4/9/09 REPORTS: OK/KS

[cedwards]

As Rocky mentioned in the now thread. I witnessed a surprising funnel on hte north side of Shawnee at about 2:15. It lasted almost 5 minutes. It extended at max about 1/4 way down from cloud base. This formed about 10 minuted before the first signs of precip in this cell that tracked NNE. I had previous commitments, so couldn't chase, but at least got something anyway. I didn't have the camera handy thus, didn't get the funnel at it's best stage.

 

[CZandbergen]

I will sum this one up as a bust. The dry line was further west than expected even looking at the later NAM and RUC runs. It just seemed to slow down just west of I35. We left Tulsa at 2PM and headed to Bartlesville as a starting point. There was some action to the NW close to the KS border, but I didn't like the Tds there so we decided to let the cell that fired close to Bristow come to us. We headed south to 1 mile east of Barnsdall and watched the cell fall apart as it headed our way. Time for plan B.

I was concerned the cells to the south would line out (and they did) so decided to see if we could catch the action in SC KS. We headed north on some marginal roads and caught a cell just south of Elk County KS that was putting out some hail but really had no rotation according to GRlevel3. We chased it up 99 and saw several others pulled off on the side of the road watching. The best view of the day was just to the NE of Howard KS on a really bad gravel and or mud road a little before 6PM. We were about 5 miles east on CR 2300. My radar feed was very spotty due to the cell coverage, but we had a nice wall cloud and a great view of the inflow into the storm. Took a few pics, but stayed pretty close to the car due to the cloud to ground strikes around us. We decided to write that cell off as it was not as organized as I had hoped and we headed SE on bad dirt / gravel roads for about 15 miles. Saw a few fellow chasers as we stopped for food and gas in Caney and called it a day.

One thing to note, we were in a cell black out zone from Howard to a few miles north of Caney even with the high gain roof antenna with ATT. I had great coverage west of there on the March events. Just letting everyone know.

End of story is 280 miles and 6 hours with no joy. Guess that is early April chasing...

 

[Elinor McLennon]

Made it to the Tulsa area. Got on to the Bixby, Ok storm....most promising one at that time. Just a little bit of hail. We continued to move just east of Tulsa and finally decided that nothing major was developing and we didn't want to end up in Arkansas(terrain issues,night time chasing). Coming home(okc area) we got to see the wildfires on the Turnpike. Also passed media(okc) coming home...they obviously busted today on tornadoes but we all stopped to view the fires.

 

[Jim Saueressig]

I took off late and headed down 99 to Elk county where I hung out In Elk and South Greenwood counties for while for a few pictures. Other than getting hailed on a dozen different times with a max of nickle sized hail just West of Fall River around 6 pm it got me out of the house and a few pictures I guess.

You can find a few pictures on my Flickr where a few of you will see some shots similar to your own (quite a few people hanging out down there) from South of Howard.

I shot the structure I believe "Zandbergen" spoke of above (NE of Howard) (shown Below) from in the hail near Fall River looking back towards Howard and would agree it was one of the better views to be seen down there today.




This was the only other notable view from South of Howard about 5:00 PM looking North:



While I was down there shooting that stuff this was happening at home. It hailed up to dime sized hail up to 2 inches thick in Burlington.

 

[Jacob Ferden]

Left Norman a little before 2:00...went through Shawnee about 2:35...about ten minutes too late...then cut up to the Turnpike at Chandler and blasted toward Tulsa...caught up to the storms near Sapulpa...saw they were lining out and didn't like the terrain south and east of there...broke off and went back to Norman...had to detour back down to I-40 because of the fires by the turnpike...wound up driving through heavy smoke for about the last 20 miles into the metro...all in all, 202 miles, 5 hours, and not much to show for it.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Really not much to report. Gabe Garfield, Jana Houser, I, and several others played around far northeastern Oklahoma today. I had been a bit concerned about a lack of shear in the 2-6 km layer (the hodograph basically sat on itself through that layer in most of northeastern OK and adjacent areas of MO and KS), and I assume that's what played some part in the lack of supercell mode (and, likely, the presence of too many storms to begin with). We sat east of Skiatook off Hwy 75 for a while, where we had a chance to talk with some other chasers and spotters. A couple of storms looked okay for while as we headed north and east, but, overall, there's really not much too stay. There was quite a bit of virga apparent ahead of the storms NNW of Tulsa for a while, so perhaps that cooled the low-level enough to really reduce instability. Heck, we saw long, stable-looking cloud streets E of Bartlesville ahead of the storms that were developing. That's something you don't want to see if you are concerned about low-level stability...

Apologies to a couple of those at the gas station E of Skiatook that were there when we left. I gassed it a bit much on unforeseen sand and made a completely accidental peel out. Just wanted to mention that in case some were like "Ugh, what an arse!".

 

[Brandon Lawson]

My report: garbage. Today was one of the most miserable chases I have been on in a long time. I took a trip up I44 with Bryan Putnam and Brett Roberts, and then turned north to Bartlesville out of Tulsa. From there I drove into Kansas, and shortly thereafter, I came back down to Bartlesville. Then I drove back into Kansas, and then back down again. Then I went home. That sums up my chase pretty well.

It was over when the cell that we were on, and hoped would do something, disentigrated into crap convection before even reaching Bartlesville. It was only the 2nd or 3rd cell to go up at the beginning of the day. Mesoanalysis went from having a good area of 2000J/Kg of CAPE and little capping, to a small pocket of 1000J/Kg and a lot of capping. Not sure what caused that, but it was the beginning of the end. I can say that I was surprised at how early storms fired, and this probably didn't help any with the instability.

Most exciting part of the day was driving up Highway 99 inbetween Bigheart, OK, and Chautauqua, KS. The grass fires were pretty bad in numerous places along the road, with smoke (of course) everywhere. At one point there were flames stretching out horizontally, 4-5 feet over the road and in our lane, due to the strong winds. Made me feel like a stunt driver driving through fire, despite the fact that I went into the other lane to avoid it as best as I could.

 

[David Schuttler]

Here is a short timelapse of the best I saw N.W. of Muskogee,Ok.

 

[Kris Hair]

First tornado of the year!!!

Left Sherman kind of late around 3:30pm and headed up US 69 towards McCalister. Caught up with the storms just east of Hartshorne, Oklahoma and made the call to go down SH 63 wich was the right call. We immediately noticed rotation and filmed a pretty impressive funnel that came down in front of us. "Walking through the jungle" is no easy task, so we kept driving, hoping not to lose the storm. We could see out the North side of the vehicle through the trees that the storm was still rotating vioently and that's when we saw the tornado come down. When we reached the intersection of SH 63 and SH 1, the tornado was on the ground and stayed on the ground for approx 5 minutes. From that point, with the road network the way it was, there was no way we could even think about catching up with it, so we pulled off at Talihina and proceeded to intercept the storm in Pushmataha county. The one that ultimately ended up in Mena.

We tracked this storm to the intersection of US 259 and SH 63 (Big Cedar) where we encountered golf ball sized hail. We were behind the storm and thought hard about core punching. It was getting dark and something in the back of my mind kept telling me not to do it. GR was showing HUGE rotation consistently and it was obvious looking at the clouds from our perspective as they came over the mountain. It was the right call. When we let the storm get a little further ahead, we headed on east on SH 63 where right at the AR/OK state line, we encountered trees all over the road. Totally impassible. There was a man standing there, and we asked him how long they had been down, he said approx 5 minutes which if we hadn't stopped, would have put us in the direct path of the storm. The tornado was rain wrapped. He said it was rainging hard, the winds got heavy, and trees started falling. About that time, a volunteer fire crew emerged from the trees and said that the road was impassible for approximately 1 mile.

I haven't got pictures or video loaded yet. Didn't get home until 1am. I hate chasing in the jungle, but all in all it was a good day for us!

On the other side, I had a technical nightmare most of the day. My DeLorme puck kept making my aircard freeze up and what I thought I had figured out on Chaser TV, I learned wasn't right. I keep reading about putting the computer down and just chasing, using my own judgement, and without the computer in my lap, I learned a lot about my skills.

Today was the first tornado I bagged without technology!!

 

[Mike Smith]

Michelle Strecker and I chased from Wellington to Winfield to Ark City then east along U.S. 166 yesterday.

Jim Reed caught a landspout near Oxford at 3:27pm. Michelle and I were on the storm, saw the rotation, and moved out of the way so we did not actually see the dust column.

In the Flint Hills near the Cowley-Chautauqua Co. line, we saw a very nice tube funnel about 1/5th of the way to the ground. Unfortunately, by the time we could get the car safely stopped and the cameras ready, it was dissipating. It was associated with a hook and a brief TVS.

P.S. Max. temp. (car thermometer) during the chase 80° east of Arkansas City. It was snowing hard with the ground completely covered at my home in Wichita at 4am today!

Mike

 

[Robert Rohloff]

I should have chased wildfires yesterday. I did have the chance to stop in Skiatook and talk to every one, Jeff do not worry we told the responding troopers it was a black Oldsmobile that lit up the parking lot. The store posted a sign "NO STORM CHASERS" LOL 1" hail near Wagnor was the big one for the day.

 

[Jerry Funfsinn]

Vinita OK tornado

23204 E VINITA CRAIG OK -ROOFS TORN OFF OF SEVERAL HOMES AND A BARN. TWO POWER POLES SUPPORTING A TRANSFORMER SNAPPED ABOUT TWO FEET FROM THE GROUND. MOST DAMAGE OCCURRED ALONG 4440 RD, EAST OF (TSA)

Considering I chased the storm on 4410 Rd road into Vinita I may have missed the building damage but I believe the video I took of the funnel and power flash was the reported transfomer damage. Might be my first Oklahoma tornado???

Lightning footage at end of video is a great example of CMOS rolling shutter. Was pretty cool though.
Full report and video can be found HERE.

 

[Darren Stephens]

My wife snapped this photo on her way home from work. It has some nice structure to it. The photo was taken on HWY. 16 just south of Taft, OK.

 

[afischer]

After farting around with earlier convection along Highway 166, Dick McGowan, Darin Brunin, and I intercepted the tor-warned Vinita OK-Baxter Springs KS supercell at 635 P.M., about halfway between Picher and Commerce. The storm was in the process of rapidly contracting, and completely dissolved 15-20 minutes later. We got a good look at the compact rainfree base and a couple nub funnels (one developing behind the leaning telephone pole in this pic, view looking south) before it wrapped in rain. Lots of dime hail, with maybe a few quarters, in the core... impressive considering the storm was going downhill so quickly. Interesting that an EM reported a tornado near Miami only a couple minutes prior to our close intercept of the base. I also saw a downed ~4" diamater tree near Baxter Springs that was smoldering... assumed to be a casualty of lightning. Thanks to Dick and Darin for sharing data yesterday.

 

[Steve Miller]

Caught this about 200 yards before it caused F0 damage near Vinita, OK:

This funnel aloft near Afton, OK had no tornado related damage associated with it but was photo-worthy nonetheless:

The full account can be found on my blog listed below.