3/23/09 REPORTS: KS, OK, NE, SD

[Mikey Gribble]

I originally headed for the Medicine lodge area today and was going to target the KS-OK border sout of there, but I decided to ride the first severe warned storm north up to Hutchinson. It had a good base by Kingman, but as it moved north into the drier air it became high based and we bailed to head south. We went down I35 to the KS border and intercepted the storm coming up from Oklahoma. After about 30 minutes it was showing rapid vertical motion and disorganized rotation. I was calling in saying they probably needed a tornado warning, but apparently it never got issued and sure enough a weak tornado touched down for about 10 seconds.The tornado occured about 2 miles southeast of Ashtong. I know a tornado report was posted a couple miles notheast of there, but these very well may have been seperate tornadoes since this was a short spinup that would have been hard to notice if you weren't looking right at it. The vertical motion was pretty intense for a few minutes. I think it's so cool to get to watch clouds developing near the ground, twisting and moving in different directions under a updraft base with good rotation and vertical motion..The tornado occured 2 miles southeast of Ashton Kansas just on the south side of highway 166.

We stayed on the storm for a while longer and it cycled through one more time and looked like it might get it done, but the occlusion became rain wrapped and I lost sight of the lowering. After that the storm started weakening so we just called it a day and are heading home.

Not a bad chase day. I got to play with the equipment and trouble shoot it and we got a weak tornado to go along with it.

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Good chase day in KS and OK. We started in Pratt after busting from a possible day before the day setup. We targeted Medicine Lodge, but quickly moved east meeting up with Michael Carlson, Dann Cianca, Verne Carlson, and Kendle (sorry bro forgot the last name ) Anyway got on some weak storms near Attica around 1pm and tried for small hail, but never got any. Finally got on a decent storm in Oklahoma west of Blackwell and saw the storm quickly acquire rotation and it even produced a nice gustnado. We followed it into Kansas and watched one of the craziest rotating wall clouds I have ever seen. Hopefully the video will do some justice, as it was amazing. Inflow dust blocked our view for several minutes as well as the Arkansas City. We reemerged from town and saw what looked to be like large cone tornado. I filmed it and thought tornado, but I thought it could be scud, minutes later I got a call from Michael Carlson asking me if I saw the large cone, so I assumed I was seeing a tornado. We followed the storm NE and got some timelapse of the incredible motion and inflow, as well as watching the most incredible gustnado I have ever seen that TOUCHED the cloud base for several seconds. Hopefully the video can do that justice too.

Tried to intercept the cell near Stillwater, but gave up and we are now sitting at the Braum's in Perry. Video and pics later!

 

[Daniel Christianson]

Positioned myself west of Osceola NE at the intersections of Hwy 30 and 92. Sat around for a good hour when cells began firing unsevere at the time near Elm Creek/Kearny and south of Hastings NE. Decided to stay put as storm motions were very fast 45-50 and higher to the north. First warning was issued for clay/adams/hamilton and merrick counties as a cell to the south headed towards Giltner NE was producing penny sized hail doppler indicated. Drove back east as more storms were beginning to fire and become tornado warned. I then intercepted the storm near Osceola and Rising City NE. Here's a pic.

 

[Skip Talbot]

Targeted Wichita. Intercepted the isolated cell west of there before it went severe warned. I chased it all the way to almost I-70 before it got away from me at ludicrous speed. Saw the base cycle three times and a lowering which I dont think I can call a wall cloud. Sub severe hail. It was the best storm Ive seen so far this year (which really isn't saying anything). It briefly had a nice hook on radar which got me excited. Suffered dual GPS failures and had to chase without spotter network or GR integration. I managed though as I could get the delorme puck to work in Street Atlas. Will post any pretty pics later.

 

[jshields]

i went out in eastern nebraska today. i headed west of omaha about 80 miles to columbus, ne. i intercepted my first storm about 15 miles south of there along hwy 92 near the town of rising city, ne. this became the first tornado warned cell of the afternoon in eastern, ne, basically when it was right above me!! the warning was doppler indicated and i didn't see much rotation except a little along the front edge of the cell where i saw a small gustnado out in an open field. i proceded to intercept 2 more cells as i moved eastward along hwy 92, with the last one tornado warned again right before it reached me. i saw a fairly decent lowering but nothing else. the storms were moving n/ne at 50-60 mph, and each one crossed about 15 miles or so further east down the highway. finally i ended up back in my hometown, omaha, just as a tornado warned cell was entering southwest omaha. this storm had been producing confirmed tornadoes southeast of lincoln to just southwest of omaha. thanks to some yahoo driving only 45 mph on the highway, i wasn't able to make it back home before getting cored by this last cell! it was almost midnight dark out with very heavy rain and tons of quarter sized hail. i was listening to the radio and there were media reports of funnels and wall clouds as it entered town. i was unable to see any of this due to the precip core blocking the back end of the cell. finally just as i approached my house the cell passed by enough to see the lowering. at this point there was mainly scud and some rapid rising but no real rotation left. at my house the yard was covered with nickel to quarter sized hail and 1.5" of rain fell in about 30 minutes. a 2nd storm moved through town about half an hour later with winds to 55 mph and more nickel sized hail. i had a metal patio chair blown all the way off our deck down into our yard and it landed on all four of its legs sitting up! reports are now coming in of semis overturned on I-29 north of here near missouri valley and back near lincoln there was damage to some farms. i'll have more info and pics on my blog: http://omahatornadochaser.blogspot.com/

 

[Elinor McLennon]

Left home about 6pm and went to hwy 74 and hwy 33 just south of crescent. Watched for about 20 minutes as storm developed and became tornado warned just sw of crescent, ok. chased it north up hwy 74 and followed it east until it went outflow dominant. decent chase for march and got some great pics. not a bad day for only 40 minutes worth of driving/chasing.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Pretty fun day for early season. Left from Lincoln,NE at around 2ish and drove west down I-80. Caught my first cell south of York. Followed a promising cell up to around Gresham, NE, then spent a while just trying to get east of the (now) line on an old gravel road. Dropped south of Valparasio into Lincoln and then east on I-80 to catch the rather healthy supercell that developed south of Lincoln. Drove for evvver through buckets of rain on the interstate, hydroplaned a bit, and was a bit shocked at how many signs were blown down. Finally got ahead of it and made my move on Hwy 63.

So here's a mental image: you're rushing south along a paved highway torwards a storm that is booking like 65mph NNE right at you. Your goal: to reach the east paved option in four miles before the circulation does. The gravel is wet and the storm is fast. Finally, you emerge from the penny-hail. Ahead of you, through the murk of wrapping rain curtains, you see a whole mess of rotation on the ground about a mile and a half to your south-southEAST. Oh crap. The inflow is still screaming, but you can see the RFD a'comin. Crap, about to get cored, gotta hit that road! You arrive at the road, only to find that it's... tada, GRAVEL. And wet as hell. And no way are you going to race the tornado on a gravel road. Great.

That's pretty much what it was like a few miles north of Alvo. Good ol' Delorme tricked me with the "thick orange line" that usually means "paved", but today meant "barely maintained gravel". (I really need another program. I shouldn't have trusted Delorme, but dang... you'd think a program that does nothing but map stuff would get the mapping part right. I digress.) So I start turning the car around north with the idea of trying to get back to those trees I saw to maybe break the fall of any big hail and spare the windshield. But now that I look west I see that the sky is very low and definately rotating, and only about half a mile away. I start wondering if maybe I am looking at an occluding meso barelling down on me. Okay, turn back south again. Here comes the RFD! Aaaaah! Luckily after about half a mile I bumped into a home that had a man looking out the kitchen window. I pulled up flush to his garage, ran through the hail, rang the doorbell, and said hello, and chatted with him and his wife inside for a while while he shouted expletives out the front window. The RFD passed and I watched the back end slide away at like a thousand miles an hour. Good lord it's been forever since I've had a chase day when the storms weren't qualifying for pole.

So, backtracked north to 80 and played catch up with the storm all the way to northern Omaha. Here and there I got good enough position to see the obvious wall cloud; I crossed over into Iowa, and after that I rarely got more than a glimpse. Not a lot of NNW roads out there, and hard to catch a storm going that fast by zig-zagging.

I'll post some pics here later once I get them uploaded to the copyright office; I'm sad that I didn't get a pic of the most exiciting part of the chase, the moment where I popped out out the hail and saw the ground circulation. I didn't get the picture because I was too busy yelling "AAAHHHHH!!!!!!!" and mentally calculating whether I should try the east option or look for shelter. Not that it would have made a great picture... a good video, probably, but not a great picture.

**edit** Here a handful of shots from east of McCool Junction. Mostly just atmospheric stuff, though in a couple a wall cloud is trying to form (and not getting anywhere.) The only storm of the day that really seemed to crank was the one that came though south of Lincoln and none of these are of that. Click any of these for the Flickr page where you can see them much larger.

 

[Angie Norris]

Got home a few minutes ago from the Logan county storm. I left Norman right after the storm went SVR warned in Kingfisher county with the plan of intercepting it near the Orlando/Perry area. Picked the storm up south of Mulhall and watched as it put down a couple of wall clouds. That little storm was trying hard to produce, but it just couldn't totally get it together. It had some of the COLDEST inflow I think I've ever felt, which is probably what kept it from producing. I did see some small (~0.5") hail at the rest stop near the 174 exit on I-35 about 20 minutes after the storm had gone through.
Not at all bad for the first chase of the year.

 

[Tyler Burg]

Couldn't leave Omaha until 3:30, but headed west on hwy 92. As we drove through Wahoo, the sirens went off and we we're like sweet! after getting outside of town the base became visible, and we quickly pulled to the side, crap...the cell weakened considerably and I honestly couldn't believe it was tor warned, not much of a lowering anywhere, but we stick with it a while and about 10 minutes later notice what looks like a cone behind a curtain of rain, but I'm not convinced...

http://tonightssky.org/images/032309d.jpg

Then we try to keep on this thing, but can't find a paved road, so we take a gravel one and run into a road closed sign and only have a west option - crap again! Eventually we decided to head back on 92 towards Omaha after my partner got a call from his sister about a tornado warning in Omaha (all this time we have no data, which totally sucked, but I signed up for this NWS severe weather alert thing that sends you texts, but the only problem is, thats all it sends you. I think I got 45 texts all saying "new event. tornado warning from 3.23.09 4:43pm to 3.23.09 5:20pm" - It doesn't tell you for what county! what good does that do? Lol it just annoyed the crap out of me is all it did. Anyways, we head back into Omaha and these train crossing sticks are down and this guy in front of me just goes around them and soon enough I don't see a train and do the same. Driving through the core for most of the way home we finally got a view of the "wall cloud" just crossing dodge street from hwy 6, didn't look like much so we headed home (and because the storm motions were way too fast for the city, let alone the open road).

EDIT: full report up now here... http://tonightssky.org/account032309.html

 

[Jordan Hartley]

As good of a first chase of the season as anyone could hope for. Marcus York, Steve Rich, and myself left my house in Derby at 315pm. Got on I-35 at the Mulvan exit and went south. Intercepted the storm at the South Haven/Hwy 166 exit and parked it at the gas station there for 20 min. As soon as the chaser caravan converged apon the gas station it started hailing and we started are march east. Got about 3 miles away from I-35 and stopped off on a dirt road. Watched an impressive rfd blast for 10 min then went east another 3 miles. It was at this point that I got video of what I thought was a developing tornado just south of 166. We were too close at that point so we bailed east and missed getting the tornado Mike Gribble reported. I would much rather get out of dodge than stick around and get an amazing shot but have to risk my life in doing it. That paid off because as soon as the area of roation crossed the hwy things went crazy. Paralleled and documented the most violently rotating wall cloud not to have a tornado on the ground ive ever seen. Continued E on 166 as the rotation occluded. I got a large cone on video myself but im 4 miles to SE of this area of interest and it was pretty wrapped up so seeing the ground was impossible. I also have a pretty nice funnel 4 miles W of Ark City as the roation was to my north. Got video of someone chasing the storm in a chopper which was pretty sweet. The inflow into the storm was insane. It was like a scene from the dust bowl. Got excellent structure video all the way to Winfield where we intercepted again and followed it until about 5 miles ene of the airport between Ark City and Winfield. Jumped on the next storm that came out of OK and intercepted it S of Ark City. Watched the storm for about 15 min and called it a day. Stopped at Native Lights Casion and won $47 at one of the slots All in all a great day.

 

[Michael Carlson]

3/23/09 REPORTS: KS, OK, NE, SD.

REPORT AND PHOTOS HERE

MODS sorry but it wouldn't let me post in the reports thread you can move it over if need be.

 

[Dan Cook]

Posted on the behalf of CZandbergen:

Latched on to this cell in Medford OK and saw some nice rotation and RFD at the airport there with a couple of other chasers. It got ahead of us and we had to run very fast east to 35 and then north and the rotation passed over again just south of South Haven KS. We stopped there with a few others and had a great show.

Anyway, I stuck with it across southern KS and headed north through Arkansas City (which is a disaster of a town BTW) and then headed east to intercept. The cell was Tornado Warned at this point but wasn't nearly as impressive as it was 30 min earlier. After taking the only winding hilly road in KS, I shot the following video at the junction of CR 20 Winfield KS and CR1 Winfield KS or 7mi SE of Winfield. That is 7MI SE of Winfield and there were at least two reports I saw on a brief touchdown there.

Long story short, the video isn't that great as I was driving and filming and everything else solo, but I caught a very brief spin up of a gustnado / very weak tornado. The video is from about 1 MI south of the actual tube. I caught it just as I crested a hill and tried to catch up with it, but it was gone by the time I got there. There were three or four others on this as well. Maybe they will have better video. Anyway, here it is. Just freeze the first frame as that is probably the best shot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=277pjW-K93s

 

[Dan Melby]

Being that It is my last semester of school and It is Prob. the last spring that I will just be able to go chasing whenever I want, I had to go today.
I originally targeted Northeast Nebraska but knew that there was no way I would make it there in time, so I headed west on I-80 and hoped for the best. Intercepted the TOR cell in between Eagle and Palmyra, bridges there are not safe down there, consist of a few wood planks with no side rails.. Anyways, the storm was very impressive, the inflow was was insane, I tried to get out to take pics a few times and got sandblasted. I had a clear view of rotation, but never saw anything touch the ground... I tracked the storm as best as I could into Alvo, impossible to keep up on gravel. Dropped south hoping the next one would go, but it didn't, had pretty good structure. Gave it up after that and headed home for a full night of homework..
Try to get a vid up later, but now I have to get my priorities straight, an hour of tv, then homework.

 

[Shane Adams]

Chad, Bridge, Rick Jarvis, and myself observed a brief tornado 2-3 NE of Arkansas City, KS around 5:14pmCDT. It formed just south of route 242, northeast of town, crossed the road about a half mile east of us, and continued north, churning in an open field as a dusty multi-vortex. It dissipated after about a minute. Nice rotation was observed above the debris swirl.

I'll have a detailed account with images up in a day or two.

http://www.passiontwist.com/32309cross.htm

 

[Shane Adams]

The tornado occured 2 miles southeast of Ashton Kansas just on the south side of highway 166.

Was there a single piece of debris flying around in the tornado, looking like a bird? We were watching the intense twisting lowering south of 166 and noticed what looked like either a large bird flying or a piece of debris. I haven't reviewed all my video yet but I'll definitely be looking at this clip again.