4/24/08 REPORTS: KS/NE/IA

[Dustin Wilcox]

Will be brief, school work is piling up, full write up and pics on my site by end of weekend. Was on the Hill City storm basically from it's true birth (after watching the previous storm move North). Watched it get its act together just before dark, and then stuck with it all the way to East of Osborne, about 12:30 a.m. or so. I believe the 4.25 Hail report in Stockton is bogus, unless it was outside of town (not what report says) I sat under bank overhang and let the core over take me in Stockton nothing larger than MAYBE golfballs, albeit wind driven. I did come across 2.00 hail NW of Osborne. The storm really looked it's best near and just to the East of Osborne. Due to some mud I had to let it go about 10 miles East of Osborne.

I took a few pics at night as well that I will have to sort through and see how they turned out...

 

[Doug_Kiesling]

I chased the eastern side of the setup in Iowa yesterday and was forecasting for the Dows Iowa area. That's Dows as in the town, not the chaser traveling carnival...

Anyway, was hoping for something right around sunset and it fired up right around the dark. It was a fun chase as the TVS ended up right on top of me but the visibility was poor and the storms were not photogenic with the lcl pretty much at a couple hundred feet.

Posted some vid caps on my blog
http://www.lightningboy.net/content/tornado-chase-last-night-winter-storm-tonight

Tornado chasing last night, winter storm tonight and I'm not in Colorado...

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

I wish I could have gotten some shots of this, (and should have told Ryan to take it with his superwide) but where this shot was taken we have driven under the inflow beavertail which is feeding into the storm from almost due east. We are just a bit south of it in the pics and shooting west. But you could actually see inflow condensation at different levels on this storm. There was another from the E-SE and another (higher) from the SE. The moisture was apparently deep and this storm, from the east side looked like a giant pinwheel with (what appeared to be) three separate inflow bands at different heights. You could literally see where the helicity was coming from. That was amazingly cool, in itself.

You are right, those were really cool. Gotta love the 10mm!

Earlier, not much earlier, it had a long one going southeast off the se side of the base.

I have a better image of it while driving while it was thinner. An updraft looked to have formed on that and fed nw up into the storm. That lightning bolt was luck, since I don't have a lightning trigger and that was 1/60th shutter.

More later, probably a couple days. Guessing I'll post a video of the hail and high speed, car sized, car trashing tumbleweeds.

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

Though a storm never did fire along the dryline, I still saw tornado damage (it was just about a year old though). After watching the few clouds that were along the dryline completely vanish, we ventured back behind the dryline to go see Greensburg. By the time we left for home the dryline had moved west of us there. Seeing Greensburg was far more interesting than most the chases I have been on this year so far. There is still so much work to be done there. In the picture, notice the completely clear sky, not what I was hoping for yesterday. The NAM and GFS, know what they are doing (somewhat), and the RUC with all that precip does not.

 

[Jerry Funfsinn]

I intercepted the cell in NW Kansas just NW of Hoxie. It had a nice wall cloud when I encountered it with strong SE winds. The wall
cloud was soon undercut by outflow and it shifted away from me as fast as I could drive toward it. I abondoned it and headed east towards what was
lurking under those inflow tails. I could make out a wall cloud in poor contrast but soon lost this feature to huge dust plumes. I continued east
watching under the meso during lightning flashes.A visible clear slot developed and I could just make out something between illumination. I stayed to long to look
as hurricane winds approached and blinded my visiblity to drive away. Well I got MUNCHED by this storm because I took the first road I could see and became stuck in the mud. I can't
verify the softball report but it soon rained baseballs.It took a good half hour to navigate that liquid snot road but I did come back upon the cell just
west of Hill City. I waited for the storm to clear my path and then proceeded towards home.
Burned out after 2700 miles, but did manage to chase the tor warned cells today in the QCA as I was passing through there.

Video of the chase is posted on my website.

Nortwest of Hoxie KS.

Taken 2 miles north of Tasco KS at 0148Z looking north.

 

[Verne Carlson]

Started the day meeting up with Tony Laubach, Ryan Shepard and Skinner in Hays, KS were we repositioned to near Ness City and met up with Mike Umchied. Watched as CU struggled against the cap and shot up to Colby, KS when the cell coming out of Burlington, CO intensified.

I got one crazy flight in with the Wicked Witch 3 after repositioning three times to get ahead of the outflow winds north of Rexford, KS. The witch landed only 100 yards in front of me in a wheat field but it took me and a very helpful family stopping by twenty minutes to find it. With the help of their daughter I was able to recover the plane and the video!

Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihXYVep6Dfw

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Here are the pics, as promised. All images courtesy of Flickr hosting (www.flickr.com). I can merge this with my first post if that's what the admins want.

Driving towards Atwood -- quite a rain foot on the storm at that time. Shot through the windshield.

After we left Atwood; looking west as we drive south to try to get under it. This is the first wall cloud that formed (that we saw); it was amazing how fast it popped out of nowhere.

We pulled over about half way to Seldon and then near the Seldon intersection to sit back and enjoy the thing for a while:

Not sure who's car that is, but he's probably reading this forum.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3035/2442581664_896f4a10c5_o.jpg

The wallcloud got organizied again. We were on funnel/debris watch, but I'm pretty sure all the dust we saw was outflow.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3199/2442581326_a76b62f5b2_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2143/2442581212_73d53a735b_o.jpg

Sat at the Seldon intersection until it got pretty dark, then bopped east to Hill City, trying to beat getting cored.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2138/2442581122_2433c1d1f4_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2130/2441752593_21e33aae1f_o.jpg

We ended the night by sitting atop a hill south of Hill City to watch the storm roll in and just barely miss coring the town as the storm took a last second left jog.

Great chase to start the season!

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

Target: My house in Ames, Iowa, once again.

Setup and Expectation: Before I left to teach my Calc II class at 5 PM, I glanced at the RUC to see if the evening was worth chasing/local spotting. Observing the latest DMX soundings revealed some low-level CAPE, slow but nonetheless backing winds, okay helicity, and ~800m base (ick). Thinking there was a minimal but definite tornado potential, I decided to head out to a SVR warned cell near Jefferson.

Description: I drove forty miles to Jefferson, using my cell phone's dinky radar and NWS warnings to estimate a path for the hail core, which I wanted to intercept. The storm remained SVR for the entire length of the journey, and stayed SVR over our position.

The cell seemed to divide in two at first, splitting up to the west of Jefferson, with the non-warned northern portion taking on some vague HP characteristics. I was close to heading south of the area to intercept the core, but noticed what I thought to be a lowering on the SE edge of the northern portion. I turned north and took some brief footage of that instead, and, idiotically, got way too close, thinking it was probably nothing more than crap that my inexperience was chalking up to wishing.

When it was around a mile away or so, it lowered into what I thought was a bowl. Just as the Good Lord intended, my Hi-8 tape ran out while I thought I was still recording, so I didn't catch that portion on tape, but my roommate snapped some photographs of the bowl. After rewinding my tape and cursing my luck, I got my camera to record again, and right on cue the mysterious lowering dissipated within the span of five minutes.

As with every single one of my other chases apart from the total bust on the seventh, my cell phone went out when the sun went down. Not even over the Northern Missouri hellhole have I seen a red 'x' with an SOS above it, but it was nonetheless fun to see that one. My new Radio Shack portable HAM/Severe WX radio apparently has a battery life of an hour, because that went out too even though it was fully charged - that one is taking a quick trip back to the mall tonight for an exchange.

So even though we were in some clear territory, we had no idea what the weather situation was at the time the sun went down, so we played it safe back down to Jefferson and got an update that the most severe portion of our storm was now headlining the newly-formed mesofail tour of Central Iowa. A portion of the MCS became TOR twenty miles north of Ames, and I could have intercepted the hook, but another sinus-infected migraine led me home instead.

Conclusion: Just because your home state has flunked the interesting tornado exam for the past eight years doesn't mean you should assume something ominous is crap. It may have indeed been crap, but I will post the pictures I have of it in a DISC thread to get some more experienced opinions, as per the guidelines.

 

[Andrew Stoller]

Not sure who's car that is, but he's probably reading this forum.

The would be me! So I guess my account is essentially the same as yours Ryan.

I started out in Goodland as the cumulus field that developed there was decent and the high based storm formed around Burlington. To the east, another cell initiated and quickly went severe with golfball hail, so I headed east on 70, then north at Colby and essentially stayed on the southern fringe of all the convection. I started heading northeast more but realized the southern cell was going right mover big time. I passed Mike Hollingshead I believe (newer Mustang??), and flipped a bird and headed back south to the spot above and was amazed as well how fast the wall cloud formed. Equally as quickly, it seemed to occlude or got undercut and directly above me to the southwest, it looked like a new meso/cell was initiating and it also looked like big time precip and hail was closing in from all directions, so I made the right decision and hauled the mail south towards Hoxie. Thank goodness too, since I believe golfballs to softballs were being reported at the position above and to the northeast.

As the new meso got ramped up north of Hoxie, it had a small clear slot and looked like for a brief half minute, a small fully condensed needle funnel formed.

The wall cloud really got low and organized east of Hoxie, so I creeped east behind it trying to stay far enough back and not get hooked. Reached the peak of a hill and videoed the wall cloud/meso as it went right over Hill City. There's one spot in my video where the wall cloud became very structured with a raggedy funnel 3/4s to the ground. Never saw any power flashes, just insane lightning.

Then I hooked up with Mark Farnik and headed to Wakeeny for the night.

All in all, a great chase day, and I'm really getting the hang of chasing. The biggest thing I've learned in my virgin chase career is PATIENCE. Don't crap out, even if only a severe thunderstorm watch is issued, as tornado/storm structure potential is still there.

 

[Kory Hartman]

Sorry it took me so long to contribute to the thread...

I left Mitchell, SD at 7:30 AM with an initial target of the NE/KS border somewhere southwest of Kearney, NE. After getting lunch and gas at Kearney, I headed south to Norton, KS. Spent a good chunk of the afternoon at the Prairie Dog State Park wondering if I was busting.

Finally, someone called and said "there's a cell with hail popping near Goodland!" (I couldn't see it at first... with my default color pallette on GRLevel3 it was in the clutter).

I really didn't want to go any further west with the very long drive home ahead, but the urge got the best of me and I'm glad I headed east on US-36.

Just west of Oberlin, KS, I could see very crisp bubbling cu to my southwest, This was actually a cell that was between me and the original Goodland cell. I decided to wait for a bit to see what it would do. At first, the storm was taking a straight north path so I eased west into Atwood. I could see on Roger Hill's Live ChaseCam that he was looking at a nice cell so I gave him a call. He confirmed that he was just south of me near Colby.

It was very surreal to watch a storm with your eyes from the north, and then look at your laptop to see what the same storm looks like from the south. I decided to drop a little south of Atwood. After about 20 minutes, I thought the the storm was going to get undercut by some other convection, so I opted to go back north into Atwood to see what was going on there. This was a mistake because as I was making that little 5 mile trip, the storm reformed, made a right-turn, and started heading away from me.

Radar was showing very large hail now and I did not want to punch through to the south again, so I took a chance on a gravel road that headed southeast out of Atwood. This put me in prime position to view several lowerings and a nice wall cloud/possible funnel near Achilles, KS (you'll have to zoom WAY in on Google Maps to find it). I believe Goodland NWS issued the first TOR based on my report and what the live video feed looked like. Again, a great use of the SevereStudios ChaseCam Network!!

I zig-zagged southeast on a horrible network of rutted, sloppy gravel roads, almost getting stuck a couple times, until I got to US-83 near Rexford. The hail core and rotation just kept gaining on me even though I was doing 50mph at times trying to get away. I was told by Goodland that I just missed softball size hail in Selden as I kept dropping south and east, south and east on gravel after gravel. I was pelted by golfballs and all sorts of dust, debris, and tumbleweeds as 65mph inflow hit me over and over. You can see the video at http://www.severestudios.com/node/385

I finally made it off the gravel and out of the hail near Hoxie and jumped on US-24, hoping to beat the storm to Hill City. I didn't make it. Between Morland and Penokee I could see a major wall cloud closing in on the highway and Hill City. Tired of the wind and hail, I opted to get south again on County Road 539 (another gravel). While sitting just southwest of Hill City, I saw power flashes very near US-24. Between that and the signature on radar, I thought Hill City was toast. Fortunately, the cell began to weaken a bit right over town and a tornado never dropped (that I know of).

After all the excitement, tired of gravel roads, and with darkness now completely in control, I headed for home. On my way back to Norton, KS, the cold front caught up to me. Temperatures dropped into the mid 30's and 60+ mph winds blew one of my cell antennas off my car. I fought wind and rain all the way from Norton, KS to Tyndall, SD. Couldn't believe that same cell lasted until almost 3AM and produced an EF-2 tornado later near Beloit, KS. I pulled into my driveway at 4:20 AM.

I loved every minute.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Full Account now up HERE.

 

[afischer]

Brief chase account of the NW KS supercell: http://tornadohead.com/042408chase.htm

 

[Mike Umscheid]

For those interested, I have a complete album of images with captions available now from my Northwest KS high-based supercell chase. Here's the Linky Dinky