2019-05-17 Reports

[William Monfredo]

Going through some older pics, I found this tornado photo from ~ 5 p.m. near Culbertson, NE. The initial storm had made its way up from Kansas into southwestern NE and formed tornadoes amidst a lot of dust. Actually, there were two areas of rotation in contact with the ground; one closer to me was slowly spinning and reduced visibility dramatically, and I had to get out of the way. When I got turned around, I then saw the faster-spinning one, still dusty, but becoming less so, and shot the photo. It moved fairly quickly at 40 mph. At that time, I was into manual focus, vintage, Nikon lenses, so I remember trying to keep my cool while focusing!

 

[John Farley]

I am guessing this is the same one I saw, but I was looking at it from the south through a lot of rain and hail, so your view is much better. Although the time I had on it was more like 5:40. Wondering what direction you were looking when you took this picture. MODS: I am pretty sure there is already a thread for this event, so you might want to merge these posts into that existing thread.

 

[William Monfredo]

John, your time's more accurate than what it says on my digital-camera file ! BTW, I checked for daily reports on this, and didn't see them.
But, I was looking north on State Highway 17 then. I had left McCook behind after spending a brief amount of time there.
I was into being present for the funnel formation, so I got chased away from the cell a couple of times, because I didn't want it to drop on me.
I used a Nikon Df, read D4 sensor, but have since gotten swayed by cameras with more than 16 full-frame megapixels: Better for crops.

 

[John Farley]

Well, you were in the right place when it dropped. I was farther down 17, outside the hook/rain (and hail) curtains. There was some big hail in there; I found a hailstone that was still at least 2.5" when I came through that area 40 minutes or so later, after the McCook tornado.

 

[Dan Robinson]

That is a nice view of that tornado. I was caught in the extensive RFD dust plume to the south of it that blocked much of my view. FYI there is a ST reports thread on this day here:

2019-05-17 REPORTS: TX/KS/NE/OK

A wild and fantastic chase day to start the sequence of Plains events! I was on the northern target's storm of the day since Atwood, Kansas. I witnessed at least 3 tornadoes from the storm, all in Nebraska: a dusty cone/rope northwest of McCook, a long-lived photogenic stovepipe south of...

stormtrack.org

 

[William Monfredo]

I know it's "ancient" history by now, but a base-reflectivity image from Goodland, KS at 5:36 p.m. shows what northbound chasers faced on 17.