2012-05-27: REPORTS: KS/NE/WI

[Bill Hark]

This was a frustrating chase day. I started in Russell, Kansas with Jason Persoff and Robert Balogh. We initially were targeting either areas just west of Russel or possibly a more southern target toward Garden City. Since we had time to watch and wait, we drove to Hays, Kansas and had a leisurely lunch at a very good brewery and restaurant, Gella's Diner & Lb. Brewing Co. They have fast wi-fi, and we watched and waited. Storms were already forming in Nebraska and we expected more isolated storms in Kansas. With some more expected backing of the winds northward, we decided to bag the southern targets and head north toward the Kansas-Nebraska border. There was a line of storms developing in central Nebraska. The line rapidly extended southward. We headed east on the interstate eventually stopping at exit 279 and going south. Highlights at that point included a brief sheer funnel and hail bow. In Minden, we said goodbye to Jason Persoff who had to return to Denver at the end of his chase vacation. Robert and I headed east between the cores in the line of storms. The evening ended in Salina, Kansas.
Not much to show for the day. Image below is of a small shear funnel on the west side of one the storms at 6:21 PM by exit 279 I-80.

http://www.harkphoto.com/052712shearfunnel

Something to note: Because of the difficult forecast, I used Tim Vasquez' forecast consulting service, Chase Hotline, and but then went with my own. His forecast was very different than mine and almost every other chaser. His target was Neligh, Nebraska. Every tornado report from the Plains from that day was very near his target. As usual, Tim's forecast was right on target.
http://www.chasehotline.com/

Bill Hark

 

[Timothy Finn]

I chased with David Hatfield, and Mark McGowen, and we decided to target the Russell area as well. We sat in Russell, KS at the McDonald's using the wifi to watch the storms blow up in far northern NE, and start propagating southward. The first one we got one was just south of Hays KS, about 10 miles or so, and it initially looked good, but noticed a better storm coming up from the south. We got on that one, and found ourselves slightly north of it as we were north of LaCrosse, KS. I went back south to LaCrosse, punching the outer edge of the core, and pulled over in a trucking yard's parking lot just on the north side of town. At this point, it had a small funnel forming, and was showing pretty violent rotation. The circulation moved directly overhead right about the time that ROTATE and the DOW guys passed us by. We went north, tracking the storm, and got hit with a little RFD, but it never produced. As the sun set, this storm turned into a great lightning producer, and was showing mothership appearances from what we could tell from the lightning.

Some of the pictures we got:

Tim

 

[Ben Corby]

A marginally disappointing day overall for me. We met up with Jason Hammer at Smith Center, KS, and also ran into Stan Rose, Warren Peterson (and his storm chasing son) and Dustin Price while there. As cells fired in Nebraska, we decided that instead of playing catch up with those, we'd wait and see if the HRRR verified. Around 5:30-6:00 PM, if my memory hasn't failed me, CI occurred in KS and a line of discrete cells popped up, including one marked with three-inch hail headed, well, right for the park we were at. There was minimal, if any, rotation apparent in these cells. Jason, Warren and I shot up to Red Cloud, NE, but by the time we'd pulled off to plan our next move, the whole system had turned into a non-discrete squall line. Jason and Warren went back down for another play on the line, but squall line chasing isn't really my thing. As my goal was to get my wife, dad (who joined us from Florida for this chase) and dog (who we could find nothing else to do with) home that night--a goal which didn't happen thanks to headlight difficulties and general fatigue--we called it a night and decided to head for I-80.

As we were headed north, one of the cells within the squall line began to show some broad-based rotation, maybe a very weak meso trying to form. Instead of chasing it, though, that cell with its ping-pong hail marker was largely chasing us. We headed further east to Hastings to buy ourselves a little time to get the truck covered--a feat we eventually wound up accomplishing by eating dinner at Sonic.

Once it was clear the cell we were concerned about had weakened and moved away, we decided to get back on I-80 and head out. Spent some time in a torrential downpour as the main line passed over us. Upon clearing the rain, we pulled into a core of pea-sized hail that was coming down at roughly a drizzle pace--nothing spectacular there. We called it a night in Kearney, NE, and returned home yesterday afternoon. Not quite the large hail show I was hoping for.

 

[Paul Townsend]

Add WI to the state list please, MODS

One of those chase days that had potential to be a bust unless you kept on your toes. I decided to play the warm front in the MN/WI area because I saw the same potential for convective initiation in WI as in MN with the aid of the upper level diffluence. I targeted Hinckley, MN as my initial base of operations. After 2 to 3 hours at the Hinckley McDonald's I began to despair over the warmfront possibilities. I did, however, notice some boundaries demarcated by moving thin lines on the Chanhassen radar. One particular boundary that was oriented in a northeast to southwest fashion and moving to the northwest caught my eye. Storm motion this day would be roughly parallel to that boundary so an addition of low level vorticity ingestion could be added if storms moved along the boundary. A while after I first noticed this boundary, a radar return was noted just to the southeast of the boundary's orientation. After watching a few more scans I noticed that more updrafts were also forming to the southwest of the previous updrafts. If these updrafts could pass over the outflow boundaries of previous cells then another source of low level vorticity ingestion would occur. As I made my way across the St. Croix River back into Wisconsin and then south through Siren, multiple cells had formed and were in the various stages of decaying, maturing, or strengthening. After some brief sidetrips, I made my way to the southwestern most updraft. I was situated just to the west of Luck, WI. The trees are horrendous in this area (for storm chasing purposes, of course). As updraft areas became very close, through the trees I could see that beneath the high bases there were tall skinny masses of clouds low to the ground. This would be typical of what I saw this day. The second and third of these that I saw produced the needle funnel/tornado? and the sinewy tornado as captured in the following video:

Watch video >

 

[Marcus Diaz]

After driving up to Salina Saturday and getting a decent hotel, we thought we were going to score big this day. WRONG! We blew the forecast and stuck to southern NE/northern KS near the low. But hey, live and die by your forecast, right? Unfortunately storms went linear in a hurry so nothing had time to get isolated and produce. But, we didn't come out totally empty handed. Here's a little video near Blue Hill, NE while watching a wall cloud come at us.

Watch video >

 

[J Allen]

Was a bit of a beatup this day, moderate risk that just lead to frustration. Targetted around Hays and were left grimacing by the deep mixed layer and left moving tendency early in the piece. We ended up doing alright and getting onto the right movers around Ellis and got some great stuff on sunset, but were ultimately disappointed once again by the poor dewpoints. Not to mention getting beaten up by left moving storms early on, including one that RFDed us with softballs. Full blog post here:
http://www.huntersofthunder.com/2012/06/may-27th-storms-arent-meant-to-spin.html

 

[Marcus Diaz]

Finally got around to getting a screen grab of my video. Not too shabby!

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Another frustrating day in 2012. The forecasts were pretty linear for days in advance and I didn't expect a lot (as usual in 2012). Ended up at the mercy of other chasers as I lost my caliper bolt southwest of Hastings, NE. Thanks to Scott Bennett, Steve Polley, Jesse Risley and others who helped.

Chase recap is posted at http://www.benholcomb.com/Chase-Accounts/20120527

 

[James Gustina]

Coming in way late on this one, just realized there was a thread for it. This was the final day for me out on the Plains. We started out in Omaha and took a leisurely drive to York and waited at the Starbucks. It looked like northern Kansas/far southern Nebraska would be where the most isolated storms were. We met up with Rob Forry in York right as storms went up everywhere. We tried to avoid going after the linear rocket fest that everyone else was on and ended up on a severe warned cluster coming out of northern Kansas with some big hail on it. On the first approach outside of (I think?) Ohiowa, had some gustnadoes and cool gust front features on the leading edge.

Shortly after going through Ohiowa we got cored on a dirt road. Unfortunately a Toyota Camry isn't designed for that so we ended up getting out and back onto an eastbound paved road. Picked up another cell outside of Wilber that was extremely high based and ended up calling the day in Lincoln.

Full Log is here: http://thunderingskies.blogspot.com/2013/01/may-27-2012-chase-log.html