4/23/08 REPORTS: TX/OK/KS/CO/NE/MO

[Dick McGowan]

No tornado, sorry. I drove southwest to Ottawa, KS where I saw a neat shelf cloud on a non-severe thunderstorm. For the 5.00 in gas and 90 minutes I chased, I can not complain. Looking forward to seeing some pics of the tornadoes in Texas and a "real" chase tomorrow.

 

[Reed Timmer]

We got a nice stovepipe just southeast of Lamesa, TX with the storm that was riding the boundary for a short time. It was on the ground for about 5 minutes before rapidly roping out. The storm to the west wrapped up bigtime as well but didn't produce before being undercut by the boundary. I'll have some pictures and video up shortly...but the 12 hour drive to the NE/KS border will be intense.

 

[sdienst]

saw the same tornado southeast of Lamesa. Watched entire life from thin needle to stovepipe to ropeout. Ill hopefully have pics up by Friday.

 

[Shane Adams]

Chad, Mick, and I observed three brief tornadoes from the early supercells in Fisher county. The first was a stovepipe southwest of Rotan from the first storm, and lasted a few minutes, before becoming wrapped and disappearing. The next one was from the second storm further west, and was south of Roby. This tornado attained wedge status for a portion of its short life. The third was a well-developed dust whirl near Noodle, and lasted less than a minute.

We tried to fly west in time to get to the storm near Lamesa, but missed the tornado. We got about 15 minutes of awesome structure before the show was over. Eastbound on I-20 passing through Roscoe looking for food. Great day.

EDIT: Attention media people - stop calling Mickey's cell phone, we are NOT INTERESTED in screwing around with live on-air reporting or soliciting video. We're too busy to be messing around with you guys. In fact, you all need to just stop scanning spotternetwork.org looking for "scoops".

 

[Verne Carlson]

Spent the entire chase trying to get ahead of the lead cell along FM180. I had to back off from the core punch near Roby when sheet metal started flying across the road. A grain bin splayed out in front of me in the RFD winds. Heading now to Wichita, KS for tomorrow's moderate. Will post some video of the damage encoutered later.

 

[Tony Laubach]

On I-70 EB for Hays, KS for the night after breaking in Colorado in the 2008 season. Intercepted a tornado-warned cell near Idalia on Hwy 385 and took on a core of quarter-size hail. Strong cold outflow from the SW Kansas storms did us in as it dropped temps into the low to mid 60s. My choice to flip back north was probably the better choice for my situation as the reported tornadoes were way south and early and I would have never made it in time. The upshot is I wake up in tomorrow's target area.

Chased w/ Michael & Eric Carlson, Jon Van de Grift (welcome to 2008 chase), and briefly with Ed Grubb. Caravaning to Hays with Skippy and Shepard while relaxing to the smooth jazz of Chris Camozzi.

 

[Andrew Stoller]

Was right on the tornado warned cell from Stratton to Kirk, CO. Had a decent rain free base with a small RFD clear slot cutting into the back. Never really got organized to well - wouldn't have even classified it as a wall cloud, although it had a slight bit of rotation. Got in some quarter to golfball sized hall though as it really wrapped up and became outflow dominant.

HOLY MOLY the wind in eastern CO though. Around Burlington, at least 50 mph sustained. Made for lovely driving conditions.

 

[Bill Tabor]

Short: Intercepted the massive monster storm and rotation at Anson right before the cell merger and was treated to awesome dark dusty clouds, with blacks and green from likely serious hail. Shot south and saw the Noodle tornado west of Hawley. Tried to film it while driving but the expanding angry storm from the north was about to eat me. Not sure how good a shot I got. Continued to Abilene and east to Cisco where I played with cells. Eventually I broke sw of Cisco for a new meso cell coming up and watched it's flank for awhile. and somehow avoided a huge ugly core. Raced south more to escape an narrowly missed driving into a gustnado or dirt whirl tornado under the cloud base. It passed about 100 yards as I slammed on the brakes. That wasn't fun.

Also said hi to Tim Marshall and streamed video most of the time.

More details later in full account.

Update: I knew that storm looked bad at Anson. I'm on my way back through town now, and at the north end of town at the intersection of hwy 83 and 277 where I had been running my streaming cam for awhile the telephone repair dudes are out. I got out and asked a guy and he said the house nearby lost it's roof and there's about 30 telephone poles down. I knew that storm had a bit of a malestrom in it.

 

[B Doss]

Lamesa, TX

Screen caps 2200-0030Z

 

[cedwards]

We had a late start, but made it in time for some action. We turned east out of Albany, TX on 180 to get ahead of the storm, it had caught up to us by that time. One lone LARGE hailstone hit the roof. Our winds were strong out of the north, then suddenly they shifted out of the south. At that moment the Chris Sokol and Mike Ratliff reported the tornado right next to the van. We were right in the middle of an inflow jet and vapor was rising off of the road making it hard to see the road. Rocky floored it and didn't stop for a while despite me saying we got well ahead of it. He wanted to make sure we were safe, I got out briefly to catch a glimpse of the brief wedge. It was a bit poor contract, but definitely was there.

 

[Bob Schafer]

Oh, the joy of living in SE CO, instead of the mountains of NM!

I would have chased TX yesterday, but instead opted to keep an eye on the home front. I was rewarded when a reflectivity popped onto the radar, I stepped outside, and there it was, just 20 miles away over Lamar!

I eventually followed the slightly-high-based storm (in low-50's Td's) up to Sheridan Lake at CO96 and US385, where I caught this rapidly rotating WC:

As you can see, the storm base had come right down as there was some added moisture from precip from convection to the S. Inflow was quite substantial, though not extreme. I don't think there was a tornado in there, but it was impossible to tell for sure with all the dust being ingested. After this, the convection to the S killed the instability, and not too much later I headed the 30 miles home after measuring some 1.5" stones, and one oblong 1.75" stone 4 miles E of Sheridan Lake that fell from the later convection.

 

[Tim Marshall]

SHORT: Got wet. Should have stayed closer to home.

LONG: I had to work until 2 PM, then headed west on I-20. Hindsight says I shouldn't have left so soon. I got to ABI around 5PM, but the tornadic storm out there already had become outflow dominant. So, I immediately turned around and headed east on I-20. I saw on the Baron that a cluster of storms formed northwest of Stephenville and headed north toward I-20. Great, I thought. Unfortunately, the core planted itself on I-20, people stopped blocking traffic, and it became a long parking lot. Adding to the mess, was road construction and the Interstate was down to one-lane ---- for 15 miles --- in two areas. After spending over an hour in traffic, we decided just to head home. TM

 

[Eric Carlson]

Me, Michael Carlson and a new face to chasing went out for the Colorado setup. We jumped on the first tornado warned cell in the area and followed it all the way till it completely died out. Video in the blog post here:
http://stormchaserco.blogspot.com/2008/04/april-23rd-2008.html

 

[Kiel Ortega]

Angelyn Kolodziej and I decided to take a break from the NWC and go sample a storm. Around 6-615 Norman time, we headed south after the storm that was near Purcell. PAR data and helicopter shots were proof enough to go waste some gas. Just south of Slaughterville found the wall cloud...was ragged and no confined motions (everything was moving in some direction). Sat south of Slaughterville and watched as it got its act together, which at about the same time Scharf called us to let us know that it was looking more interesting on the PAR. The interesting look lasted about 2 min and we proceeded to the east...looking for hail! Finally got into the hail core west of Etowah, with a 1.25" measured. Eventually headed to the northeast and ended up 4 E of Pink for a crummy wall cloud and an area of enhanced (10 mph) rotation (which lasted for about 2 minutes). All in all a good break from the HWT grind...amazing amount of rain with the storm, occasionally had visibilities under 100 ft.

 

[Jerry Funfsinn]

Lowlights of the day, batteries on the camera went south and lost data and navigation at the moment of intercept west of Rotan. Highlights included a couple of fair size gustnadoes and a tornado south of Roby. I had the sh*t your pants lightning bolt after the Roby tornado and enjoyed looking straight up at the red hued laminar funnel near Noodle. All things considered a fun chase.
Video of the chase posted on my website.