight less than a mile to our west and the entire funnel took on a zebra appearance. We shot great video and stills from high vantage point of looking down into the Mulberry creek/river valley. According to Gene's digital photo times, the tornado touched down at 1843 CDT and ended around 1915 CDT. It moved pretty slow, only about 15 mph we estimate.

We also saw a truncated cone-stovepipe-elephant trunk tornado after dark from about about 3-5 miles south of McLean, TX from this same supercell. The tornado just missed McLean to the west, while a new tornado touched down on the east edge of town and moved north. McLean dodged a bullet.

This new tornado hit the west TX Mesonet site on the northeast edge of McLean with a 127mph 3-second wind gust and 9 mb pressure drop. Pictures of the damaged mesonet site can be seen here:

http://www.mesonet.ttu.edu/temp/McLean_tornado_28March2007/message_mclean.html

RJ's Personal Mobile Mesonet Project (PMMP) data logs can be viewed here:
http://pmmpdurango.com/Data07Temp.html

We sampled this storm's environment quite well. Around 0050z, on TX273 between Headley and McLean, we measured a period with inflow sustained ESE at 40-50mph.

Here's a description of RJ's vehicle:
http://www.pmmpdurango.com/

This supercell and others apparently formed on an elevated nw-se oriented boundary in the Crosby-Floydada area. At first, it appeared the left splits might ruin the show, but the great environment won out. This boundary was a tornadic supercell factory with multiple hooks noted over the ern Panhandle. Not sure what this was associated with, but the models predicted this convection accurately. Gene calls it a wave. Was it an elevated dryline bulge that intersected a NW-SE boundary between AMA-CDS? Moisture funneling up the Palo Duro Canyon? Who knows! Fascinating!

Special thanks to RJ for saving us from a crash while departing Oklahoma City near the I-44/I-40 junction. A truck in front us of slammed on his brakes and swerved into our lane. RJ swered onto the shoulder to miss him. Our hearts missed a beat or two on that one.

 

[Roger Hill]

I'm not going to go into detail here, since everyone else already did I caught the same stuff that most everyone else caught, from Silverton, Briscoe county, and on into Hedley and north. Beautiful storm structure, awesome tornadoes and full accounts, pics and videos willbe up on my web site this weekend at www.stormchase.net

Did have a VERY VERY close encouter west of Hedley as a tornado developed just south of town. VERY VERY close to the tornadic circulation! Not on purpose either LOL!

 

[Jerry Funfsinn]

After visiting Nebraska twice and a stop in Minnesota in the last 2 weeks I finaly hit chaser
Nirvana in NW Kansas Wednesday. While dropping south from my original Nebraska target I
partnered up with Skip Talbot near Norton KS as convection fired southwest of Colby. I believe we sampled at
least three cells as we dropped down the line to the tornado warned cell north of Shannon Springs.
We managed to catch this cell without getting stuck in the mud to
watch this beatiful storm really come together.We saw one tornado in the rain and a well formed funnel
just after parking near the storm. As we traveled north to keep up with the storm Skip came over the
radio and commented about how great the sun was lighting the storm features and that
now would be a great time to get another tornado. My reply was "ask and you shall receive". Well,
minutes later as we crossed I-70 and past the town of Edson the storm developed a beautiful sunlit
tornado. After that jawdropper we continued on as darkness fell. We quickly went east to find a
north road that paralleled the storm fairly well.It was during the next hour that we got to see
another tornado as well as two tornadoes at the same time and finally the wedge near Bird City.

Big thanks
to Skip for his great navigation in and around the storm. I'm also thankful my prayers were answered
that this storm passed over mostly rural areas.

Link to Video

Jerry Funfsinn
CreativeJetstream.com

 

[scott r currens]

Very brief report:
I observed three tornadoes in the Goodland, KS area.

Tornado #1 ~5 miles north of Sharon Springs, KS

Tornado #2 ~1 mile north of Edson, KS...Edson is in the foreground

I have a lot of work to catch-up on and Saturday looks like a CC chase in NE/IA …it will be some time before I post a full chase report in my chase logs.

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

After driving all the way to Ama from Norman, we went back to Shamrock and then turned around again to head back for the storm over Caprock Canyons/ Silverton area. I had my doubts about making to that storm on time. Not only did we get there in time, we got some great seats for the multivortex as it really got going. West of Hedley we experienced baseball size hail, it was kinda soft hail. It would shatter real easy and didnt leave many dents, and small dents at that. Cracked my headlight case though. It wasnt till after it was north Hedley in Donley County that this storm really went to work. Along highway 273, we saw a funnel come down around the back edge of the meso. As it came around, it reshaped into a large bowl and came down in the valley next to us. The whole valley just looked like it exploded as the dust went flying into the air. The roar of this tornado was incredible. As it began to track north toward Mclean we could see it when lightning would illuminate it couple miles in front of us off the highway maybe a mile. Alot of chasers were moving directly next to this thing. It became a very wide and short stovepipe. Thankfully this thing lifted just before Mclean and the I-40 region. We were getting really worried because it had a bullseye on McLean.
Another large tornado followed soon after. It touch down on the far SE edge of McLean causing a power flash that knocked out the Mclean's power. At this point we were just trying to stay behind the storm as safely as possible. We took highway 453 through Pakan east of McLean. Saw a couple other possible large tornadoes backlight by the crazy lightning, one of which was near Kellerville. These storms were lit up much better than the SE KS storms on Feb 28, but the road networks just were not good enough to risk staying with this storm especially seeing the size of tornadoes they were putting out. The animals were going crazy in this area. We about ran into a big group of dear and a crazy raccoon before making it back to the interstate to head home.
I will never forget this chase. I went from seeing no funnels, let alone any tornadoes, over the past 2 years to having a tornado count somewhere around 15 just through March on just 4 chases (3 very successful ones).

Here are a couple pics,
Tornado about 10 miles south of McLean, very wide cylinder

Tornado about to strike SE side of McLean

Power flash at McLean

Video of early in the day, then some at night:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7LFWrLTz9A

 

[Tony Cook]

Departed Austin about 8:15 a.m. Caught the Silverton tornado shortly before it dissipated just NW of Caprock Canyon. I was well north of the cell when TOR warnings first went up, following another cell which pulsed down shortly after I comitted to it. Driving SW towards Silverton, I caught some pretty nice views of the extremely distant wall cloud, lowerings, and tornado(s). I was roughly 40-45 miles NE of the storm when I first saw what the wall cloud. Definitely the most distant WC/TOR I have ever witnessed. Vidcap from roughly 20 miles NE of the storm:
http://home.austin.rr.com/chasing/28Mar2007/silverton3.jpg

And later, when I emerged from Caprock Canyon, as the Silverton tornado ropes out:
http://home.austin.rr.com/chasing/28Mar2007/Silverton0.jpg
http://home.austin.rr.com/chasing/28Mar2007/Silverton1.jpg

From there, dropped south to pick up the cell entering southern Briscoe County. Story here is the same as many others. Beautiful tornado- wish I could have gotten a little closer. These pics are from a digita still camera with NO manual focus:
http://home.austin.rr.com/chasing/28Mar2007/Briscoe_1.jpg
http://home.austin.rr.com/chasing/28Mar2007/Briscoe_2.jpg
http://home.austin.rr.com/chasing/28Mar2007/Briscoe_3.jpg
http://home.austin.rr.com/chasing/28Mar2007/Briscoe_4.jpg
http://home.austin.rr.com/chasing/28Mar2007/Briscoe_5.jpg
http://home.austin.rr.com/chasing/28Mar2007/Briscoe_6.jpg
http://home.austin.rr.com/chasing/28Mar2007/Briscoe_7.jpg
http://home.austin.rr.com/chasing/28Mar2007/Briscoe_8.jpg

I hope to get some stills up from my Video soon. The video camera malfunctioned a couple of times during this tornado, but I still got a lot of video from it. Video camera is malfunctioning again today (on my waste-of-a-chase in Central TX). Vidcaps should look a little better than the stills, and I'll post them when I get the camera working again.

Also got up to just West of Mclean at sunset (after guessing wrong and gonig North from the chaser convergence zone in South Brice). Observed some lightning illuminated funnels as the cell crossed I-40, and got some low-light video of those also.

Congrats to all those lucky enough to be out there Wednesday. This event definitely eased the pain of my recent 3/23 1360 mile bust (I have spared the forum members a report from that debacle).

Miles: 1060
Quarts of Oil: 2

TonyC