2013-05-18 REPORTS: TX/OK/KS/NE

[Hannah.Taylor]

In preparation for Sunday 5-19-2013's chase, I decided to play Central KS solo. I departed Denver at approximately 8:15 Mountain Time, and made way to Colby, KS.
I saw this Phased Array Radar Truck while eating my sandwhich

After topping off my fuel, grabbing a bite to eat and checking radar, forecasts and seeing where the radical number of chasers were at and were headed, I head east to Wakeeney on I-70. As I progressed eastward I saw towers going up in the direction of Ness City.

At Wakeeney I dove south to Hwy 4 and cut east to Hwy 147 where I sat and patiently observed the storm progress it's way towards me.

It was the only play in the area at the time and for 3 1/2 beautiful hours I watched this monster grow through several stages of storm development. It spit out gorgeous mammatus, numerous mesos and wall clouds. From my vantage point I never did see hail or any tornadoes, although it was reported (99.5 FM in Ellis County, KS) to have had tennis ball size hail and put down a confirmed tornado.

Despite the lack of visual on a tornado, I rather enjoyed this storm, it was a beauty!

I was amazed at the amount of updraft it was pulling into the storm as evidenced by this photo (note the dust being sucked into the front of the storm)

I followed this storm up to Hays, but I didn't want to go further north, so instead I attempted to get to Great Bend to intercept a storm coming out of Larned, KS that had a chaser confirmed tornado on the ground, but I was too late. Got a 2nd chase though when a 2nd tornado formed and was on 56W to intercept and according to my P3yckl radar it should have been breathing right down neck but I didn't see any funnels or any tornado.


Pulled over and got some fun lighting and sunset shots and then headed south to OKC in preparation for Sunday's chase. I'll be chasing with Marcus Diaz, James Siler and Brady Kendrick!

Great Bend at 70th Ave & 56W around 8:40 pm central time

While this was a FUN and AMAZING day for me, and my first serious chase in over 2 years, I am notably disappointed that I didn't get a tornado on this day and it was plenty disheartening to see most of my friends out chasing bagged tornadoes. But I am to remain optimistic that 5-19-2013 will yield results in the form of a tornado!

 

[edward oneal]

Did Not have to travel far from home to have a great day, followed the first towers North and waited for them to get going near Ransom. this storm showed signs of putting down a tornado but soon got rain wrapped so left it and headed South to just East of Rozel and that is where the show started. Pictures can be found on my Facebook page here is a link.https://www.facebook.com/EdwardONealSWStormChasing

 

[JeffGonzales]

Yesterday we chased in west Kansas. We got one of the first sereve storms by Ness City. We stuck with the storm while it became tornado warned. We witnessed an amazing wall cloud with storm then the area of rotation become rain wrapped & the storm became an HP mess. The tornado warning stayed with it, but we noticed the storm to the south was isolated and looking good and entering good conditions. It was hard to leave the tornado warning but the gamble payed off with 3 tornadoes near Rozel & Sanford, KS.

Watch video >

 

[Bill Hark]

Saturday was an epic fail. I started in Russell, Kansas and shifted to Oakley to wait for initiation. I had two targets, one in the Oakley area and another in the Oklahoma panhandle based on precip models. I really liked the higher instability to the south. Passing on a developing cu field west of Scott City, I headed south Garden City and then east through Dodge City to the massive chaser convergence in Greensburg. At that point, the dryline was starting to fire just to the west and there were more intense storms near Hays. There was a more isolated cell near Slapout that I expected to move northeast into better air. As I left Greensburg, one of the storms just to the northwest was becoming slightly more dominant and well defined visually. As it was part of a small line and moving away, I decided to go for the "Tail-End Charlie." I was on the southern storm just west of Protection and it was a big outflowish mess. I stayed with it but nothing significant happened. Meanwhile, that interesting storm to the northwest of Greensburg became the multiple tornado producer through Sanford and Rozel. I drove east on 64 in northern Oklahoma after the chase and encountered brownout conditions and 60 mph winds that caused power flashes. At times, I had to stop due to the darkness and dust. Congratulations to those who picked the right storms. I am currently "licking my wounds." and looking at data for today's expected weather.

Bill

 

[Zack Hargrove]

Wow, what a day. We watched the Rozel storm for its whole life. Our target was Greensburg and we elected to go just north of town to wait in a field as to avoid some of the chaser convergence. We watched the storm of the day as just a little puffing cumulus cloud. It tried numerous times to break the cap and it failed. We almost made a terrible decision to sell out for the northern storm and high tail it north, but decided instead to stick with our target. There was another little supercell that merged with our storm and seem to enhance it, because right after the merger, the Kinsley-Rozel storm absolutely turned into a beast in basically one radar scan. We saw the whole life cycle of 4 tornadoes. The video I'm posting only shows 3 of the 4. Now we are in Wichita read for stuff to fire today.

Watch video >

 

[JamesCaruso]

Like Bill, I would call Saturday an epic fail. We had been sitting in Spearville, just east of DDC, when towers started to bubble on the dryline and we committed to the first/northern storm. We foolishly stayed with it the entire time; barely considered going after the southern one, thinking we would lose too much time by the time we got there. When we first heard the tornado reports in Pawnee County, we thought we had missed something in the HP mess but later realized that those were on the southern storm, which appears to have passed through the same area later. I do think we missed at least one confirmed tornado in the northern storm (also noted in Hannah's post) but can't imagine the visuals were that great on it.

Bill, it sounds like your storm was even further south? I was confused when you mentioned the "northern" storm being better, but I assume you meant northern from your perspective, not the northernmost storm that I was on...

I will attribute some of it to being the first chase since last year's chasecation... Need to work the rust off...

Like an athlete that has a bad game, time to shake it off and focus only on the day ahead...

 

[Sean Ramsey]

I also chose to target Greensburg, arriving in town around 1:30pm and watching the towers go up. And I waited, and waited some more. The storm near Ness City was blowing up on radar, eventually going tornado warned and there was development to the south around the Oklahoma Panhandle, and I was in the middle watching small storms try to develop just to die off as quickly as they formed. I thought about going north, but figured I was an hour away and by the time I got to Ness City the storm would be that much further north. I thought about going south because I was afraid of busting, but nothing to the south was interesting enough to pull me away from where I was. I eventually moved north to Kinsley and waited there for about an hour, at the very least the storms that were developing were basically training through the area so I figured if something was to stick it would come through here. Luckily, my patience and discipline paid off as one of the storms did get its act together and had some rotation in it. It wasn't severe warned yet, but it looked like it had potential. Ultimately, it ended up being the big show of the day and a big payoff for a day I was almost to the point of getting irritated about because the cap wouldn't let loose. Here are a few shots of many. Getting ready for today's action!

 

[Winston Wells]

I too spent much of the afternoon waiting in Greensburg (with very, very slow Verizon data). I kept an eye on three sets of storms firing off the dryline to the west: (1) the early and furthest north cell near Hays, (2) the middle cell, which as Bill Hark notes above was just northwest of Greensburg and which went on to produce the photogenic tornadoes near Rozel and Sanford, and (3) the messy Slapout/Buffalo, OK cluster off to my southwest.

I also chose poorly and headed south on US 183 to incept the Slapout/Buffalo cluster near Coldwater. I unfortunately contributed to the convergence at the intersection of US 160 and US 183 just south of Coldwater, where I took the following photo. The view is to the west.

I then headed east on US 160 towards Medicine Lodge, stopping periodically at what few turnoffs existed to watch as this cluster transitioned into a long bow. I took the following two structure shots in eastern Comanche county, about halfway between Coldwater and Medicine Lodge. The view in the first picture is to the southwest. The second picture looks north.

 

[Michael Gavan]

My most successful chase to date. Truly made up for 2012 and early 2013!

Initial target of the day was Buffalo, OK. My final target area today was Greensburg, KS. Staged just north of town while a few lazy CU's rolled in from the SW.

One storm began to slowly get its act together and move into the direction of Kinsley, KS. Took all the patience I had to avoid repositioning for a tornado warned HP supercell to the North.

Storm merged with a new updraft approaching from the south. During the merger, the LLJ began screaming inward while the storm produced a healthy RFD. Tornado 1 dropped very quickly producing a massive stove pipe. We were about 7 miles from this one. Lifted maybe 10-15 minutes later.

Tornado 2 dropped close to where #1 stopped, but only minutes later.

Tornado 3 dropped just east of Rozel, after a very quick hand off from #2. Cone/Elephant Trunk. Unfortunately I couldn't reposition to a more photogenic spot due to a KHP cordon.

Tornado 4 dropped just west of the Cone, apparently a occluding version of Tornado #3. Needle/Rope.

Soon after we got double-rainbow shots with anvil crawlers.

After sunset, a powerful heat burst arrived, driving temps briefly into the low to mid 90s. A rush of dry 60 degree air rushed in. The interaction produced a brief Land-spout tornado only miles (yet more than an hour later) from Tornado #3 and #4. It was too dark to get good video but Mike Phelps was with us as well. He may have gotten a good shot of this onel

What a day!

 

[Skip Talbot]

Caleb Elliott and I chased in a small Cessna. We got on the northern cell that tracked through Hays, KS. Despite the contrast being very poor at altitude it did sport a nice wall cloud and interesting motion for awhile. The reports of rotating wall clouds and EM/LE tornado reports kept us on it instead of diving south toward the cell that actually produced. Unfortunately, I also got massively air sick on this chase. I hurled several times out the window, probably splattering chasers below. A squall line erupted ahead of the supercells and forced us to abort our chase, and may have even kept us from getting on the tornadoes to the south had we been down there since we can't punch any storm cores safely. Here's a tornado warned Hays, KS

 

[Dan Robinson]

I came close to making fatal decisions to leave the storm-of-the-day several times, but stuck with it. Saw the full life cycle of both tornadoes near Rozel. The first tornado was amazing from start to finish. I filmed it for a while before attempting to get closer, but it was out of reach by the time I got to the town of Rozel. I was directly underneath the circulation of the second tornado just before it put down the first debris whirls in the field just north of the road. The second tornado rope-out went on long after the parent updraft had occluded, leaving a rope funnel still on the ground with nothing above or anywhere near it. Afterward, The sun poked through creating a rainbow with anvil crawler lightning at Larned.

More images and a video clip are linked at my blog at:

http://stormhighway.com/blog2013/may1813a1.shtml

 

[Albert Rodriguez]

Left Dallas late and I knew it would be difficult to make to SW Kansas/NW Oklahoma before initiation. On my way to target location on US283 near Magnum,OK towers started going up. At that point I decided to stay and wait for storms to come to me. Of course nothing materialize and I called off the chase around 7:00 p.m. Can someone elaborate why the (SW OK area) storms never ramped up and were quite messy?

 

[Donnie Beasley]

Left Dallas late and I knew it would be difficult to make to SW Kansas/NW Oklahoma before initiation. On my way to target location on US283 near Magnum,OK towers started going up. At that point I decided to stay and wait for storms to come to me. Of course nothing materialize and I called off the chase around 7:00 p.m. Can someone elaborate why the (SW OK area) storms never ramped up and were quite messy?

If I'm not mistaken, I believe the cap was very strong the further south you went which is why most were targeting further north into Central Kansas and up into Nebraska.

 

[John Farley]

I will get around to a full report at some time in the future, but for now will post a couple of my pics of the first Rozel tornado, including one with the same bolt of lightning Dan posted above, but from a different angle. Came within a hair of leaving for the southern storms a couple times, very thankful I didn't! Saw the second tornado also, and an earlier needle funnel from the same storm, but missed the 3rd and 4th tornadoes. Still, one of my best chase days ever!

 

[Zack Cooper]

Originally targeted Woodward, OK. Decided to move to Greensburg, KS later in the afternoon. Saw several small showers attempt to develop and then waited a while. Storms were forming to the North and to the South towards our initial target. Finally a supercell formed and we followed it until it produced several tornadoes.


edit: Can't figure out how to make the pictures actually show on the forums, must be clicked.