2012-03-28 REPORTS: KS/NE

[Austin Marti]

Jordan Hartley and myself initially targeted Herington, KS, and we waited just east of there as we debated on whether to go after the cell south of Topeka or not. Well, we decided to wait it out and see what would happen for us, and what do you know, a tower showed up from nowhere right on top of us! We were right on the south edge of it.

We ended up shooting down south-southeast, hitting up the two southerly neighboring storms that were choking off our initial north cell. We ended up on the tornado-warned cell near Hamilton, KS as the night set in. Pretty sure we saw a funnel or two while we watched there.

Sorry for my lack of technical terms, I'm very much a beginner when it comes to meteorology, but I'm learning! Jordan was a great help on this trip and I learned a lot from him.


EDIT:
"video" progression of funnel shot 3 miles east of Hamilton, KS, pointing east
Seven (13-second exposure) stills, captured between 8:49:55 PM - 8:51:37 PM:

Right-click here to download 12.7 MB .mp4

Watch video >


EDIT -- Some newly edited photos:


Funnel (s?)

Funnel(s?) (cropped)

http://500px.com/photo/6197095

Here are a couple shots from tonight (will post more in the coming days / week):


http://500px.com/photo/6150178

This was shot after dark, a few miles east of Hamilton, KS.

http://500px.com/photo/6148152

 

[Cody Taylor]

This was taken on the tornado warned cell just south of Madison, Kansas

 

[Doug Drace]

At first a very frustrating chase for us, as our original Target near McPherson, KS turned out to be too far SW of where storms initially fired. After making a rapid adjustment to the NE where towers were beginning to billow along the WF, we got on the storm SW of Topeka, watched it begin to look promising for a while, only to get right under it 15 mi SW of Topeka and watch it skinny up and basically crap out. We headed back south to the storm moving into the Scrantin area, only to be faced with more dissapointment as it appeared rather elevated. However it rapidly intensified and began sucking some scud into the updraft base, produced copious amounts of dime size hail, which trasitioned to golfballs over the span of a few minutes, then developed an elevated wallcloud structure and got Tornado Warned. Saw some weak rotation at best, then watched that storm rapidly fizzel. Our last play was on the storm moving toward Americus to our WSW, which made up for the entire lack luster experience to that point. We timed it perfectly, just as we positioned ourselves approximately 1 mi east of it, just north of Americus, the mesocyclone really got its act together and became a menacing striated beast with a well developed large blocky wallcloud. The storm was incredible...moving 5 mph to the east, saw a cone shaped tornado embedded in the wrapping rain, then basically just sat there and let the monsterous meso slowly traverse the landscape just a 1/2 mi or less to the north of us for over a half an hour. The only thing that could have made this day better would have been to witness this storm during daylight hours...but our night mode caught some pretty good images of the entire meso, so all in all, a very successful end to a long days chase! Chase partners where Jeremy Milligan and Chance Pruitt...also teamed up with Brandon Sampson from HolyTornado!

The images are video grabs...havent had time to go through everything yet...but these initially seemed worthy of posting....

Developing Tornado to the left side of the wallcloud just behind and over the tree tops:

Monster Mesocyclone as it was producing a Rain Wrapped Tornado @ 8:35pm:

 

[Cody Taylor]

My initial target area was Emporia, Ks. When we arrived in Emporia, the storm southeast of Topeka was developing so we decided to go after it as it was only moving around 20mph. We arrived on the storm just as it went tornado warned. We observed the rotating wall cloud and took some photos. We decided to leave this storm and go after the cells that were firing to the south and west of our location. We drove south on 75 to intercept the storm that had fired in the butler/greenwood country area. We arrived on this storm right is it became tornado warned. This thing was basically sitting in one spot as it was only moving 10 mph. We got in position just south of the storm and took some photos. Sorry for the bad quality, as i took these stills from my video camera.

 

[Adam Lucio]

Our initial target did not pan out either, but we ended up on the same tornadic beast everyone else did noting lots of large hail and some weak rotation. Once the storm ramped up with the LLJ kicking in afterdark we had a somewhat distant view, and I can't say we for sure saw the potential tornado, just some suspicious "dark areas" in that huge rain shaft.

Full log with with and structure video: http://www.aerostorms.com/large-hail-and-supercell-near-americus-kansas-march-28-2012/

 

[Austin Marti]

Updated my original post on this thread with a video of funnel progression and a couple more stills. Just wanted to post again for the sake of notifying anyone who's interested.