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

[J.B. Dixon]

Frustrating day for me. Started out in Oakley waiting for initiation with Steve Pederson. As we watched the first cell fire near Dighton we then headed west. I continued east of Quinter to Collyer, anticipating more of a NE track of the now tornado-warned cell. ALso trying to avoid the core, I hung back east in Collyer, waiting to move west towards the circulation. By the time I got back to Quinter, the circulation had passed. I could make out the RFD notch and extreme motions close to the base north of Quinter. THis may have been the wedge that Kiesling got acquainted with.

Frustrated with the sheer intensity of the cells, and the moisture haze all day, I was growing increasingly uneasy about the realization that if I really wanted to see anything, I was going to have to take some risks that I was pretty much unwilling to take yesterday (more on that in the discussion thread, I think). SO I headed south to intercept the supercell getting its act together SW of Ness CIty. Seeing that i wouldn't make it without getting beaten in the core, I headed east then back north to Hays, where I knew ot would be heading. Again, visibility and the sheer magnitude of the cell prevented a good intercept west of Hays.

Congrats to all who bagged wedges today. My hats off to you!! It was a violent day, with every cell seemingly producing such intense circulations. WIth the poor road conditions, the volume of chaser traffic, and all the other intangibles, it was truly a day for the really good chasers to get the good stuff. I guess I've got some work to do. I had my day on Thursday, and still had a good time learning on Friday.

 

[Ericka B. Gray]

Yesterday was a mess. The atmosphere was grunge, it seemed as if every chaser in the world was on the road going every which direction, the yahoos were out, the locals were confused and upset - understandably - and the contrast was almost non-existant. We drove through everything from thick fog, downpours, drizzle, mud, roads almost blocked with chasers, empty roads, and just about every condition you can imagine but clear skies. However, we ended with the ginormous cell out of Ness City with a rain free base and thought the beast was going to drop one right in front of us heading for Ellis. We saw what we thought was a low contrast tornado, later verified by photos, sightings from other chasers, and damage path. We headed to Hays to our previously booked motel rooms to find that the Whiskey Creek staff had closed the restaurant and was telling everyone that there was a tornado ready to set down on top of them (paraphrase) and they were making everyone go to the tornado shelter. However, the staff was milling around in the parking lot and were uninterested in seeing radar and knowing what was really happening. Many other establishments had also closed as the police had apparently advised. Everyone ended up in Applebees, which did a great job given that they had hundreds of chasers to feed all at once.

All in all, not as good as yesterday - very frustrating with the lack of visibility and the number of chasers. Not surprising that many chasers had close calls. Dangerous stuff out there. Glad to see blue sky and heat today.

 

[Andrew Stoller]

Caught at least 3 tornadoes, possibly more. The first was a HUGE HUGE wedge north of Dighton, KS - I'd say at least a mile wide and likely bigger. I'm a fisherman, so I'd say it was 2 miles wide - fully zoomed out it barely would fit in the frame. The whole meso basically touched the earth and rain wrapped, with many mutiple vorticies. The storm looked like it occluded and cycled and a new wall cloud quickly formed east of the occluded meso west of Utica, KS and produced a nice elephant trunk/tube tornado for 5 minutes. Most of the chasers that saw the wedge were hauling tail east on highway 4 and never even saw it as the wall cloud/meso was directly over them. About 4 people stopped where I was and filmed it - Mike Kovalchick being one of them from his pic.

Then, I waited for the storm to get going north of Garden City up towards Ness City. Northeast of there as it really wrapped up and the percip cleared out showing the meso, several nice cone tornadoes touched down.

Since storm motions were 60 mph, I didn't even chase anything, I just planned where to be so I'd be on the east end of the rear flank of the 2 middle storms as they passed me. Plan worked perfectly.

Also chased with Mark Farnik and a couple other guys who's names I can't remember. I can't remember people's names to save my life.

Whew, I'm tired, but what an amazing experience that many many people fantasize about but never get to see.

:edit: After reading the couple of reports here from the Dighton wedge, you guys must have been really close to it. I was a bit farther east of it so I could see it's entirety. It was Greensburg big. Before it really got big, I was zoomed in all the way and it looked like a mile wide meso about 20 feet off the ground with rapid motion and suction vorticies.

 

[Peter Wharton]

Now back in Amarillo after a great day in Kansas yesterday - initial target was Scott City, got west of town for good visibility of the horizon and waited - towers first went up to the east of us about 3pm - sped east to get to Dighton before they went severe and cut us off, then north - cells rapidly became severe warned , then tor-warned - all within an hour of initiation - observed wall cloud near Shields and the signs of rotation beginning - storm moving rapidly NNE - no good roads north in that area, so went east to just after Ransom, then north on 283 to get some quick distance on the storm on paved roads - finally made the decision to get on to county roads to get closer to it again - wet, muddy and very slippery.

Ended up on Castle Rock Rd just south of Quinter - paved road again to my relief - inflow screaming over our heads from the east - then as we came up over a rise sighted big wedge on the ground to our left running parallel about a mile away - tornado sirens wailing in Quinter - turned onto I70 westbound to intercept it's path and watch it go by - lots of traffic already stopped watching approaching tornado - pulled over, rolled down window - 1st thoughts were "this tornado is not moving sideways anymore!" "it's getting bigger!" - tornado had evolved into a classic cone-shaped funnel about 1/2 mile away, and moving towards us at 30 to 40 mph - "gotta turnaround!" - rest of crew got about 10 seconds of pics/video footage before we did a u-turn and drove down the wrong way on the Interstate <no traffic was moving towards us - and median strip looked too muddy to risk a crossing and get stuck in the path of the tornado> - after 100 yards found a paved strip to the other side and crossed over - pulled over again a short distance eastward on I70 only to see a secondary funnel rotating around the main funnel - decided to put more distance between us and the whole rotation - pulled over again just in time to see the funnel lift off the ground and cross the Interstate just west of the interchange at Quinter.

I was too preoccupied with the driving challenge to get any pics - but rest of crew got some great stuff, including some HD footage.

Briefly tried moving north to track the storm, but roads too muddy and treacherous - narrowly avoided sliding off the road.

Tracked back south down 283 to Ness City/Jetmore on next set of storms - impressive structures, but not in time to chase after too long a pit stop at Wakeeney. Saw hangar damage at small airport south of Wakeeney from the previous day's storm.

Cut westward through developing squall line at Garden City - pea size hail. Then tracked line of storms down 83 - back building down the line all the way into Oklahoma/Texas. Spectacular line of anvil clouds at sunset stretching probably 200 miles from Scott City down to south of Canadian.

After sunset treated to stunning display of lightning all along the squall line - pulled off to watch just south of intersection of 83 & 60 - so intense and frequent that it was almost painful to watch - so much activity that you were not sure where to look next - great cloud structures illuminated by the lightning.

Numerous stars overhead in the clear sky west of the dryline/cold front - saw a shooting star as the final event of the day. Then turned westward for the quiet run to Amarillo.

All in all an amazing day that will be difficult to top for the rest of this chasing season. Full confirmation of why I travel all this way annually to chase.

 

[Bryan Putnam]

Kind of late with the report but it was a long night and then a long day driving back home. I had to drive back to Colorado from Kansas after Thursday's action because of my sister's high school graduation, and then did a u-turn and flew right back out. I made it to Quinter just in time to see the first large tornado to barely miss the town. It was almost like something out of a movie - I was sitting about a mile south of the town and the wind was howling like crazy into a wall of rain. Suddenly, the tornado appeared out of the rain and I watched as it moved north towards I-70. Miraculously, it completely evaporated just before reaching the interstate, probably saving several lives. Right after crossing the interstate a new tornado, a cone, formed but quickly moved out of my view.

After driving to the north side of the town to see the storm move off, I spent the next 45 minutes trying to figure out a way to get south towards the next storm at Dighton. I decided against either core punching the storm south of Gove or trying the muddy road south of Quinter and patiently waited about a mile east of town for the storm to come to me. At first I thought I was seeing things when the outline of a wedge, probably a mile wide, appeared out of the haze. It was still so far away i had the whole structure of the storm in view. For the next 20 minutes, I watched as it got closer, and closer, and closer until it moved a couple miles to my west and crossed I-70. It seems like each tornado I'd seen up to this point the past couple of days was more intense than the last. This one has already been rated an EF-4 and I completely believe it. The rotation was violent, and I saw several large unidentifiable objects get launched a hundred or more feet into the air. The more I think back about it I'm surprised I didn't go into some sort of shock, but the whole experience at that point seemed unreal.

I finished watching the now dissipating tornado barely spare the town of Quinter again (it still hit a few houses south of town), I decided to head south past Cedar Bluff State Park to catch the next storm coming up by Ness City. It was a harrowing experience in strong winds driving a road atop a dam at the park, but I survived and caught another two tornadoes just west of the town of Brownell. One never fully condensed, but the ground circulation lasted nearly 10 minutes. The second tornado, a small rope, appeared out of nowhere just to the north of the first but unfortunately disappeared into the haze/rain within a couple of minutes.

I've had more than my share of busts it seems the past couple of seasons, leaving me feeling quite frustrated. After a two day extravaganza of a dozen tornadoes including three large/strong ones though, I think I'll be able to relax.

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

Simply awful. What started out as an exact carbon-copy as the day before ended up more crowded, erratic, and threatening for us INVOF our repeat of our WaKenney (sp) target. We had to play safely on every single storm we were on given the gigantic mess, and after a point we no longer cared about seeing tornadoes or getting footage; we just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

We saw the melted remnants of the reported 3'' diameter core by Park, KS, and a beautiful wall cloud, but that's all for us to report this day. Sig-severe hail isn't a bust to me in the least, even though I know of the quality of the rest of the show, but considering the unpredictability and above all else the bad luck of our target, the b-word was the least of our concerns. The b-word dealing more with our hindquarters was the bigger concern.

We normally wouldn't be proud to leave a shoulda-been-high-risk setup (especially, of course, given how discrete the sups became after we left and before the squall cut them up) but this one was the right decision given the cards dealt to us. Ill luck and bad road options was the cause, "safety first" was the effect - better to fold 'em and see tornadoes another day than to have no other days left to see anything at all.

The day before (5/22) was my first day witnessing tornadoes while chasing, so it is very special to me - that report will come later. For this particular day though, we'll take the memory of sig hail and an absolutely beautiful wall cloud and call it at that. Pictures of the witnessed weather can be found under the related date at www.easterniowastormchaser.com.

 

[Bob Schafer]

Congratulations to all who bagged the amazing tornadoes the last few days! I've had good luck, too, if not as good as some of you.

I'll have to keep this short, as yesterday's bust in SE NE and lack of motel rooms in Columbus resulted in me eventually bedding down in... OMAHA. Now that today's target has shifted from IA to W KS (SHEESH!!) I gotta get the heck out of here and on the road... pronto.

Anyway, yes, I do have a report. Caught tornadoes around Dighton KS Friday. Witnessed and filmed an incredible large wc that I was positive was going to result in a long-track wedge, and it did tornado, but then soon lifted. At one point the whole big wc was wrapped in rain curtains rotating at tornadic speeds. I have posted the vid here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3IunFY8FF4

What I haven't yet posted is what happened prior to that. I had been parked on a county road along with a cute, young sheriff's deputy named Shawna. She was quite apprehensive and nervously informed me that this was her first spotting duty. As the wall cloud was violently rotating, sucking up scud, and wrapping a condensation inflow jet into it for at least a mile on its periphery about 10 feet above the ground, Shawna asked me "Is that something I should be concerned about?"

After telling her we were DEFINITELY about to get a large tornado, she got in her car and radioed her supervisor.

Then, as I'm filming on a tripod about 3 feet in front of her car, she hits the siren. OMG. No constipation issues for that day. She came back up to me, and, with siren still blazing and yelling in my ear from a distance of 2 inches so I could hear, she apologized, saying her supervisor told her she had to do that. It was one of the funniest things I've ever experienced chasing. It's all on film, but I haven't watched it yet. Hope the vidcam's microphone didn't explode.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Saw a few rain obscured tornadoes so I won't bother putting up any video of those for now since they'll be nothing new to this thread.

We did go for one last hurrah on the supercell that formed on the southern flank of the beast that everyone else chased. We got positioned perfectly in the hook and had several funnel clouds attempt to drop to the ground to our east.

We were blasted by RFD winds that easily peaked 90-100 mph, while trees literally broke in half and were uprooted right next to the car. Video is pretty intense. This event put the day from mediocre to pretty good even though we missed the wedgefest.

 

[Greg Stumpf]

SHORT: Followed supercell from NE TX PH to Greensburg. One short tornado observed just NE of Greensburg near sunset. Chased nocturnal supercell near Cunningham KS. Hardly saw any other chasers on our storms.

LONG: We (Steve Hodanish, Kevin Scharfenberg, myself) initially targeted the dryline storm development in the NE TX PH and E OK PH (Laverne) due to evidence of slight dryline wave in the satellite data and 18Z RUC prog, with prospects of storms moving into an extremely favorable environment for tornadic supercells (SW-SC KS). We ended up only chasing one storm during daylight, which began in Lipscomb County TX. We watched this nascent supercell from a location just west of Gate OK come cruising at us at a fairly good clip. We then repositioned to just west of Englewood KS, where we saw several new cells go up on its flank and merge into the main core. Here we met Gene Rhoden, who was trying to look official in his TSA uniform. During this time, we saw several lazily rotating lowerings in the right spot, but nothing pre-tornadic. We then repositioned again to about 3 miles east of the 283/160 junction (west of Ashland) trying to stay ahead of the storm, downstream in the path of the low-level mesocyclone. By this time, it really began to take shape, with a large wall cloud, occasional tail clouds, a visual DRC and wrapping rain curtains, matching the nice hook we were seeing on radar. But, no tornado.

At this point, road options became less favorable, so we bolted east to Hwy 34, and decided to remain upstream of the storm. In the meantime, radar showed continued evolution with fairly obvious tornado signatures. But from our new positions, haze grew thicker, contrast declined, and we may have seen a few possible "funnel 50% of the way down" tornadoes. Also, a pretty decent left-split from the Harper County OK storm became ingested into our storm. Apparently, it made a few brief tornadoes which were not visible as we repositioned to stay ahead of the fast-moving storm.

Finally, through a series of dirt roads, we repositioned to just west of Greensburg while the storm started to cycle. From our vantage, partially inside the forward flank core, we could not see the possible large tornado south of Mullinville, but we could make out the location of the new jumping meso, now SW of G'burg. We drove east through town, sirens blaring, with many residents fleeing east in their cars (who could blame them!), and set up a few miles east of town, just west of a large road block. We watched the new meso pass over town with a large lowering, but no obvious tornado. Once it moved a mile or two NE of G'burg, we observed a diffuse tornado, with occasional condensation filaments. But then the storm moved into the lower contrast murk to the N. The RFD surged a bit, and looked like it might cycle again (this time, over the line of cars at the roadblock!). It was starting to get dark, but we decided that given storm motions, it was no longer something to go after.

We instead gassed up in Pratt and moved east to Calista to watch the next supercell approach. We were being fed super-res images of the storm by Patrick Marsh and once the forward flank hail core moved off of US 54, we moved back west into the notch to just east of Cunningham to see if we could catch a large nocturnal tornado. As it crossed US 54, we saw two waves of power outages in town (must have been two electric grids), but no real evidence of the tornado (Kevin thought he saw a power flash at the time of one of the waves). While the tornado was passing to our west, the inflow winds picked up rather nicely. We did have one regret tonight - after hearing reports of a semi overturned by the tornado and two fatalities in a car, we wondered if they were any of the vehicles that passed us going west into the storm. Perhaps this might have been a good reason to have ... lightbars (!) ... to warn oncoming traffic of the tornado.

 

[Rick Schmidt]

video stills from Friday

Here are a few quick video stills from Friday's tornadoes--the first 2 just east of Ransom on K-4, and the other 2 are a few miles SW of Ellis. ---Rick Schmidt

 

[Marko Korosec]

We had a great day and saw 3 tornadoes on this day, chased down along the dryline west of Ness city. We first got a massive rotating monster with few brief touchdowns near Dighton, KS and then got a beautiful tornado N of Dighton (NW of Beeler) on the same supercell with new meso cycle. A brief touchdown was also observed nearby while we were driving from first to second tornado east of Dighton. Also got some nice footage from near Ness City of that HP sup where also massive chaser convergence and DOV crew was there.

Unfortunatelly we didn't chased northern storms along I70 as a long 1000km drive back to Dallas was expected later, we had flight in the morning next day. Additional miles would be just pain in the a$$ if we'd have ended too much north of the interstate. Now as I see images, makes me envy... but still, an amazing day with great stuctures and few tubes, great end of our chase trip.

And for the end, we had a frustrating driving back south, as we did not have radar with us, only NOAA radio was screaming all the time... I wanted to come near Greensburg as there was a big storm tornado on it, we came after it as it was having large tornado on the ground near Trousdale (source: from NOAA info), inflow winds into that storm north of road 400/54 were insane, easily over 60mph as it was hard to drive. But meanwhile two tornadic sups were south of us, over Protection and another just west of Medicine Lodge. Thankfully we got wifi in Pratt and were able to jump south just between both storms and continued towards DFW.

 

[Doug Raflik]

Again, like my 5-22 post, not going to go into details, just going to share pictures...

Went south on castle rock road just south of Quintar. This is the first tornado I saw in that area, around 4:30 pm.

hour or so later, still on castle rock road south of Quintar, the wedge comes up over a hill..

http://www.wxnut.net/5-23-08_7.jpg

http://www.wxnut.net/5-23-08_8.jpg

These next pics were taken from the interstate at mm 106

http://www.wxnut.net/5-23-08_13.jpg

http://www.wxnut.net/5-23-08_14.jpg

http://www.wxnut.net/5-23-08_15.jpg

Doug Raflik
[email protected]

 

[David Hoadley]

5/23/08 REPORTS: KS/NE/CO/OK/TX

My Virginia chase friend, Greg Guise, and I began our chase NW of Oakely, then turned back east to WaKeeney and down US283, drawn south by repeated tornado warnings near Dighton. We drove west on Hwy 4 to watch that storm, but from our vantage the base was mostly obscured by wrapping rain. However, a new base developed east of there, and we did tape a thick, steeply-angled, rope tornado north of Pendennis. Despite multiple reports north of town, I believe there was just one. That cell apparently went on north to produce tornadoes near Quinter. However, when we finished with the Pendennis storm, it was too late to return north and catch it on the Interstate.

 

[Jerry Funfsinn]

Short- Saw the first tornado as I approached south of Quinter and lost it in low contrast. As I drove north of Quinter I saw the wide circulation with spin ups around the outer edge. Stupid a** me attempts to drive around downed power lines and gets stuck in the mud. Long story short, did not wait to see if next storm down the line will miss me as I can see the couplet on radar. Abandoned vehicle with the lightest camera I can run with (small HI-8). Watch as wedge emerges from the precip and manage to flag down locals surveying the damage from the first tornado.The previous days tornado speed fresh on my mind we make a run for the basement of a damaged house up the road. Joined about a dozen other Kansans in the basement as a new tornado developed east of the old one.

Video plays out like a farmer Bob home video but sh*t happens.
Quinter tornado video

 

[Tony Laubach]

COMPLETE MAY 23, 2008 STORM CHASE LOG HERE

That photo will end up on my wall very quick! Bagged 7 tornadoes in western Kansas to add to the 5 from the previous day. Out of the 7 total tornadoes, 5 were on the first storm to narrowly miss Quinter including the one above which was the first that gave birth to a satellite, our second. The third was the low contrast cone that several chasers had an excellent view of. The forth was a small little spin up birthed from an area of circulation above us as we made our way north along of Castle Rock Road north of the town. The last one in this bunch was the giant wedge we came into view as we approached the RFD ravaged area 2 miles north of town. The 6th tornado was the second storm that produced the wedge that crossed I-70 west of Quniter about an hour or so later, then the last illuminated by a power flash over Ellis.

The story of the day for me was my wrong turn in Quinter where I followed the state highway northeast into town as opposed to following Castle Rock Road straight north. That was likely the event that saved me from being raped by the RFD that knocked power poles and lines on chasers, blew out windows, and pushed others into the ditches. I saw the satellite tornado as I proceeded northwest before the RFD swing around and blocked my view. Once we got north, I pulled into view of the massive wedge and the mess left behind by the RFD. Took an hour to finally get the vehicles mobile again. Saw the last two tornadoes after that.

Another incredible day that I personally am happy worked out the way it did. Fortunately everyone was okay along that road, but it certainly could've been much worse. I do have to call out an idiot tour group van that pulled in front of me as I was driving up the mud-covered road and nearly sent me swerving into the ditch to avoid them (basically they ran a stop sign and turned in front of me heading south). I have video that will be posted soon of that.

COMPLETE MAY 23, 2008 STORM CHASE LOG HERE