2018-05-18 REPORTS: CO/KS/OK/TX

[Quincy Vagell]

I started the day in Dodge City to keep an array of options available, but I made a decision fairly early on in the day to head south toward the panhandles. Although it was a bit of a conditional play, I favored the moist axis across the eastern portion of the panhandles and how deep layer shear vectors were perpendicular to the dryline. Around midday, I highlighted the fact that one could argue for five different chase targets. I don't think Southwest Texas performed, otherwise all of the other targets had some photogenic storms.

I wandered toward Canadian, TX and I would end up finding myself staying in that general area for the next few hours. A cell initiated northwest of Canadian and began to quickly organize.

It wasn't long before the storm did another left-right split, similar to what I encountered on the 17th. The southern/right turning cell seemed the most dominant, so I stayed with it. As it drifted northeast, although its updraft was relatively small, it began to take on a striated appearance as there was clearly substantial mid-level rotation.

Seemingly out of nowhere, the storm got tornado-warned. My visual was of a messy base that was elevated far from the surface. Radar velocity scans looked impressive, but they were more indicative of rotation aloft, which was responsible for isolated very large hail.

Storms began to merge and I decided to loop around to the west and then the south to get in position to watch the tail-end cell. For a time, it showed some signs of becoming a mature supercell, but that didn't last long, as it gradually weakened into the late afternoon/early evening hours. While I was working on catching up with the storm, I sloshed down an increasingly washed out dirt road, encountered some hail and finally had to bail out. The timing worked out, as I got to witness a double rainbow before ultimately turning around.


The chase capped off with mammatus, once again, which only seemed fitting.

This wraps up a mini 3-day chase tour that brought me to the panhandles each day. I think I've only had one Oklahoma panhandle chase prior to this year, but I found myself in that general vicinity for three days in a row. What was nice about Friday was that I avoided the masses up in Kansas and did not see one chaser on the road at all, so I largely had the panhandle storms to myself.

Even though this year has been a struggle, finding photo opportunities has been fairly easy. I look back to 2014 as a rough chase year, but as hard as it's been in 2018, few chases have resulted in complete frustration and no photos like that year.

 

[JeremyS]

My chase partner and I decided to pull the trigger on this day despite the marginal tornado chances. It had been over 2 weeks since we had chased so we went out knowing nothing better was on the horizon.
Left Omaha at 930 and decided on a target of Scott City, KS making it there about 4p. We went north of town and waited for initiation in the area. Had lots of tcu and a few blips show up on radar to our north and northeast a bit, but they'd just fall apart after a bit.
Finally one of the towers seemed to be holding together as it drifted towards Gove City to our northeast. We decided to take the back roads and head towards it. While making our way northeast, we accidentally found Monument Rock. I had heard about and seen a few chaser pics from there at some point in the last year I believe. Our storm we were trailing behind wasn't really getting any better looking on radar so we decided to stop and take some pics there.
We were there probably 20 minutes or so and initiation began to our west now too. Seeing the storm near Gove City not doing much and the storm to our west growing rapidly, we decided to go with the closest and easiest to get to storm to our west.
This storm was very slowly drifting north as we sat along Hwy 83 watching it. It eventually had a severe warning with it and even a bit of rotation showed up on radar and about that time a nice base showed up that looked slightly "interesting for a while. We dropped south to get a better view as the rain/hail was kind of blocking our view. About this time a storm moved in from the south and basically killed our storm.
Meanwhile our original storm that we were going after when we found Monument Rock was tornado warned and had baseball sized hail reported with it near Collyer/Quinter. Of course!
Again storm motions were slow so we figured we could still make a run at that storm or go after a new storm that caught our eye to our north northwest near Colby. We decided for the second storm and made good time getting to it about 840p and about 5 minutes before a tornado warning was issued. It was a nice looking storm but nothing visually looked imminent for producing a tornado and sure enough the tornado warning was dropped a bit later.
Now that it was dark we started the long drive home. Unfortunately for us we had heavy rain and storms that continually developed along the warm front as if they were following us. Just when it looked like we were going to get out in front of the storms, new ones would form or move in from the south. This led to us driving in almost continuous heavy rain for about 3 hours straight so we had to keep our speeds down to about 45-50 mph most of the time finally arriving home about 430 in the morning.
Glad we went out as any chase is better than a day at work and we did see some decent structure and ended up on a tornado warned storm at least when there was only a 2% risk for the day.

 

[JeremyS]

Wanted to add one more pic from this chase. Love seeing an isolated storm with blue skies around it!

 

[ScottCurry]

2 hour drive from my house? √
2% Tornado Risk? √
May? √
Colorado? √

Yup... I was chasing!

After a very long week of little sleep and lots of stress, I decided to head out Friday to unwind. I left work at 1pm and went home and took a nap first. At 2:30, I woke up and hit the road. I checked the radar and saw storms to the west of me building up steam, going severe warned, dropping hail, and causing flooding. I also noticed some tiny storms starting to form in southern Colorado. The shear was closer to Kansas, so I decided to leave the storms to my west behind me, and head toward southeast Colorado in the hopes that those tiny storms in southern Colorado would grow while I drove.

I lost internet shortly after leaving Colorado Springs (I have Verizon, but I don't have a range extender). When I got to Punkin Center, I checked the radar (which had last been updated 22 minutes prior). The storms to the south were starting to grow, but still hadn't severe warned. I decided to stick with it and drove to Eads. When I got to Eads (a little over 2 hours after leaving my house), I regained internet and checked the radar again. The southern storms I had targeted had merged into one large storm. It had gone severe warned due to hail, and had formed a nice circle on the radar, but the overall storm still wasn't rotating. I did notice some radar indicated rotation on the southeastern section of the storm though. I decided to drive east, and then south to try and intercept it, and just hope that it continued to grow as I continued to drive. I was also hoping the rotation would increase as it came in contact with the shear near the Kansas border.

After leaving Eads, I immediately lost internet again. I knew that I would have to go all visual from here on out. After driving another 45 minutes east, I got to the last intersection before hitting the Kansas border. I saw some large, growing clouds to my east. It wasn't the storm I was after, but I did see a cool cloud formation that looked like a real life sounding:

I then decided to continue chasing the storm I had selected. Unfortunately it was completely overcast and I couldn't see the storm I had selected anywhere. I figured it just hadn't made it to my location yet. Since it was moving in a ENE direction, I decided to take the southern road and try to intercept it. I drove for another 30 minutes south, and found what I had been looking for off in the distance.

I then had to decide whether to continue driving South, get behind it, and follow it; or head back North to the intersection and wait for it to come to me. I decided to head back North to the intersection. The main portion of the storm was starting to hit me, and so I decided to head east to try and intercept the southern portion of the storm. When the storm came to me, this is what I saw:

I also met a guy named Chris from Texas there who was trying to capture some lightning. He said he got a few good shots, but as soon as the rain started to reach us, he immediately packed up and drove east. So I didn't even have time to get his last name. I also managed to capture what I thought was a pretty cool looking "Welcome to Kansas" photo:

I failed to capture any lightning myself. But my family and coworkers were all impressed by how dark the clouds were in the main section of the storm.

I continued to follow the storm east into Kansas as it became Tornado Warned. Unfortunately, it never dropped a tornado. I heard on the radio that a storm further north, just south of I-70, had dropped two tornados (confirmed by people on the ground). Oh well. I chose my target when it was just a little blip on the radar, stuck with it, and 3 hours later, it tornado warned. I did all of that with very little internet access.

All in all, I was very happy with how the day turned out - because my intuition was correct, and I proved to myself that I don't need non-stop radar to chase storms.