2017-05-27 REPORTS: MO/IL/OK/KS/TX

[Ethan Schisler]

Adding to my report from earlier this week, I wanted to throw in a couple more frame grabs. After viewing the area of rotation to my west, I continued north between highway 63 and 72 east of Edgar Springs, MO and south of Rolla, MO. After some comversation with NWS Springfield. I'm pretty confident this area was a brief tornado for a time as it crossed the highway 3-4 miles ahead of me. You can even denote a faint horizontal vortex at the top of the area of rotation, sorry for the blurriness as I was driving at the time. The second photo is better and shows the area more concentrated, before I lost visual and it dissipated. It appeared to be buried in an area of confirmed 70-80 mph+ (isolated 100 mph per NWS) straight line winds across Phelps County, which I encountered on the back-side of the tornadic circulation. Nothing spectacular versus what I shared the first time, but thought it was worth posting, since its a *likely* tornado or at least tornadic circulation of some sort....


Brief tornadic circulation at ground level with horizontal funnel running E-W at the top of the vortex

View attachment 3037771abd47e18cce1e68cfbc3aebcf.jpg

This was as I rounded the bend heading northbound, I'm not sure if this feature is a tornado or not. It's in the same spot as the condensation/dust in the previous photo.

 

[Paul Knightley]

Late to the party here in reporting!

Started the day in Garden City having busted in SE CO on the 26th whilst others had fun in NW CO and adjacent KS!

Spent a good few hours looking at all the data and wrestling with options - I could see three potential areas of interest: S Cent OK around 6pm in extreme instability; portions of NE OK and SE KS closer to the warm front; and SE CO/NE NM and TX/OK Panhandles, in post-frontal upslope flow beneath reasonable shear.

In some ways, my protracted procrastination (we didn't leave the hotel until around 11am CDT) effectively ruled out the S OK play - TBH I didn't really fancy the big drive into the very soupy air - the notion of it being a busy chase day in OK also played on my mind. I also didn't see a great deal of reason for going east, and I really liked the idea of something photogenic on the High Plains. CAMs suggested SE moving cells should fire of the higher terrain, e.g. Raton Mesa, with all models showing the N to NE flow tending to become more easterly in the late afternoon/evening as a surface low developed in NM.

So we headed WSW to Springfield, CO, for lunch, and waited a while. Storms form near Pueblo, and others over the Raton Mesa and environs. After a time, one or two became better organised as they drifted eastwards, and so we dropped south, past Campo, to Boise City, OK. By now, a severe warned cell was WNW of that place, in NM. We headed west and parked up to watch it. We then stayed ahead of this supercell, zig-zagging down to Stratford, TX, where the leading edge of the core overtook us, briefly, as we headed NE into town - we intended to then drop SE towards Dumas. However, on leaving town the core once again overtook us - but instead of a few half-dollars in the mix, hen-eggs started pelting down, perhaps a shade larger. Needless to say this didn't agree with our vehicle! We got out of it pretty quickly, but sustained some damage - got an SN report in, which made it into the storm reports for the day. We headed to AMA for the night, stopping briefly south of Dumas to try to get some dusk shots of twin supercells to the NW and NE, but a low-level outflow boundary, marked by some low clouds, soon moved over abd blocked the view.

We arrived in AMA about 10 mins ahead of the now well-detached OFB, which passed over with pretty decent gusts (40-50mph) and some blowing dust.

This ended up being the best chase day of our ~2 week chasecation, and I'm very happy we played the more marginal risk area, as it really delivered (this time!).

Supercell west of Boise City, OK, looking to the west.




Supercell seen to the west, north of Felt, OK. Really love this view with the hail shaft!



Supercell somewhere west of Stratford, TX.