2008-06-15 REPORTS: TX/KS/MO/IL

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Not the day I was hoping for, but we still saw some good things. Anyway we intercepted the storm in Jackson county, KS. It had a nice shelf cloud and good lightning. We were able to get 8 lightning pics out of about 30 we took. Here are a few below. I will post a video of the lightning and shelf when we get back home.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEI7LFzXfWg

 

[Danny Neal]

Add IL please.

Well after going to bed at 430 AM this morning, I was not-so-pleasantly awoken at 650 AM by warnings for a small Bow echo heading my way.

An hour later it hit, just shot out of my backyard. Had a 50 mph gust, but sustained winds of 30-40 mph for about 5 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTjTBFnriC8

Video here.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Not sure how it managed with all the moisture in the ground, but we just got quite the dusty haboob here in eastern Illinois. Winds were sustained around 50-60 mph blowing dust around for a good 15 minutes.

Wasn't bothering chasing so I had to run out the door when I saw the wall of dust coming out my window, so I didn't get to set up my shots as well as I'd have liked to.

 

[Jerry Funfsinn]

I did not go very far to capture the nice shelf cloud and subsequent high wind storm this morning. It rolled through Bureau County IL around 7am with my morning coffee.

Later in the afternoon a repeat performance. This time without the view but some nasty hail.

I'm kind of liking the local chasing lately.

 

[John Gnuechtel]

Didn't get any cool shelf clouds, but I did go out to capture some time lapse of the action that rolled through Urbana around 5PM local time. Probably wasn't all that far from Andrew when I shot it.

 

[John Farley]

I saw stuff along I-72 from west of Niantic, IL into the west side of Decatur similar to what Andrew and John saw around Urbana. Basically I was trying to catch up with the storm from behind, with the haboob ahead and to my right and the hail core ahead and to my left. Here are a couple pics from I-72 just west of Niantic, looking SE:

A couple minutes before these photos, the updraft pulled up some of the dust and it went about halfway up. I caught up at the west edge of Decatur, but was running on fumes, so had to stop for gas. By the time I was done with that, the storm was hopelessly ahead of me, so I decided to drop south on 51 hoping to get back ahead of the storms on the way home. Soon I saw a nice-looking storm exploding ahead of me, and it went SVR-warned and dropped up to quarter-sized hail in the Centralia, IL area. But by the time I caught up, the once-impressive updraft had dwindled down to this:

It did still give me a few CGs and this rainbow:

 

[edward oneal]

6/15/08 Kansas

Chased cell moving south out of Ness CO. into Hodgeman and Ford Co KS. Storm was LP most of its life until it merged with a cell moving out of Gray CO. over Dodge City. Was also high based with hail to golf ball size, did have very strong rotation NW of Jetmore with RDF cut and a nub funnel. Low level moisture was lacking so could not produce. After the merger over Dodge City became heavy rain producer with some big hail south of Dodge to half dollar size. First picture is of Nub funnel, second the high base and third approaching the storm.

 

[Joe Stuart]

Here is a short summary of today's local chase just east of Leavenworth, Kansas: I got LUCKY! LoL ,I headed east out of Leavenworth as this cell was approaching Mclouth, Kansas. I heard reports of golf ball size hail at Fort Leavenworth on the scanner, as well as a call from my wife(manning gr3), so I shot north toward Weston to get out of the hail and got the pics below. I thought the structure of this storm was pretty decent.

Just wish I had a better camera.

 

[Mike Umscheid]

I left DDC for this chase at 4:45pm, and I decided to just head south down 283 to get close to Beaver County, OK which is where I thought (one of) the best storm would develop given the enhanced convergence right near there. It took awhile for a supercell to be born out of the initial junkus, but it finally got crankin' to my west across southern Beaver County. Man there was a lot of dust activity beneath this storm updraft...mainly the southern edge. Just too much rear flank downdraft dominance, despite the very impressive inflow where I was at east and southeast of the storm updraft to the south of Booker. The structure was quite good, which is what one would expect for a high-based, High Plains supercell. I saw one legit small, dusty (and quite brief!) vortex develop to my distant west-northwest when I was east of Booker a few miles sometime between 6:50 and 6:55pm. I broke off this storm at around 7:30 or so, as the storm was beginning to show signs of weakening. The drive back home was fantastic -- especially across Meade County, KS. Wow. A right-moving supercell was on a collision course with a left-moving small supercell very near Dodge City. The backside of this action was brilliant to the distant northeast. Rock-hard convection at sunset provided amazing palette of warm hues -- amidst a pristine blue sky. I stopped several times on the drive through Meade County to photograph before finally making it back home around 10:15pm or so.

I uploaded 7 images from this chase. See my blog post!

 

[Steve Miller TX]

Festival Of Vortices

I was treated to quite a spectacle yesterday around Perryton/Booker/Balko along the TX/OK PH border. I lost count of the number of vortices or spinny-things. ;-) For the most part, they were moderate to strong gustnadoes.

Some of the spinups were instantly "tubular" and extended up towards the agitated and slowly rotating cloud base. Sometimes, the rotation at cloud base was moderate. I'm calling those landspouts..three at least. Others were "what the heck is that" type of spinups which I call "hybrids". At one point when the notch of the hook started enclosing around me and I was fleeing south away from it's jaws, two intense, compact vortices quickly spun up in a field next me, snaked and danced around each other. I hastened my retreat as I watched the action in my mirror.

Lots of good streaming video when I had a connection. The NWS-AMA was watching it a good deal of the time which helped facilitate my reports to them of the storm's behavior and the many vortices popping up.

And a note to Mike: Sorry about cutting off our call abruptly, but the NWS-AMA was on the other end. Things got pretty hectic and crazy after that.

One of the pictures from my full chase account:

 

[Eric Flescher]

6/15 shelf cloud

I was watching the weather. My son was going to come in from Lawrence, KS some 40 minutes away for father's day. However the weather worsened around Johnson County and Lawrence so I did not want him to head out. Instead I chased out of Olathe and West on 10 into Lawrence to chase and maybe meet him somewhere for lunch in Lawrence.

On the way around 1:00, this massive shelf cloud suddenly appreared in the West and stretched all the way across highway 10 around to the North. I took some photos before it literally ragged out and disappeared into a shelf-mess.

Here is the panaorama I pieced together.

After that we went to Jin Shan japenese- chinese buffet just East of Lawence on 10. All you eat sushi, fish, shelfish, roasted duck and chicken and much more . Consistently good, reasonable and relatively cheap indeed. If you nearby and hankering for Japenese/ Chinese/ Sushi check it out.

Also hope you all a good father's day for those of you who are fathers!

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Sunday was a pretty good chase day for me around home here in Michigan. I ended up intercepting a cell showing 2.5" hail south of Battle Creek, MI. The storm was definitely pulsing, and I first got to it on a down pulse. I got around to the back side of it, however, and saw a pretty defined wall cloud and some rotation. As I got closer, the rotation got much more defined. A funnel ended up dropping but nothing ever touched down. The best part was that I was streaming and IWX was watching. Instant ground truth for them.

Here is my video from Sunday. First part is sped up, the second part in real time.

 

[Colin Davis]

Not sure if this even counts as a chase, to be honest. But I did travel, like, 50 miles. Basically, went west of town and intercepted the line on a back country road. I placed myself at the apex of the bow...noticed some brief rotation in a lowered area along the leading edge to my northwest, so headed north a few miles to try and remain dry. That eventually crapped out, and I let myself get "cored," even though that, too, was crap.

No luck for the cursed, I suppose. Storm killing streak continues.

 

[Kurt Hulst]

MI Dusk Storms

Full report http://midwestchasers.com/blog2

Heres a few shots:

 

[Jason Harris]

Think we should add MI to the reports thread here since Ben, Kurt, and I all have some reports. The first three pics here seem to be of that same storm Ben was on (first two pics have a wall cloud--and a curved stiation in second pic indicating rotation of storm, though I saw no rotation with the wall cloud maybe if I'd been there earlier and closer . . . and the third one has the shelf as it got more linear), which I took pictures of from Allen, MI--thanks to updates on radar and roads by cell phone communication with Kurt Hulst and Mike Kovalchick. The last pic was from a separate and weaker storm right along the IN border and seems like an example of the so-called "pedestal cloud." Pics were from disposable camera.

 

[Sean Mullen]

A little late to the party......

About 7PM I was heading south on 35 toward Wichita, looking forward to checking into my motel in time to get a decent dinner for the first time in a few days, when I saw towers going up in the direction of DDC. I didn't think they would go tornadic, so I resolved to continue on to check-in and a nice steak.
Then it occurred to me:
Be where you are. Where are you?
"I'm in Kansas."
What are you doing there?
"Chasing storms."
So chase the storms!!!!
"Duh....."

I checked into my motel, dumped some stuff, and headed south on 35. I headed west on 160, went through Wellington, and pulled off on south Drury Rd a little bit west of Wellington. I turned around once I was well off of 160, and pulled over facing north. Time was about 8:10PM; the lightning getting started about then. I took several pictures and checked for proper exposure, then set the camera on a window clamp, pointed it west, and just started shooting. For the next 20-25 minutes I just clicked the shutter, waited about 5 seconds for it to close, and clicked it again. I knew if I stopped to look at a picture( I'm told this is called "chimping") I would miss a picture. After things died down I returned to Wichita, just arriving as the storm hit.
I enclose one thumbnail; more pictures at the link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/47087278@N03/?saved=1

Sean