4/22/10 REPORTS: CO/TX/KS

[Jason Boggs]

If you read Jay McCoy's report, you basically have my report. Bri Winkler and I stayed with Jay McCoy through the first half of the chase. Got a couple of tornadoes along with many funnels to the SW of I-40 and Hwy 70 right after meeting Lanny Dean and Jeff Smith. Was great to finally meet up with those guys, and what a day to do it! Then headed east, and then north of Alanreed and got great structure, but never saw a tornado. Then headed back east and sat just south of Lake Mclellan. Saw another brief tornado and lots of funnels along with 10 million other chasers. I briefly met Dick McGowan there and saw the Dominator. Said a quick hi to Reed and Joel and then we had to take off as the cell was starting to right turn on us with rotation wrapping up in rain just to our west/northwest. We actually had to take shelter at the Alanreed rest stop because I didn't want to chance being caught in a rain wrapped tornado.

All in all a great chase with lots of action. It was great to finally meet some of the guys on here. Lanny and Jeff are truly class acts, and it was great to be surrounded by great storms and new friends. Now to the photos:

funnel looking SW from I-40 and Hwy. 70

tornado a few seconds later from same location as 1st photo

beautiful structure north of Alanreed looking west

The "DOMINATOR" Dominating with Reed Timmer and Joel Taylor back in the saddle

Just one of the many funnels we saw today

Lanny Dean and his tour company scoring big in the TX Panhandle.

 

[Derek Shaffer]

Chased SW KS. Backyard chase. Didn't catch much more than a possible tornado SW of Lakin early. Ended up leaving Lakin cell #1 right before it produced the Wedge. Had luck on cell #2 though. ~10 miles north of Lakin?

 

[Scott Hammel]

Wow, nice job everyone...looks like it was tubes for everyone!

I chased today with Dann Cianca and we had planned on targeting the early action in Colorado and then were going to move E to SW Kansas and that's actually what verified! I love it when things go the way you planned. Anyway, caught the Las Animas cone with satellite around 1:10 Mountain time and then caught 2 more tornadoes with the Lakin cell in SW KS. We got cored, added some nice dings to the ride, and damn near got RFD'd off the road E of Scott City. Amazing day!

 

[Connor McCrorey]

I was lucky enough to be east of the storm north of Paducah, TX, when it dropped the wedge around 7:30. Contrast was horrible and it quickly became rain-wrapped, but I did manage to get some video of it. You can't even tell where the right side of the tornado cuts off.

Video is online - Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOYevx4u33k

 

[Adam Lucio]

This was a great chase and Danny's report pretty much summed up the day. We targeted Chidlress where we stayed overnight from Wednesdays chase. Drifted northwest once initiation had occurred and got on the storm that would eventually produce the tornadoes at birth.

Tornado 1 was tough to confirm and I am still a little skeptical of it, the funnel was more than 3/4 the way down then it rapidly shrank and roped out and quickly reminded me of the Goshen storm.

Tornado #2 was obvious and I didn't even see #3 until my buddy Mike Nelson told me to turn around, it was the first time I have ever seen two tubes on the ground at once...and from 2 different storms! I submitted the SN report at this time. Tornado #4 was a nice fat cone that I have seen so many pictures of.

Tornado #5 came as we were driving east on I-40...I could see it in my side mirror as it was well behind me and I couldn't document it.

We kept up with the storms for awhile but after an hour or so I began to think they had finished their main show. I was filming some rapid rotation when 2 very skinny ropes quickly touched down and went back up to confirm a multi vortex tornado...shortly after this I spotted a very large, long, white funnel that didn't appear to make it to the ground but came ever so close...once that lifted another funnel deeply embedded in the rain was spotted and again I could not confirm ground contact but I believe it is the same feature in Terrence Cooks' last photo.

Certainly a spectacular chase! It was nice to see all target areas light up and provide so many with many different tornadoes to mess with. FINALLY!

These were some stills I uploaded for media, pics and video wont be up for a couple days.

All in all I was able to document 5/6 tornadoes! Congrats to those who bagged. I am now believer in caprock magic.

 

[Olivier Staiger]

panhandle tornado

chasing with Dave Holder , Extreme Tornado Tours and the TVN / Discovery team, caught some good action in the TX panhandle.

slideshow > http://www.kyte.tv/ch/klipsi/tornado-april-22-tx/p=lpw&c=9038&s=875916&l=2507

 

[Tim Marshall]

First serious chase of the year was a success. Shawn McQuinn and I saw a high-contrast, long-tracked tornado that passed just west of Goodnight, TX. The tornado was a truncated cone most of its life and touched down at 5:20pm, in open country and roped out a few miles northwest of town at 5:43pm. We watched the tornado cross Rt. 287, within a mile of us. Pictures are posted on my FaceBook page. A second, brief tornado was observed near Jericho, just north of I-40 at 6:32 pm.

 

[Lanny Dean]

What a Day!!! Jeff Smith, Chad Berryhill and I had a FULL TOUR and media/production crew following us....We filmed between 6-8 tornadoes 2 of which were pretty big. Will have some pics and or video posted hopefully later today as we are still on tour. Great to finally run into Jason Boggs...man I love that dude! By the way Jason, expect to see yourself on youtube! "JASON BOGGS...YOUR IN MY VIDEO"!! LOL good to see Mick P., Erik Burns (spelling) and everybody else. Congrats!

 

[Rich Thompson]

Me, Ryan Jewell and Bryan Smith left Norman around 12:30 pm after I completed the 1630z outlook and a few other responsibilities. We ended up in the same general area as many of the chasers, except we stayed close to I-40 instead of hwy 287.

We witnessed two tornadoes near Jericho with what must have been the "northern", apparently at the same time the Goodnight tornado was ongoing with the "southern" storm. The first tornado was small and quite weak, while the second tornado closer to I-40 was more of a classic cone for several minutes. Our only real mistake of the day occurred as we attempted to let the Jericho tornado pass close by us along I-40. Basically, we got caught with no way to turn around (I-40 in that area could really use some emergency crossovers) and ended up trying to beat the wrapping core to the next overpass (hwy 70 N and I-40), as the remnants of the Jericho tornado passed maybe 1/4 mile to our S as a ghostly funnel. Short story- we didn't beat the core and got smacked by tennis ball to baseball hail, which broke the driver's side of Ryan's windshield. We can verify the 2.75" hail report 6 E of Groom.

There was one funnel buried back in the crud on the south side of the meso as it crossed I-40, and it may have been a brief tornado. We'll never know since we were just recovering from our beating and I was having to look behind us as it occurred. Our escape led us east along the interstate for a few miles until we realized that visibility and road options wouldn't be good for the northern storm. So, we went back west several miles and intercepted the southern storm which was raining into the northern storm. The southern storm had a nice contrast meso as it crossed I-40, but no tornadoes that we could observe. We continued east then northwest to a position a few miles NNW of Alanreed on FM 291. From here, we (along with many other chasers) watched one small rain-wrapped tornado, followed by another multi-vortex tornado that moved to within 1/2-1 mi of our location before we moved south to avoid wrapping precip. Merging storms and poor visibility ended our chase by 7 pm, and we were back home by 11 pm.

Tornado near Jericho, TX (just S of I-40)...left my tripod at home

The last tornado we saw a few miles NNW of Alanreed from FM 291:

 

[Jane Herbert]

Hi all,

Australian invasion has begun after a great season down under!! Greetings from Clyve & Jane!

2 hours after we stepped off the plane in Denver, we drove into a horrendous hail dump near Kit Carson followed by at least 3 sitings of separate tornadoes so far - will upload photos when our server is back accepting FTP (tomorow)...have a couple on FB(AUSSKY)

 

[Bobby Prentice]

Alanreed, TX Tornado

SHORT:
Greg Stumpf and I were arrived too late in the eastern TX Panhandle target area to see the the tornadoes from Storm A. However, we saw impressive storm structure from storm A after its tornado phase and saw a nice consolation prize multi-vortex tornado with Storm B near Alanreed, TX. During this chase, grand total, I shot about 2-3 minutes of video (tornado near Alanreed) and no stills.

LONG:
Conditions appeared favorable for tornadic supercells across the eastern TX Panhandle on Thursday (4/22), with a big "go here" target at Palo Duro Canyon southeast of Amarillo. Ascent from an approaching shortwave was priming the environment and acting to increase vertical shear. The thick, north-south oriented stratus deck across the eastern OK/TX Panhandle and western OK was eroding on its western side, leaving behind a favorable NNW-SSE oriented baroclinic zone. This boundary was well-defined on the 2045Z visible satellite image with enhanced cumuliform clouds along it and transverse roll clouds to its east. Numerous mesonet surface obs (UCAR/RAP 20Z, 22Z) across the southeast TX PH indicated SE-ESE winds of 15-25kt funneling 61-64F dew points along the Red River Valley right up the Palo Duro Canyon. Meanwhile, 15-20kt W-SW winds behind the dryline was increasing convergence. Our plan was to intercept storms forming near the Palo Duro Canyon as they quickly crossed the baroclinic boundary.

Our main problem was we were about about 30-45 minutes late for the first tornadoes between Goodnight and Jericho, TX with storm A. The storm crossed the boundary pretty early in its life cycle which is why some chasers were surprised on US 287 near Goodnight.

Road options were bad north of I-40, so we decided to position ourselves in front of storm A near the TX 273/FM 2857 intersection about 10 N of McLean ~25 miles ahead of the storm's position (southwest of Jericho) and wait the 30-40 minutes for the storm to approach. All the while hoping the storm wouldn't ingest lower theta-e air and die. This was a mistake. We never had a good view because cloud bases were too low and FM 273 had too many hills. We saw a strongly rotating, ground-scraping wall cloud cross TX 273, but the storm looked very cold and then the next occlusion jumped about 5 miles to our north. In retrospect, we should recognized this was a mistake considering:

1. The boundary was oriented NNW-SSE
2. Storm motion was to the northeast, almost perpendicular to the boundary
3. Significantly lower thete-e air at our intercept point since 22Z McLean mesonet was 66/60 (compared to 73/62 at Clarendon and 77/63 at Turkey).
4. Storm B (and eventually storm C) forming back at the genesis location near Palo Duro Canyon was seeding our storm A

We finally realized the folly of our initial decision and drove back to I-40 near Alanreed in order to intercept storm B and storm C as they crossed the baroclinic boundary.

This decision payed off as we observed a 2-3 minute long multi-vortex tornado as storm B crossed north of I-40 near Alanreed. We observed it about 2-3 miles to our WNW-NW from I-40/TX FM 291. The first (main) vortex was a stovepipe that quickly evolved into a snake as it tracked north at a rapid speed while it rotated around the east side of the meso, dissipating on the north side. After a 30 second pause, another diffuse, vortex developed that quickly became rain wrapped and/or dissipated. I don't know the exact time, but Greg submitted a Spotter Network report shortly after the tornado dissipated and/or we lost sight of it. At this time, the supercell was overtaken by a developing squall line and this meso evolved into the cyclonic comma-head echo of a Line Echo Wave Pattern (LEWP). The LEWP/bow echo then tracked into OK after dark.

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

I let the first cell slip away to my and waited on the second cell headed for Goodnight. I thought it was falling apart, so I was blasting east. Looked in my mirror and there was a funnel coming down. Definitely was the tornado of the day for me. Considering how bad the chaser zoo was around I-40, things did go pretty smooth.

South of Goodnight, TX

NW of Goodnight, TX

NE of Paducah, TX

 

[Tim Stoecklein]

Preliminary target for the day was Eads, CO. Had a little mini chaser convergence where I finally had the opportunity to meet more of the CO contingent in Michael, Eric, Kendall, Dann, and Scott. Went after the storm which popped in Bent Co, and as you see from Michael's post, we were rewarded very nicely with a couple of great tornadoes at once. No need to post more images, mine were from the north with worse contrast anyway!

Once the tornadoes dissipated, the storm crossed north over Hwy 50, and proceeded to drop another tornado about 5-8 miles further on. I just caught the end of a beautiful white elephant trunk to rope out before getting turned around at the advice of the Bent Co sheriff.

I was bailing out early to head back home when I managed to stumble across one more circulation on the NW side of Kit Carson. The hail with this cell was insane, but true to CO ways, the snow plows were already out clearing Hwy 40.

All in all a great day in CO! Almost seemed a shame to head home early given the number of tornadoes across E CO! I'll try to add some pictures once I get a chance to process them.

 

[Chris C Sanner]

Pretty much the same story as many others. Caught 7 tornadoes, including 3 from a fairly close distance near Jericho. The rest we were not in position for, so no need in sharing video from those. Posted a short video with some clips from our fun in Jericho:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbMqe2zLcHs

 

[Matt Gingery]

One of my more memorable chase experiences to date. We had set up for the day in Shamrock Tx. sfc moisture was abundant, but still a question as to if the low deck would erode. I was chasing with Bart Comstock and friends when we noticed some cells beginning to take shape off the 287 corridor. The first cell was the one we honestly thought would produce for us before we ran out of road networks. We noticed a tail end charlie that had a formidable wall cloud but needed maturing. We were talking with Chris Wilburn debating on heading to the north out of Clarendon when the cell we had been watching quickly produced a elegant tornado 5-8 miles to our west. The tornado remained over mainly rural areas as it transformed into a wedge then stove pipe. We traversed up hwy 287 and intercepted the tornado as it crossed the highway just 50 yards in front of us. The video of course does no justice, but I am happy to have had the chance to film and enjoy this storm with my chase buddies this day. . .We ended up intercepting 3 total tornadoes. The second was as the original cell roped out and occluded it formed a brief secondary tornado to the southwest. 3rd tornado was near Childress after 9pm where we encountered 60-70mph RFD in the bears cage. There was a possible 4th tornado as the Goodnight tornado peaked. We had a developing satellite tornado to our adjacent west, just off the highway but remained focused on the larger more dominant circulation thus don't have video to substantially back up a 4th. What a day!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt0FaTTVVYE