4/24/07 REPORTS: TX / OK / KS / CO

[Chris Sokol]

Well...dang. Played the dryline in Oklahoma way too long. We did get on the Kansas storms, but just a bit too late. We were actually stopped for gas in Kingman watching the television reports a tornado, but by the time we reached the storm, the sun was going down and the show was pretty much over. Oh well...saw some incredible structure form these storms on the way to them. The storm that went tornadic actually pulled apart another decent looking cell to the southwest of it. We closed out the night by briefly visiting the cell that went up rapidly behind the one that everybody else was on, but the sun had set, and it died just as rapidly as it formed. All in all, a fun day though!

 

[Jay Cazel]

The day started out in Wellington Kansas where I ended up meeting up with fellow stormtrack members Tyler Costantint, Joey Ketcham, Chris Wilburn and Bart Comstock.

After sitting around Wellington and watching the Dow truck scan the sky that seemed like it took hours, waiting for something to happen we all made the decision to head towards Salina Ks to get into position where the dry line started to fire up some storms. After a quick pit stop in Salina we headed west on I-70 to the cell that was Tornado warned in Ellsworth Co.

We ended up about 1 mile east of Ellsworth Ks and the storm never really put down any circulation (that we saw) it did have some nice out flow and after talking with the DOW team they where not impressed either.

So then, we started to head south towards the Rice and Reno co storms and ended up about 1 mile north of Nickerson on N Nickerson Rd. From our vantage point, it went right over us and we did see 5-7 different touchdowns from that cell and at least one multiple circulation.

All in all was a great chase day and we ended up in Newton at the Applebee’s for dinner.
Cannot wait to see you guys in the field again, had a wonderful time.

Congrats to all who were on the storms yesterday!

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

I was on the first tornado warned storm as it went up, after struggling for a long time the storms finnally got somewhat organized. If the intial storm would have ever been able to move a little more East then North we may of had a decent shot, anyway after that storm weakend I debated too long on rather to waste the time/money to drop south for the other tornado warned storm, after screwing around for too long I decided to try it only to arrive about 15 minutes after the last tornado. I have a few pics up on the link provided.

http://www.severechase.com/4-24-07.htm

 

[Caleb Kimbrough]

Here are a few photos from yesterday. Sorry for the crappy quality...I'm kinda in a hurry and don't have time to edit them well.

A few of the funnels/tornadoes"

And a few of the storm structure:

I have a lot more but I don't want to crowd the page...so check out our reports section on our website in a few days for the full report and more photos.

It was a fun one....let's hope we have many more like it!

Caleb

 

[John Diel]

Bustola! At least for me.
Hung out at I-35 and US 60 for a bit watching chasers streaming north. Unfortunatly, I had to stick pretty close to home as I was acting as a Spotter rather than a Chaser.

Spoke with Joey Ketcham for a bit and now I'm jealous. Heard about all the folks laying in wait at the Wal-Mart parking lot.

Anyway, not too long afterwards, I cut south to Red Rock for a impending warning, ended up in Marland at the Warning and pretty well followed this complex of storms over to Pawhuska on a TOR warned imbedded cell. Either my data wasn't updating well or I wasn't reading it well but I never saw a tight couplet, but did see the broad area of circulation. I decided NOT to try to get through the rain shield to see the Tornado (wasn't even sure there was one there) and with images of Chris Collura in mind, I turned around and headed to the barn.

On the way back, a friend called me and told me about the Tornado that had been video taped on the ground 5 miles NW of Pawhuska.

Oh well, such is life.

 

[AndrewLee]

Always a little late to the party

Started out early from Kansas City at about 10:00am and headed toward ICT. I tried to chase a few of the early storms that crossed the OK/KS border near ICT, but they were quickly falling apart. Wichita was a black hole for storms today, they drifted near the city and it sucked all the energy from 'em . I hung out at a rest stop on I-35 just north of ICT for about an hour and decided to head for McPherson where I checked out the developing Cu field to the west. (Incidently I was checking data in the parking lot of Montana Mike's. Guess I should have stuck around for dinner later ).

Some cells started to pop along the dry line and I chased those north on Hghwy 14 from Lyons,KS to the intersection of Hghwy 14 and Hghwy 4. I have never seen so many chasers packed onto one road as I did yesterday. Not much to see with those storms (in terms of good structure), but I did catch some nice rainbow shots.

I noticed that the southern storm (Reno/Rice Counties) was really tightening up on radar and flew south to catch it near Nickerson. I was too late for the big show but did manage to catch some rotation on camera (no tornadoes though).

Reno/Rice storm as seen from ~25 miles North :

A close shot of the rotation on the Reno/Rice storm before it died:

The updraft base of the Reno/Rice storm as it was dying:

Random nice shot from the Reno/Rice storm about the same time:

Today epitomizes my chase season so far - always just a little late to the party. I feel your pain Mike H., bad choices seem to be the only ones I can make these days

Andrew Lee

 

[Mikey Gribble]

Deleted to due tone of post

 

[Mikey Gribble]

Here is a link to the preliminary tornado map from the National Weather Service from yesterday's storm by McPherson Kansas. My tornado count of 6 from yesterday doesn't look so exagerated now considering they already have 7 tornadoes on the preliminary map. The tornadoes in red and blue text represent the same tornadoes on multiple touch downs. I am starting to feel vindicated and I am starting to slowly feel my credibility return.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ict/scripts/viewimage.php?STORY_NUMBER=2007042505&IMG_NUM=7&loc=remote

 

[George Grant]

El Bustola

Well now I don't feel so bad about busting too far east yesterday...it makes counting easier! Much more of this and people will call busting, "you Hollingshead", sort of like "Munson" in the movie Kingpin.

Well, sorry to say Mike, but I seriously contend for that honor. There is a certain reason why I have ONE post now. I'll preface that with the fact that I have little time for other than a few serious chases every spring. So...

I originally headed to Topeka thinking that I would stop at the I-470 Wanamaker truck stop for data. Well, that truck stop is NO LONGER PRESENT! And, this is a city I visit every spring for the drag races!
Since my wireless card was not playing well with several of the * Inns, I stopped at a gas station and asked the Pepsi vendor where I might find the nearest truck stop. West on I-70 or down the turnpike. Here was my chance--and according to Engvall--was where I picked up my card! I headed southwest to Emporia to the FlyingJ for data. It was either back up the turnpike and west on I-70, west on US50, or hang around for something seemingly starting to fire to the south/southwest.

So, for reasons unknown to... well, EVERYONE, I head south on K99 to Madison and left on K58 towards Gridley. I remembered someone saying he hated driving through the Flint Hills. I didn't know where the Flint Hills were three days ago, but, now I hate driving through the Flint Hills.
I was headed towards US75 when I decided this was worthless and got back to K99 heading north again. About this time, a new tornado watch box was issued for this area. As it was darkening to my west, I figured I was on the western edge of this area. Heading back to Emporia for quick data, I encountered about 20 vehicles in a row heading south for a position on an encroaching storm. So, now I'm thinking I'm King Sh** for being the only one out there BEFORE the watch box was issued.

I get to Emporia for three spectacular strikes of lightning about half a mile south of me in a field south of the FlyingJ. I picked up I-35 NE to Ottawa and went north to follow the gully-washers back to St. Joe. Then, up I-29 to the cold, wind, and rain in Omaha.

Yet another stunning chase.

 

[Matt Chatelain]

After targeting south central oklahoma for supercells that turned into a mass of rain, we noticed that the ruc was forcasting an insane low level jet from I-35 to the east south of Dallas, and cape around 3000-3500. So we flew south and then spc went "high risk" for the area we were targeting so excitement increased as we were driving south in a massive downpoar through the DFW metroplex. Then we noticed that the dryline wasn't making much eastward progess and storms started firing WAY to the west of I-35. We then got on the commanche supercell and the tornado threat seemed very limited with lower 850 flow it was in. Core punched it a few times and saw some really great lightning but that was really the highlights of our chase.

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Here is a 4 minute video of the tornadoes from yesterday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F83NXn0q9co

 

[Shane Adams]

Since I'm having beers and there's nothing better to do, I'll post my report from yesterday. I had no clue where I wanted to go at all during my morning forecast..er, data examination. There were pros and cons to everything I saw, and instead of just making a decision....I hedged. At first I wanted to go north into S Kansas, and was planning to, but at the last minute, I changed my mind and decided that for starters, we should play the line forming in southwest OK. My plan was to go south on I-35, stay ahead of the line, and grab whatever isolated sup formed ahead of it.....thinking this was "round one." Well, a bunch of isolated stuff formed ahead of it, and before we could even reach a good one, it all began to congeal into a big mass of crap.....so we bailed out in Ardmore, foresaking north Texas (which we briefly considered) and decided to head back west for "round two", thinking we'd be the "smart chasers" who stuck around in OK and would get the main show while everyone else was either drowning in SE OK/NE TX or twiddling their thumbs in C kansas along the WF. Turns out we were the ones who ended up twiddling thumbs...actually we were throwing rocks at a bottle floating in a large puddle....while everyone else was scoring in Kansas or Texas.

Don't feel bad H......I suck worse than you do. At least you have a talent with photography, LOL. All I got to fall back on is WX-CHASE LOL.

 

[Ben Prusia]

I, like many others, caught up with the tail-end Charlie in NW Reno County. From my vantage point at 43rd Avenue and K-14 (3 miles south of K-96), I managed to see about 3 different touchdowns, one of which had debris for a moment.

Pictures and complete chase report on my website:
http://www.vortexpursuit.com/ChaseLogs/04242007/index.html

 

[Joey Ketcham]

My report is the same as Jay Cazel's... what an amazing chase day it was! Here are some of my pics..

One of the tornadoes, center of the pic.

I got all my pictures uploaded now, check em' out... http://kschaser.com/cpg1410/thumbnails.php?album=40

 

[Mikey Gribble]

Either the NWS added one more tornado to the preliminary map or I missed one of them earlier, but the total is now up to 8 tornadoes on the McPherson storm according to the National Weather Service. I'm not trying to be a wise a$$ either with the counting comment mods, so please don't give me with another infraction. Honest to god the map either got updated or I missed one.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ict/scripts/viewimage.php?STORY_NUMBER=2007042505&IMG_NUM=7&loc=remote
I am making a copy of my video for the NWS to hopefully help out with determining the number of tornadoes and locations/times. After watching it while I uploaded it to my computer I believe we had a total of 6 different tornadoes on Tuesday, all of them were well seperated in both space and time. I am going to do my best to mark locations and times on a map and I will post the results along with video tomorrow.