sdienst
EF1
Here's a quick video with my views of the Tahoka, TX tornado, mostly in it's early stages. This was the first of a 3 day plains trip for me in which I had low expectations but it turned out to be my best chase.
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2019-05-05 REPORTS: TX/KS
- Thread starter sdienst
- Start date
Tony Laubach
EF5
Mods please add KS to the title..
Left Wichita around 430pm after playing AM weatherman Sunday morning for a storm that developed near Great Bend, Kansas. The storm was pretty messy, and was slowly pushing to the south/southeast. It was definitely HP, and had a constant low-level rotation signature with it, but never quite got organized.
Then some time around 7ish, a pretty solid RFD developed and I was south looking back to the north. I was somewhere south of the Arkansas River, south of Alden/west of Sterling by this point. A steady wall of precip sat between me and the business area, and I couldn't make out anything. As precip started to fall on me, I was going to push east, then get south again. About 60 seconds into the eastward jog, I looked over my shoulder and could barely make out what I thought was a funnel in the rain.
I stopped and immediately grabbed the video camera, easily capturing the funnel, but the rain made it very hard to see any ground circulation. The contrast was terrible, and I had some light precip still coming down, so I kept the vid on it as long as I had view. Eventually, the circulation moved back into the rain and out of my view.
After putting a little gap between me and the storm, I ran the video through my editor with the contrast cranked way up, was easily able to confirm ground circulation.
This storm would have a few other reported brief tornadoes with it as it tracked between here and Hutchinson, none of which I could see given my angle to the storm and the precip they were blocked behind. Eventually, this storm became a pretty decent little hailer that worked its way down into the western suburbs of Wichita, where I sat at a gas station a couple blocks from my house as a barrage of wind-driven hail up to golfball size came down and pulled a Colorado and accumulated into drifts up to a foot or more in many areas.
This marked the first tornado of the 2019 season for me, and continued a streak of 17-straight seasons seeing at least one tornado (since 2003).
Left Wichita around 430pm after playing AM weatherman Sunday morning for a storm that developed near Great Bend, Kansas. The storm was pretty messy, and was slowly pushing to the south/southeast. It was definitely HP, and had a constant low-level rotation signature with it, but never quite got organized.
Then some time around 7ish, a pretty solid RFD developed and I was south looking back to the north. I was somewhere south of the Arkansas River, south of Alden/west of Sterling by this point. A steady wall of precip sat between me and the business area, and I couldn't make out anything. As precip started to fall on me, I was going to push east, then get south again. About 60 seconds into the eastward jog, I looked over my shoulder and could barely make out what I thought was a funnel in the rain.
I stopped and immediately grabbed the video camera, easily capturing the funnel, but the rain made it very hard to see any ground circulation. The contrast was terrible, and I had some light precip still coming down, so I kept the vid on it as long as I had view. Eventually, the circulation moved back into the rain and out of my view.
After putting a little gap between me and the storm, I ran the video through my editor with the contrast cranked way up, was easily able to confirm ground circulation.
This storm would have a few other reported brief tornadoes with it as it tracked between here and Hutchinson, none of which I could see given my angle to the storm and the precip they were blocked behind. Eventually, this storm became a pretty decent little hailer that worked its way down into the western suburbs of Wichita, where I sat at a gas station a couple blocks from my house as a barrage of wind-driven hail up to golfball size came down and pulled a Colorado and accumulated into drifts up to a foot or more in many areas.
This marked the first tornado of the 2019 season for me, and continued a streak of 17-straight seasons seeing at least one tornado (since 2003).
