2008-05-23 REPORTS: KS/NE/CO/OK/TX

[cedwards]

We intercepted the first tornado to cross I-70 at Quinter, KS. It eventually wedged out north of the interstate.
In the wedge picture, it looks like there is a satellite tornado.

At dark, we came up on the 2nd Ellis tornado on the interstate from the west. A truck passed us and stopped ahead on the shoulder. I could see the tornado in my viewfinder. the truck blew over and I aimed the camera at it, but I guess I got off of infinity and it was way out of focus as the truck flipped over. Then the tornado got wrapped in rain and got BIG. It backed up a little to the west and we turned around and went the wrong way on the interstate to get out of there.

http://www.cloud9tours.com/bear/2008/pics/052308a.jpg
http://www.cloud9tours.com/bear/2008/pics/052308b.jpg
http://www.cloud9tours.com/bear/2008/pics/052308c.jpg
http://www.cloud9tours.com/bear/2008/pics/052308d.jpg
http://www.cloud9tours.com/bear/2008/pics/052308e.jpg
http://www.cloud9tours.com/bear/2008/pics/052308f.jpg

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

I came really close to repeating yesterday. I may as well have, really. Sat in Grainfield waiting to do yesterday over, but I forgot to do it over the right way lol. Went south of Quinter, but turned around, since I hate being in the way trying to turn around on small roads and not get stuck in my rear wheel drive car. I just foresaw a huge mess of chasers as that storm moved north. So went east on I70 to try and get a view first. I sat EXACTLY where I did the day before with nearly the same conditions....no contrast and rain. And I was well out of the path. So I hop back on I70 and inch nw to get a view. It sucked, all hazy and a million chasers with the same idea to use the interstate shoulders(beats teh hell out of being stuck on a wet gravel road cluster). I got sick of the haze, but more sick of so many chasers. I'm getting wierd with that anymore. I think a big chunk is being paranoid about getting my car stuck trying to turn around real quick or get out of the way. When I get annoyed, I just say scew it, so I did. I thought, I'll let this go and flyyyy south away from everyone and let whatever happens happen. Problem was I saw the repeat of yesterday starting to unfold on radar behind me. I KNEW what was going to happen at that point but didn't really care. I should have, but I get in the mood and just don't. The thing was the number of chasers near me before this was pretty big, all while spotter network showed hardly a soul near me when I was east looking sw. The ton on spotter network just didn't sound too good considering what I was seeing not even on there.

So flew south, and it was really nice to be out almost on your own lol. I targetted the cell sw of Dodge City. It began to look classic on radar. I jetted west from Jetmore for an intercept. Saw a far off cone tornado in the occluded area. I essentially got the cell as it was cycling, as it had a tornado before this, and had issues as I was on it. It was reorganizing but it was doing so right on my location. It just about put down a nice one in the field. I went ne with it on gravel best I could, but it turned to more dirt and sand. Sucked I couldn't continue since I had no clue how the roads would be or if they'd even get better. Sucked worse trying to beat the rain all the way back south to the highway west of Jetmore. As I do this, a cell goes up sw of the first one, and east winds became insane. Rain ripping west into that new cell that already had a nice big fat lowering. I was glad to reach pavement again as that rain increased. Seems this is the theme with storms in this setup. For whatever reason something fires behind the lead main storm and then that is where it really intensifies. Just like it did north the last two days, this one did that whole deal too. Raced back north to Ness City(after pondering dropping south agani for that other southern cell).

It beat me to Ness City, but wound up in an amazing horseshoe. Of course now I was back with the masses, right behind the TIV. Funny thing I wasn't annoyed at all(makes no sense). I guess driving in a train isn't as annoying as just trying to park and have a route out. I just thought about it at the time, thinking how bright it was to up and leave the earlier storm over crowding. I've never driven away from something I was that close to, knowing pretty much for certain what it was about to do...and completely not care at the time.

Anyway, drove north with the train of chasers, watching the amazing structure from the back. Then a tornado forms in the horseshoe to the ne. At the same time there was a persistent area over the n-s highway to the west of it that seemed it wanted to be teh main area on the ground. Just very low, pointed, mass of convection at the end of the horseshoe. Seems like I saw two tornadoes east of that, but can't remember for sure. One was a pretty nice white cone. After going east with it for awhile I opted to let it go since it was getting a really cold, not so organized look to it. Having a room booked in McCook helped.

Congrats to all the baggers again today. It's a hair painful now to consider all I had to do to see that along I70, even though I 100% did not care at the time if I missed anything. It's like annoyances slowly build and I don't think sanely. It's just amazing how many chasers there are now. Film crews with them. Tours! College groups. Trying to sneak a view of that intial grungy area on I70 did not help anything, neither did the damn rain leading up to that. I must learn to stop saying screw it and leaving the area. At least it doesn't hurt that terribly anymore.

 

[Mikey Gribble]

Damn storm motions screwed us again. We still managed to get a tornado today, but we missed the Quinter wedge. We were on that storm and followed it to 15-20 miles South of I70 before we finally fell behind and couldn't catch up. The roads around that area suck terribly. After that we dropped south and got on the storm that developed just West of Dodge City. We intercepted it SW of Ness City about 20 miles. The storm produced a brief stove pipe and then two ropes that only made it half to 2/3 of the way to the ground, but I can't confirm ground circulation with the ropes.
I am more than a little pissed about missing the Quinter tornadoes. We knew that storm would tornado as it approached I70, but there was just nothing we could do about it. Storm motions were doable, but not with the crappy back roads we were on. Storms aren't supposed to move this fast in May. Congratulations to those of you who got the wedge. I'm jealous.

 

[Michael Carlson]

Caught 3 brief tornadoes just north of Ness City.

 

[Tim Marshall]

An OZsome day in Kansas for the Marshalls. Target was Oakley. Headed west on I-70 from Salina this morning and had a nice leisure lunch at the Jade Garden in WaKeeney. Heading farther west, we saw a N/S line of towers/Cb's develop at Colby. However, an isolated cell at Scott City caught my attention and moved rapidly northward toward I-70. So, we turned around and headed south of Quinter to intercept. We encountered a large wall cloud with scud rising up from the ground, so we headed back to Quinter and waited for the cloud base to appear from the fog. I knew something was up when I saw the DOW and TIV in town. Then the winds increased from the east-northeast. Hmm. Then, as if on cue, a multi-vortex tornado emerged out of the fog and headed right for us. We parked on the west side of Quinter and let the tornado pass within 1/4 mile of us. Shot breathtaking, high contrast, footage of the merry-go-round.

After the tornado passed Quinter, we made the critical decision not to follow this tornado north into the fog and the poor road network. Instead, we dropped south to Pendennis to another storm. The fog cleared out and a classic supercell came into view. A tornado could be seen in the distance near Dighton. It died, then another occlusion took place closer to our west producing a white stovepipe that drill pressed the ground and had an elongated rope stage north of Shields. Had time to film it AND take lots of stills. This storm also headed rapdily for Quinter (again!) and we tried to keep up with it, on the wet backroads, but couldn't. So, we let the wedge producing storm go off to Quinter.

Then, the megasupercell out of Ness City caught our attention, so we eventually headed east on Rt. 4 (after finding gasoline) and caught sight of a violently rotating precip wall that contained a tornado (per Scott Peak) heading for Ellis. By that time, it was getting dark and we decided to head back to Salina -smiling all the way. TM

 

[Dennis Sherrod]

For me, I saw the largest tornado yet for this year. I was sitting on I-70 West between Wakenney and Collyer when the large wedge first came into view. A Deputy Sheriff and State Trooper blocked the interstate to any westbound traffic. I was fortunate enough to be the first in line and was filming it nicely until several arrogant tour group vans pulled directly in front of me blocking my view. The trooper immediately put a stop to them from trying to drive right past him and made them pull over. Ha Ha Ha.
I was speaking with the Trooper after this and he gave me permission to follow behind him as we followed it west on I-70. This allowed me to film it uninterrupted for over 20 minutes. Well almost. The exeption was a couple more chasers in a silver Honda SUV that thought they were going to buzz by and then he saw the trooper as we were driving along about 70. He cut into the lane I was in and almost hit me.
But all in all, a great day. I just wish some of these tour group jerks and other chasers were more considerate and would think about what they are doing before running over others and blocking someone's view. ( read section on Chaser Courtesy Reminder)

 

[Matthew Crowther]

Saw the second supercell/tornadoes from Perdennis to Quinter- not bad beginning the day in Atlanta the driving from Dallas!

pics here:

http://web.mac.com/mcrowther3/iWeb/Site/5-23-08.html

 

[Angie Norris]

Was on the NW OK storms, but unfortunately missed the tornadoes (heard the warnings, but couldn't find my way to get to where they were). Got three very nice sups out of the deal, so I'm quite happy with the day.

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

Sean and Katie McMullen, Jeff and Kathryn Piotrowski and myself Filmed a hand full of tornadoes today, three large wedges, two along I-70 and another near the Cedar Bluffs Lake, a weak multi-vortex north of I-70 and than Jeff and I saw an elephant trunk to stovepipe with major power flashes near Ellis at night. Some pretty stunning video, though not sure it tops what I captured yesterday (gonna be hard to top what I saw Thursday, stuff is that good). A crazy couple of days, not even sure how many wedges I have seen the last couple days, let alone a total tornado count, gonna take me a year just to get all the video sorted through, hopefully soon (maybe Monday) I'll start getting video up on www.severechase.com

 

[Jerry Prsha]

Quinter, KS 30m minutes after the wedge

Here's the one I spoke of earlier... I still don't see the car get tossed but I may have just panned away at the right moment.

Pardon my giddyness... I've seen a few but never got one on tape before...

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

 

[BrandonWhittington]

7 tornadoes today in OK and KS. Saw power flashes in Protection, KS along with damage. Hope everyone is alright. This tornado was northwest of woodward......

 

[Jeff Bartlett]

Protection, KS?

As everyone else, I will work on pics and try to get some up tomorrow. However, I may have the unfortunate distinction to be the last chaser to ever drive through Protection, KS the way some of us remember it. After having my route blocked off due to damage south of Bucklin, I found a small paved county road that took me straight through downtown Protection. Managed to get east to Coldwater for gas and then south of the highway 160/highway 1 intersection where I stopped for a few pics of the structure I was viewing to my west. Without data or cell connection and knowing a beast was coming at me, I chickened out due to self-preservation and headed south on 1 very quickly. Apparently at that point something managed to hit Protection. Last I heard, heavy equipment was being brought in to clear the highway in order for emergency crews to get in and start helping the people there. Of course these were preliminary reports, but the last quote I heard was that downtown Protection "was completely destroyed". Anyone have news on this? More later.

 

[George Kourounis]

TORNADOES - More tornado madness!! We knew that today's setup had as much tornado potential as yesterday and it certainly panned out for us with several tornadoes witnessed.

We started heading towards a developing supercell, south of Interstate-70. We waited for the storm to get closer to the highway because we didn't want to face the terrible dirt roads that were left muddied by yesterday's storms. As the rotating portion of the storm approached the interstate, we found ourselves in the hook of the supercell with a large, dark cone tornado fast approaching. We pulled off and filmed as it got closer and closer. I prepared myself for the possibility of having to dash out of there at full speed but the tornado dissipated before it made it to our location. Just east of where we were, a new tornado formed. This time a big, ragged multiple vortex tornado that shifted shape and morphed until it eventually became a huge wedge. At one point, it was so big that I could only see one side of the tornado.

We pushed on to the north to try and cut ahead of the storm and make another approach on the tornado but the only paved roads were few and far between. We eventually cut across through the storm near Hill City as we "threaded the needle" in between 3 different TVS markers (tornadic vortex signature).

As the light began to fail we watched yet another tornado warned supercell from a hilltop when we were jolted by an extremely close lightning bolt. We believe it hit behind the house we were parked beside and it was a good thing that everyone was inside the vans at the time. The shockwave almost startled the pants off of me!

On our way back to Hays for the night, we heard about another possible tornado approaching the town of Ellis. We were close by and tried to make an intercept. The problem was that the tornado was wrapped in rain and it was getting dark. As we got closer to the town, we noticed the winds shifting and we remarked about how stupid some of these big rig truck drivers are, they'll drive into anything. A few second after we said that, an 18 wheeler passed us and pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. The tornado was fast approaching and we watched the winds flip the truck over onto its side. Charles spotted the tornado and saw more rain wrapping around it as it closer to our location. We had to get out of there and fast! The big problem was that we were on the divided highway with no way to turn around. We ended up circling back and drove the wrong way down the interstate for a mile or two with our headlights flashing to warn any oncoming motorists of the danger. The tornado crossed the road close to where we had been and damage was reported in Ellis.

When the danger had finally passed, we drove back east again and noticed 4 different trucks overturned, some in opposite directions which was more evidence of the tornado passing through.

What a day.

More photos here:
http://www.stormchaser.ca/Tornadoes/2008_05_23_Quinter/2008_05_23_Quinter.html

 

[Steve Miller TX]

I caught the tornado near Buffalo/Selman, OK today same as Brandon.

Congrats to all those who scored the awesome tornadoes up in KS today as well. It's about time that May showed up.

Report and a few more pics here.

 

[Mike Umscheid]

I photographed a very brief tornado about 20 to 22 miles northwest of Jetmore at around 6:25pm from a supercell thunderstorm that initated east and northeast of Liberal…which tracked across western Gray County…and eventually through extreme eastern Finney County…clipping far northwest Hodgeman County…before moving across Ness County when I eventually said to hell with that storm and left it about 7 miles south of Ness City. Of course, it went on to produce tornadoes once again, after there was a funky and complicated cell merger that I really did not like at the time (which was one of the reasons I abandoned it). The other reason was I had developed "fatigue" with that storm… as it teased me for such a long time with "oh my God" rotating wall clouds and nascent 3-second funnels and whatnot. I would have had a beautiful front-row seat to a high-contrast tornado at one point when I got up into Southwest Ness County, but it just wasn’t to be. I got real deflated after that "false alarm". Rather frustrating to be on a nice supercell like this and only get a brief 30 second tornado whereas other supercells all around seemed to be tornadic machines. I really shouldn’t complain, this one image (below) is the first tornado photograph I’ve taken since October 26, 2006: