4/25/09 REPORTS: OK/KS

[afischer]

Sat in a parking lot in Elk City looking at data for a couple hours (tied to WIFI data), unsure of which storms to commit to. Finally I actually committed, and headed south and east a bit to observe the two tail-end-charlie supercells after sunset... more or less sitting at a point south of Cordell OK between 830 and 930 PM. This was only the 7th time I've chased in Oklahoma since 2002, and it still feels like strange and unfamiliar territory to me. A couple photos and brief discussion of the Cordell OK supercells are on my blog at the following link, along with some meteorological discussion/data from the Kansas Turnpike tornado near Linwood. http://tornadoheadblog.blogspot.com/

 

[Cris Schroeder]

Finally posting some pics from Saturday. The first shot was taken west of South Haven, KS looking northwest as the wall cloud attempted to develop.

Another shot from the same location maybe 20 minutes later, looking north, as it moved to the north of my location:

The storm started getting its act together after crossing US 81 north of South Haven. This shot, looking east from US 81, was taken around the time it became TOR-warned, as it moved off towards Oxford, KS.

Here is a telephoto shot of the nicely developed wall cloud approaching Oxford. This was looking north from US 166, between South Haven and Ark City.

This shot was taken just west of Winfield, KS of the same cell as it moved NE from Oxford. The wall cloud to the left is the original circulation I had been following all afternoon, while another lowering formed to the SE of the original (on the right in the photo).

A tornado was reported from this storm shortly thereafter, near Douglass, KS, as I headed home. Go figure.

 

[Daniel Christianson]

2nd part of chase ( Ok im 98% sure i caught brief glimpses of the Kremlin OK tornado. At the time there were reports of a tornado near Kremlin OK to being a mile wide, and damage being reported. First view is from Hwy 412 that runs into Enid OK, im looking to the Northeast. Im then on Hwy 60 Northbound from Enid and looking directly north. At this time there were vehicles pulled off to the side of the road with law enforcement/spotters ahead of them. It was raining hard but there was a sudden change in the direction it was coming from, i didn't move any further as to my fear of maybe being a little to close for comfort. Esp at night when your relying on lightning. Ill post pics of the supercell i was on and then the Kremlin Ok one, sorry im just reviewing all the video and getting around to doing a chase summary, long drive from Omaha NE to OK!.. so more specifics to come!

 

[Brendon Lindsey]

Well, I hadn't planned on chasing until I realized I could get two chases in for the price of one. So I set out Saturday morning from Tahlequah,OK. Ended up in Fairview,OK took the cell that fired NW of there. Followed it a while, as it produced nothing. Got to my parents house in Enid. Ate 2 awesome cheeseburgers, and around 10:30 or after dark sometime, Tornado warned cell came over our town, I headed out. I saw all three of the tornadoes, I have never had so much trouble with the police. Also there was the least amount of lightning for a tor warned storm I have ever seen making this night chase near impossible. Realized night chasing is not worth it, I picked up some random chaser from out on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and we both got back into town at 3AM =/. I went to N Enid the next day where the First Tor hit. Wasn't able to get into Kremlin, actually I didn't try, my dad just said US 81 N of town was flooded.

DAMAGE...

 

[Adam Lucio]

My full account for this day is up. Has video of us getting munched by some tennis ball size hail. I wish I could get these full accounts up sooner, but I have to spend a day driving home and my way of documenting is a long one.

Awesome shots Brendon.

www.aerostorms.com

 

[Ben Holcomb]

Finally got my recap posted at http://www.benholcomb.com/20090425.html

 

[Paul Stofer]

Well, I'm late on getting my summary up, but here goes.. My chase partner and I left for our target around Shamrock, TX from our hotel in Woodward, OK around 11am. We arrived in Shamrock off I40 and ran into chaser convergence. We wanted to distance ourselves a little further from the approaching / stalled cold front so we went East on I40 and arrived in Erik, Oklahoma along with Michael Seger, his friend, the TIV crew, Reed and some others. Michael, his friend, my chase partner and myself decided that we needed to relocate a little further North so we went North on SR30. Along 30 we observed penny sized hail. We then went East and then South on Custer City Rd just East of Clinton OK to intercept a cell that was dropping reported baseball hail and had signs of rotation. We sat at a Loves truck stop and observed quarter sized hail. We watched a rotating supercell approach our location from the West. The storm produced a very large, rapidly rotating wall cloud. The rotation associated with this wall cloud was very impressive. The base began to drop funnel after funnel, so we reported this to 911 and the local NWS. The storm never did produce a tornado, but had beautiful structure. We called it the end of the chase and returned to Norman to stay the night. Nothing else significant was observed. Here are a couple of photos from the day.

 

[Rocky Rascovich]

Finally getting around with this summary, albeit brief.. while the facts and figures are still remotely fresh. Charles Edwards, Mark McGowen, Dustin Aldridge.. my son Leif and yours truly embarked on what turned out to be a tornadoless adventure. We hung around the Foss Lake area, watched several cells with feeble attempts at producing wall clouds. (Did see one real nice mid level funnel coming out of the side of one cell a little south of Foss Lake at around 1815cdt) We were really torn over what storms to target. We ended up on the storm that went a little north of Hammon, OK. where there was a chaser convergence and accompanying film crews. That storm tried hard to produce but no cigar. We ended up at dusk going back south to Clinton where we experienced a barrage of 1 to 2" diameter hail just after dusk.
Leif really enjoyed himself despite not seeing any tornadoes.. I think he's starting to get a real interest in weather.. especially wanting to photograph lightning. Overall, a rewarding day and as always, it's great to chase with Charles.

 

[Bill Tabor]

Guess I better get a placeholder in here before I forget everything. This will be short for now. Third chase of the season for me. First was to south of Lone Grove, OK and second was out toward Llano, Tx. No tube on either.

Left Austin about 12 due to chase setup and configuration issues. Shot north and right into the action of the developing / training supercells emmanating from around Childress. Got on a supercell that eventually was near Lone Wolf, OK. This cell had a nice clear flank with a wallcloud at times and the precip core off to the right. After a while it had a funnel extending from the middle of the wallcloud. Later a tail cloud formed off the wallcloud extending in the direction (right) toward the rain foot as I looked on toward the north. This tail cloud became very laminar and lowered almost if not on the ground and was in some of the mist of the rain foot. I know what a tail cloud is and looks like, but for some reason I thought it was a funnel cloud and logged it that way on Spotternet. At the time, I thought it was still part of the earlier funnel. Looking at video later I think it is obvious it was a tail cloud but a very active one. Can a tail cloud (an inflow feature extending from a wallcloud be tornadic? Personally I am not sure. Others can enlighten me. Anyway, it was cool to watch and I got to mess with Spotternetwork and found I had issues with it. It took me at least 10 minutes to sub my report due to slow bandwidth / Google Map zooming issues. Between that and trying to get my dashcam to stream live video I had very little time to actually observe the storm or what was going on. I blame part of my poor report on that. Perhaps a lesson learned. All the multi-tasking while chasing alone can be quite taxing and distracting and really takes away from just the fun of the chase and watching the storm.

After that I continued ENE a bit I believe on hwy 9 toward Hobart. Looking out the left side of the window the supercell continued and from the inflow / wallcloud region it appeared a very slim laminar funnel extended all the way to ground from a high base. My dashcam was pointed forward so I didn't get the shot. I decided to quickly U turn and go back to hwy 44 which I had just passed and went N in the direction of Cambridge/Sentinel. Immediately the funnel feature was wrapped in thin precip at first, and then the whole thing began to widen and became very bulbous and wrapped in rain. This was a very odd looking feature. I was thinking I had a potential rain wrapped tornado but I was having trouble seeing through to verify. This feature was very active and appeared quite strong/intense. At times I believe I could see a darker funnel feature inside extending to ground. Because of this and believing most chasers were further north due to the earlier storm I decided to report it as a tornado. I don't guarantee it was for sure, but it looked potentially dangerous and it also looked like it could indeed be a tornado. Because Spotternetwork had been so unruly previously I decided to use my Street Atlas to call the NWS. Turns out that number is now bad and I got a non-working number message. So, I decided to use 911. They seemed somewhat clueless about what I was talking about. After awhile he just said ok, and then gave me a non-emergency number to call in other weather reports. Hah- whatever that means. 20 minutes after the fact I did sub it to sub it to Spotternetwork. They never did tornado warn the cell. In retrospect I have reviewed the video and showed it to Gene. Gene thought it looked a bit to him as a wet microburst. However, he only saw that portion of the video and didn't see it's location in the storm. This was not part of the precip core at all. It descended straight from the center of the inflow region that contained the wall cloud as I had previously been tracking. This was a previously rain free base. Now, perhaps the updraft was collapsing some and rain was pouring through. I kind of doubt it. Gene also didn't watch a lot of it closely. As I reviewed it on the little camcorder 2" screen there is a part where I can distinctly see a pseudo clear laminar tube on the front side of the feature all the way to ground. It quickly gets wrapped again. Anyway, after my review I still believe it is a tornado. I have some pics, and I may do a short Youtube clip just so some of you can analyze. It is very interesting IMO and a good learning clip I believe.

After that it got dark and not much else happened except met up with Gene, and David Douglas / Randy Denzer. Randy is now with TVN and we holed up in a motel. I chatted with Reed a bit when his new TIV type red armoured vehicle showed up. Quite the interesting ride. Next morning had a bit of a chat with Tim Samaras at breakfast.

It was a fun chase, and I'm surprised I was able to get into the thick of it. I almost turned around and went home after a 2 hour delay trying to leave in the morning. I was thinking I had very little chance and would most likely miss everything. I did miss the earlier storm up on the boundary further north. That likely would have been where I would have ended had I left earlier - along with pretty much everybody else. However my target area forecast was really closer to CDS and just east of there which is what I ended up playing and turns out I think that worked well. I almost had the storms down there to myself.

I'll post a pic when I get the chance.

 

[Buddy W Bradley]

Nighttime tornado in Enid OK

Here are a few pics from the chase of 4-25-09 in western OK including the nighttime tornado which struck Enid OK about 10:10pm on Saturday Evening.

Hope you enjoy looking at these and if you have comments or want to reach me you can @ [email protected] or (cell)417-299-1154.

Thanks!
Buddy

 

[Bill Tabor]

Finally getting around to posting some pictures:

The image above shows just after I made my U turn and after what I believe was a skinny tornado from a high base was wrapping with rain. The rain wrap happened only seconds after the tornado began. It was after this the whole feature got much wider. The tornado is the darker tube almost in the middle of the precip - perhaps slightly left of center. These images are shrunk down and compressed showing less detail than my originals.

In the image above you can barely see the small hollow looking laminar funnel extending from cloud base to ground along the leading edge (right) of the precipitation under the wallcloud. The top appears to be dark / conical as well. There may be something on the back side (left) too - I can't make it out really. In the video I reviewed there is a brief instant where it is out of the precip and it is clear that the hollow tube appears to be a legit tornado.

 

[Dann Cianca]

Woo! Finally got my report done!

Brief synopsis: Left Colorado with Jason Burns on Saturday at 5AM and got to our target of Shamrock, TX on right on schedule just before initiation. Followed our first storm all afternoon/evening and got 2" hail, plenty of structure, and a wall that almost produced. We had position on this storm for most of its life and until dark but unfortunately/fortunately it didn't produce a tornado. Did see a few gustnadoes early on, however. Tons of pics and video here:

http://blog.bigskyconvection.com/2009/05/2009-storm-chase-vi-brief-day-one-april.html

 

[Doug Mitchell]

Stayed home because I felt sick and wanted to watch the NFL draft...ended up chasing the tornado warned storm that passed right over Lawrence...will eventually upload the video of the rotating wallcloud passing right over KU.

 

[James Wilson]

Here's video of the start and run of the tornado North of Eudora Kansas.

 

[Eric Flescher]

which road were you on in your video?

I am so peeved. I figured I was just due east and north and missed it .
I will post my video of hail etc soon
congrats!
::

Here's video of the start and run of the tornado North of Eudora Kansas.