3/10/10 REPORTS: TX, OK, AR, KS, MO

[Joey Ketcham]

Just got back home from my first chase in the season. Met up with Tyler Costantini, Jay Cazel, Bart Comstock and Chris Wilburn. We intercepted the tornado warned storm that came into Newton County. Heading south on 71 you could see the base of the storm with strong rotation on it and even a funnel at one point. We ended up running into quarter size hail and the storm eventually escaped off to the north/northeast and was never able to catch up with it.

On the way back up parts of the ground along Highway 71 was covered in hail. No tornado, but did get on a tornado warned storm, saw rotation and a funnel and got into some good hail. Overall, for the first chase of the season - a local chase at that - it was good.

I was driving and wasn't able to take any pics, so many thanks to Chris Wilburn for letting me borrow this to show what we saw.

Another picture courtesy of Chris Wilburn. This is hail that covered the ground just north of Neosho along highway 71.

 

[D. Hayes]

I came in late and headed down to Winfield KS to watch the storms come in. Pretty hilly there so I had to cut further SE to get a better view but the roads are pure crap down there. I had to take a one lane dirt about 7 miles to the next paved road right on the KS/OK boarder (166). Mistake. The storm opened all hell up and dumped pea to marble size hail in buckets. I had at least 2" on my windshield and the temps dropped from 52 to 34 in a matter of minutes. I could barely see anything till I headed further NE to get into a clearing around Howard KS to watch the cells outrun me into the dawn. Her rear looks awesome though. I just hope the few pics I got come out.

I sure hope some of you got some good shots I cornered myself out there in that maze of roads. This guy does not like cold storms. I did see a few folks out there so if you seen a big silver F150 with a massive mad max front bumper that was me.

The reason why I was looking for a better position:

Leaves an imagination lots of room to speculate doesn't it.

 

[Adam Lucio]

After messing around most of the day with meager crapvection I Got on the same storm and saw the same feature in Joeys photo. The monsoon of quarter size hail was the quickest and fiercest Ive encountered. It went from drizzle to complete bombardment of hail, sticks and leaves within the snap of the finger. As a matter of fact by the time I get my camera on to record it there was a river of hail flowing through downtown Seneca, MO. All in all it made for a good start to the 2010 season. I havent had a first chase yeild anything as exciting so that plus a few cool photos of cloud structure and I consider myself off to a good start.

I can't post photos or videos because I am staying in Lebanon for the night and the power has been knocked out at the motel and all my cameras have exhausted batteries.

 

[David Schuttler]

Saw a couple of funnels N. of Sedan, Ks. on hwy 99 (video grabs)

 

[Jim Bailey]

I arrived in Joplin, MO a little before 4pm and settled in to see what might pop up. Things began to intensify to the SW, so I started west on 44 and cut north to Baxter Springs and intercepted this ragged little system (and avoided the I-44 toll booths).

From there, hurriedly back to the east, trying to get out in front of the storm that hit Seneca, but that system was really moving and the county roads to the east were not great for speed. This is as close as I was able to get and, unfortunately, my approach was from the north. I felt a bit uncomfortable at this point as the core was coming right at me and I was out of road.

Sure enough, I caught the brunt of the core as it passed me by. Very dark and full of pea and marble sized hail.

The hail came hard and fast and the roads were soon covered. Added to that was the fact that this cell was tornado warned...a very stimulating few minutes for me, but a great way to start the 2010 chase season.

JB

 

[Randy Denzer]

Left Austin at around 0930 and shot up to the Hilsburogh area. Got on the first cell south of Ft Worth and ran with it NE along 67 until it disappeared in the DFW metroplex. Then shot south on 35 E to Hilsborough to get into position for the line that formed along the 35 corridor. Truth be told I didn't see anything even remotely rotating.

 

[Shane Adams]

Erik Burns, Bridget Geaughan, and myself targeted the area of NE OK/SE KS east of the progged surface LOW track. We stopped in Colleyville at a brand new WAL-MART store (which we found out wasn't even open to the public yet), and a few minutes later, Jon and Shawna Davies pulled up. It was great finally meeting Shawna and seeing Jon for the first time in years. Our chat session was cut dramatically short when everyone (but me) noticed Bridget's hair standing on end. We all bailed to our vehicles, but no strike ever occurred.

Sat visiting and watching the storm north of OKC move our way. The Davies left to chase it after a bit, and not long afterwards, we followed suite. By the time we intercepted the storm along KS99 north of Sedan and near Grafton, it seemed everyone else had given up; we saw no other chasers the entire time we observed the storm. The storm had the overall "used up" look, with a progressively-outflow pushy base. However, the storm slowed down and took more of an easterly direction. With a progged -30c cold pool aloft, we didn't worry about severe parameters and just waited.

The storm started to exhibit some unorganized, chaotic turbulence/rotation. Over the next several minutes, the rotation became more focused in the area directly west of us. Another few minutes and the rotation was quite rapid. From this rotation, a sinuous white funnel developed and snaked down halfway to the ground. It was moving slowly eastward, and was tracking right towards us. We aimed our vidcams up to capture the action; strong, tight, chaotic rotation as well as strong vertical motions. The funnel snaked down even further as new condensation whisps formed beneath the tip and joined up, bringing the funnel over halfway to the ground. By this time, we could only sit there and watch as it moved over....we could hear a "whooshing" sound and observed a rapid wind direction/speed change as the funnel passed overhead.

I spun the car around to look east as the rotation continued nearly overhead. However it was gone within a minute, and our winds died back down to the relative calm we had before. It had been raining the entire time so I doubt any ground circulation would've been visible without condensation. Had it been a plowed field there's no doubt in my mind we'd have seen a whirl. Awesome payoff for what was overall a nothing storm by the time we got to it.....I'm starting to know and understand these cold core/vorticity-driven systems and really digging them.

EDIT: I started a REPORTS thread in the NOW section....hey, it's late

Video of the event can be seen here: http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1220163963

 

[Robert Hettchen]

Shane thats actually quite funny! I drove 4 hours east to have a sandwich at arbys in Coffeville when I decided to head back west on 166. I then dropped south on 15 into ok to about webb city just as the storm was coming out of ponca city. had great bow structure and decided to head back north on 15 up to 166 again. i turned to go east on 166 to get out of the rain and when I did i did notice some fairly strong rotation. The first funnel I seen was a larger nipple type funnel wich I snapped a photo of and it was gone in 30 sec. I however also got a few pics of the thin white funnel as it came down what i would have said 1/3 of the way down. and once again gone in 45 sec or so. I was chasing alone but there were 2 other guys in another little red car like mine who also snapped pics of the funnels I saw. After the funnels of course i had some hope so i took 99 to Sedan,ks and up to Moline on 160 as the storm just turned into a small hurricane. I drove through winfield as the low bullseye was just letting it all go! no lightning at all just 50mph winds that went from the south on the east side of town to the north on the west. took till wellington for the rain to stop. made it home to coldwater by 10pm to find the wife in bed.

the bow coming into kansas

the first funnel i saw

then the thin white funnel

as the storm moved to the north of highway 166

the next 10-15 mile was very slick!!!

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

My dad and I had a decent first chase today. We had high hopes for today when we saw the good moisture return, sunshine, and rare SE LLJ over the target. But our hopes were dashed as we saw the crapvection moving in to ruin the day. We continued to chase however and arrived in Coffeyville and grabbed some lunch. After lunch we headed west to Caney and planned to head south to Bartlesville but stopped as we watched convection develop near Perry, OK.
We decided that was the play of the day in that region so we blasted west on US166 and then south on highway 15. We crossed into Osage County and could see the storm to our SW. We chased the storm north as it had quite the shelf cloud on it. The tail end however was seperated from the shelf and had persistent rotation for a long time putting down a nice funnel that took us by surprise.
Once we crossed into Kansas that southern end of the line began to do its own thing and aquired more rotation with multiple little shear funnels spinning up. As we chased it north we saw what appeared to be a nice cone funnel to our north but we lost sight of it in the rain. I couldn't tell it is was just the best funnel look alike scud or actually a funnel. I wouldn't be surprised it was a funnel considering all the shear we had.
As we headed north on highway 99 we saw the southern end began to tighten and spin up the same funnel Shane saw but we were about 200 yards north of the funnel. I didn't see a debris cloud but it still made the chase that much better. We then followed it north and broke off the chase at sunset as the storm weakened. Not bad considering the conditions. Below are a couple pictures.

Video of the funnel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcmweZVfmCg

 

[Tony Laubach]

FULL MARCH 10, 2010 CHASE REPORT HERE

Tom Dulong, Scott Hammel, and myself ventured out on what turned out to be a 1,229 mile trip to Perry, Oklahoma and back. I drove the entire trip which covered 20 hours of travel time from 5am Wednesday to 1am Thursday.

After the 2000z outlook jived with our thinking of the precip shield slaughtering the southeast Kansas target, we figured our best (and only) shot was in northern Oklahoma with storms forming along the low.

When all was said and done, we got under a decent hail-producing storm along I-35 near Perry that made it look like snow (which would see for real in Colorado on the return trip). Pretty fun stuff given how fast things deteriorated on us.

All sorts of goodies on my log, including video clips, more images, and some chase fun-facts!

 

[Ric Burney]

I have been trying to come up with the best words to accurately describe my chase on 03/10/2010 and I think I've found them:
Bust, dang, crap, oops, D'oh, FAIL, and crud. Please contact me for the R rated version.
I began the day spotting in the western part of Dallas county,TX as a line of storms containing heavy rain and some small hail moved through around 10am. I stayed with the storms on I-30 as they worked their way east, north east.
Getting ahead of the storms near Mount Vernon, TX it appeared that they were becoming disorganized junk. Originally I had targeted Texarkana but decided that since it was still early in the day I would try my backup target area, NE OK. Abandoning that line of storms I made my way up north to Hugo, OK where I entered the Indian Nation Turnpike.
As soon as I cleared the first tollbooth I was pulled over by an OK state trooper. I wasn't speeding and had paid my toll so I couldn't figure out why I was being stopped. He thought one of my brake lights may have flickered as I stopped to pay the toll but amazingly it was working fine as I tested it during the traffic stop. He was very nice about the whole situation and appeared to be more interested in the fact that I was chasing storms. I received only a warning from him and he even followed me to a nearby gas station in the center median of the turnpike to see if they had a replacement bulb (of course they didn't). After this brief delay I continued up the turnpike sans OK trooper.
A few miles further up the road my phone rang. I discovered that the cells I had abandoned in Texas had now strengthened and were even showing signs of rotation... how nice. As there were now no places to turn around or exit the turnpike I was now unwillingly committed to my second target area.
When I arrived in NE OK it appeared that my second target area was a complete bust and waste of time. The cells nearby were not cooperating. The ones that looked decent were stilll out of range and racing NNE at nearly 40mph. I made it up to Adair, OK and turned west to connect with the Will Rogers Turnpike to go SW toward Tulsa, Oklahoma City and eventually back home to Dallas arriving a little after 11pm. My gas mileage increased dramatically as I was constantly relieved of many of my pesky, heavy coins at the never-ending tollbooths along the way.
Lessons learned from this days chase: Never dismiss your original target area until you are absolutely sure without a doubt that the storms you are on are trashed. Oklahoma state troopers really like storm chasers. Oklahoma loves turnpikes, be sure to carry big sacks full of coins for the conveniently placed tollbooths (about every other mile or so it seemed).

 

[Brian Emfinger]

I targeted Eastern Oklahoma and was in Webbers Falls when I decided on a big move down to Central Arkansas. I timed it out and it seemed like I could get to LR right about the time the storms did. I got to LR and got just south enough in time to see the tornado warned storm (I believe its the same individual cell from SW AR). The wall cloud was pretty much on the ground... the only way I knew it wasnt a tornado was from no pwr flashes. I continued following this cell to NE of Searcy. I eventually dropped off and headed back SW to Center Hill where there was pretty bad damage.

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqDrab_8Vko


Vid capture from West Little Rock:

Pics are here:

http://www.realclearwx.com/031010.htm

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

Lots of hail. That sums up yesterday. There seemed to be a continuous path of hail from Perry, OK well into KS. There was a hill on 166 in KS I thought I was going to die. I came over the top of a hill to see a road packed with hail and water with 2 vehicles sliding to the bottom in front of me. Before I even touched me brakes they were locked up and I was sliding around. I regained control and slowed down, but I dont know how. Whoever was in the Blue SUV in front of me was even luckier as they were going 10mph+ faster than me. Good reason not to speed right there.

I did come across a pickup that had done a spun out into the ditch there on 166. I asked if they wanted to be pulled out but they already had help on the way. They were extemely lucky not to flip considering how steep the side of the road were.

Low top?

He looks scary, but was actually a nice dog, who got a bunch of old beef jerky from me.

 

[Brett Roberts]

Brandon Lawson and I observed the same funnels described by Shane and David from the low-topped storm a few miles W of Sedan. The first one took us by surprise and we weren't able to capture any stills or video, but I managed a quick shot of the second one a few minutes later (about 5 W of Sedan, 1 N of US-166).

Here is a shot of the funnel at 2340 UTC, and a wider shot of the "storm" departing north-northeastward a few minutes later. Despite their unimpressive appearance, nice rotation was evident with both of the funnels.

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

Cory Thompson, Craig Maire, and I started from Coffeyville and quickly became depressed about the rain shield/cloud cover killing our chances. We dined at Pizza Hut mid-afternoon with Randy Cooper and quickly took off to the NC OK storms, before pulling off to the developing line NE of Tulsa. We ended up salvaging the situation with a nice tornado-warned storm in Missouri, picking up some nice hail and hearing the first sirens of the year in Carthage.

Not worth the incredible drive, but we did get a good hint of how 2010 cell coverage and Internet data operates in that portion of the plains, and we nailed our first TOR-warned storm of the year with nice maneuvering on Craig's part. Looking forward to storms that don't end at a 6:30 PM sundown. Bring on Spring and Summer!