5/10/10 REPORTS: OK/KS/TX

[Joshua Nall]

One of the more interesting vehicles I saw Monday:

How about some nice Mammatus:

Would post pictures of all the tornadoes I saw.... if I had seen any. Didn't even see any hot chicks... I guess I should read Gribble's forecast a little closer next time.
Left house at 7 AM, made it to Kingfisher, OK about the time the cell that would become the Wakita storm got going. Chose not to head north do to storm speed/heading and I figured every other chaser in the country was heading there... plus there was new development due W of me and I had confidence there would be more storms. Patience, patience, I told myself... well sometimes it works out for you. This new development became the storm that intensified SE of Enid. I headed N and let the storm pass directly overhead while on a dirt road just S of hwy 412. There were a few stones bigger than golf ball and some visible rotation in the base. Was surprised by the hail as the storm didn't look that intense... some guy flew by me fishtailing on the rubboard dirt road and small hail that had fallen... and I was like, dang, don't kill yourself trying to keep ahead of the storm, but then the golf balls started falling... and at one point I was wishing I had some volleyball net protection. A few fingers of condensation twirled around once in a while... one reached half way to the ground after the storm crossed 412 but as soon as I could pull over it was gone. Never did really see any tight rotation/funnel... but part of the time I was looking at the road I gave up on this storm at I-35 and headed S.

If I had of been intense about it I might could have beat the I-40 storm to Henryetta, OK, but I fooled around some watching the little junk storms on the way. Ended up giving up on it at Henryetta as the meso/hook was to my SE... the mammatus was along there on the backside of the storm at sunset. Saw some moderate damage on the highway north of Lake Eufaula... then the highway curved S and ran across another swath of damage... looked to be too concentrated for RFD, so it will be interesting to see if there might have been two tornadoes along there. After Yazoo City and now this I-40 storm... I'm ready for some slow moving cells out in wide open spaces.

 

[Joel Wright]

Full chase log with a lot more pictures now uploaded here... http://qcweather.net/5-10-2010.php

 

[Rebekah LaBar]

I chased with Jeff Makowski and Esther White on Monday, and we trekked all over, but the main show was up around Wakita.

We saw two brief tornadoes, including the multi-vortex beauty that many on here caught. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos or even video of that one, though, as of course the storms were moving so fast we didn't have much time to stop.

A full account of our chase is posted on my website, but I don't have any photos or video up yet (will do that probably on Thursday, as will be chasing today...).

Here's a photo of the first funnel we saw, around 3:33 PM, as we looked southwest (yes, it was coming right for us and was probably less than a mile away, so after this photo we booked it out of there!), that briefly touched down just southwest of the intersection of Highways 11 and 132 (sorry for the low contrast--I was in too big a hurry to play around with the settings on my camera).

 

[Rob H]

All most impossible to catch these after they passed.

For some foolish reason, we tried.

This was an amazing chase, but also frustrating. We were on the Wakita storm. The good: I saw my first multi-vortex tornado, saw multiple tornadoes form, saw 5"+ hail, and we didn't take damage besides some small debris and hail dings. The frustrating part? In the chaos - I accidentally left my camera on auto focus while taking video so I have some decent events on video but some are slightly out of focus. My SD card also took a dive, so most of my video is capped at ~40 seconds.

We also had some communication problems and made a very poor decision in our positioning.

After the multi-vortex lifted, we were in the lead going E on 11 towards the back of the storm. Very broad rapid rotation was occurring to the NE just off the road - and condensation was starting to become visible in the space between the lowering and the ground. I think Mike Hollingshead has a good picture from the E side of this. It was rather creepy to not see any cars coming from the other direction for some time. We instantly stopped and several seconds later the swirl turned into a wall and extended out towards us. Someone several cars back reported 75+ mph winds with their anemometer and power line poles snapped next to us. I thought we were going to lose a window for sure, so the camera went back into the case, but I managed to snag this blurry still shortly before I shut the camera off:

Andrew is 100% correct - the stills and videos that I and others took don't do justice to this cell. This thing was large and evil, and Hwy 11 will be etched into my memory for a long time.

 

[Connor McCrorey]

I had an exam here in Plano until 4:15, so I was very late getting out. In addition, knowing that I might not have made it on time, I let David Reimer borrow my data card. So considering I left late and was chasing with nothing more than my eyes, paper maps, a video camera and a phone, I'm very happy with how this day went! I got on the supercell that formed near the Red River and produced just east of Marietta. I spent probably twenty minutes under the roof of a gas station north of town, getting pummeled by tennis ball sized hail. Once the hail finally stopped, I blasted back down I-35, then east out of Marietta, and just a few minutes later this is what I saw!

I got video of the beautiful white tornado it produced. I then tried to follow it east, but it just wasn't possible. While driving home along 377, I got cored by, and then RFD'd by, a supercell that I later found out had been tornado warned just south of the Red River. It had a nice lowering on it at one point, but I wasn't going to even try to chase at night with no data.

I'll post the video later.

 

[Connor McCrorey]

Here's the video of the tornado and hail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfn9zb5q3p4

 

[Andrew Stevens]

We finally have our video up... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be3JTp_a8jQ

After leaving a gloomy cool morning in Lawrence, KS Andrew Stevens, fellow KU ATMO classmates, and I arrived in Enid, Oklahoma by 1:30 pm. Glad I took a look at RUC and NAM runs as the dry line and moist axis was being shifted more to the west.

At first we felt we may not reach the storms initiating north of Enid, and decided to head south for the small returns that struggled to get going. Saw on radar that the storm to the north was splitting and decided to turn around quickly.

We made it in time to see several of the same multiple vortexes and short lived tornadoes near Medford. Storm motion was awful for this event, and struggled to keep up after that.

We decided to head to Ponca City as there appeared to be some type of supercell near, although we saw nothing worthy. Called it quits and enjoyed a nice long drive through eastern Kansas!
One of the better pic here:

More found here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Storm...f=ts#!/album.php?aid=22513&id=120109444669252

quick write up here (more to come later in the week): http://www.storminskies.com

 

[CZandbergen]

A clarification of my post early in this thread regarding the intercept on 177 south of Ponca City. After talking with other chasers and reviewing the damage reports from WFO Tulsa I am fairly certain that the gusts and damage I discussed was RFD from the tornado that would touch down just a couple of miles to the east in Noble and Osage counties. The WFO Tulsa report can be found at the here.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=tsa&storyid=52278&source=0

 

[Damon Scott Hynes]

Here's mine:

http://cycloneranger.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/2010-05-10-s-ks-and-n-ok-tornado/

 

[jshields]

i dont even know why i am posting bc my story and pics stink compared to the rest of you! i knew i couldn't go all the way to oklahoma, so i planned on playing the northern edge and set a target of kingman, kansas. i unfortunately left an hour late due to no other fault but my own, and as i was about 20 minutes outside of wichita i had to watch the zenda, ks tornado on radar only. yes that's right by kingman i can only suppose i would have been in the right spot to see that beautiful tornado that a few of the guys here have posted pics of. so rather than try to deal with rush hour traffic and a tornado moving at 60 mph i went around to the east side of wichita near el dorado to wait for the storm. of course it weakened dramatically by that time and i saw nothing but heavy rain and gusty winds. i began the drive back home to omaha, po'd but was treated to a nice shelf cloud on a small 10-15 mile long line of storms that crossed over I-135 near mcpherson. they were warned briefly for hail and 60 mph winds, but i experienced only pea sized and maybe winds to 45 mph. then on the way home i received a $125 speeding ticket i didn't slow down fast enough pulling into one of those speed traps in some "town" along hwy 81. the limit had just dropped to 55 and of course there sat the cop right on the other side of the sign, got me going 69 mph still. what a day

 

[Tyler Burg]

Full report now posted here... http://tonightssky.org/accounts/051010.html

 

[Rich Thompson]

After a couple of days without power, I've finally been able to upload some photos of the east Norman EF3 tornado:

The full evolution of the tornado can be seen here:
http://www.chasetolive.com/gallery2/v/2010+chases/10+May+2010/

 

[Derek Weston]

Also was on the Medford/Wakita area tornadoes.

Initially high based looking when we nailed it... quickly evolved and put down a few funnels... motion was taking it right at us, so went north and hit the highway, blasting east ahead of it as a multi-vortex tornado formed in my rear-view mirror. (familiar story, eh?) Watched then as it morphed into a rain wrapped wedge quite likely. Intense storm.

note . . .
Surprising how many people were dumb enough to sit behind as the storm quickly moved on the highway. At one point there were tornadoes on both sides of the E/W highway... seems as though some folks don't respect a storm that isn't producing visibly condensed rotation. That was a nasty meso and nobody should have been sitting under it.

Will try to get up some media later, though it was hard...being a driver. The other cars scared me more than the tornado... people and cars darting on and off the highways at all times.

After that dropped south and tried to get in behind a storm that was crossing 35. Never could catch up, but grabbed giant hail in its wake.

Contemplated flying east and trying to get ahead of the OKC tornado or at least cells in that area. Decided this would not be too feasible and pulled off. Headed back west to Stillwater and enjoyed a relaxing evening of gin and tornado reports.

Today was a one-and-done supercell selection for most chasers, so overall... felt good about our pick.

Was interesting how early things went today. Wasn't terribly surprised with the sort of dynamics we had. Had suspected this might happen. My plan of getting near the triple point in N OK for the first wave turned out to be a good move. Though we almost didn't go after the Medford area storm as it was struggling to go early and was a bit north of our position. (thinking that perhaps the cell to our south would've been the thing to go after)

 

[Chris Gullikson]

Short – Close encounter with multi-vortex tornado southwest of Wakita OK, lost rear window to monster hail.

Long
Left the upper mid-west on Sunday afternoon and met up with Scott Weberpal. Spent the night in Cameron MO, Ryan Wichman met up with us in the morning departed hotel about 9am.
Scott and I discussed two potential targets – Scott liked just northeast of the surface low and under the vort max where chaser convergence would be minimized. I liked the triple point further south and had picked Coldwater KS as my initial target.
Mid-morning concern was the low stratus covering much of Oklahoma and Kansas but it was apparent that the southwest half of OK would mix out quickly with HCR’s visible in the visible sat loops with breaks between them allowing surface heating. Water vapor showed the powerful shortwave trucking across southern CO into west KS and surface loops showed the dryline surging east across the TX panhandle into west OK with TCU by early afternoon.
As we drove south out of Wichita we debated going after the storm that had fired off the dryline in west OK and was racing northeast. It seemed too early to commit to a storm knowing we could be left behind the game with the anticipated storm motion and speed, but after throwing off a few left splits and further intensification as it approached an environment with backed winds and probable boundary, we bit and went after it.
We jumped off at exit 4 in Kansas and went west on 166 and 81 to Caldwell. It looked like the storm would blow right by us if we continued south and southwest on 81 out of Caldwell so we initially tried to take a road west just north of Caldwell that ended up being dirt instead of pavement. We turned around and continued on 81 and realized the storm was beginning to slow down despite the warnings shows speeds of 50-60mph.
We turned west at Medford on 11 and began seeing structure to our southwest. We stopped at the intersection of 11 and 132 and were able to observe the storm come slowly towards us over the Great Salt Plains Lake.
We observed what appeared to be an RFD cutting in front of the lowered base and a few attempts at funnels and rising scud were seen. The WGN crew with Jim Reed and Tom Skilling arrived just as the first brief tornado occurred about a mile to our southwest.
The circulation really started to wrap up at this point and chasers began basting east to stay ahead of it. At this point I made the “great†decision to wait for the circulation to pass by just to our south so that I could watch the beautiful tornado through my windshield as I followed behind it. I have too often raced away from an imminent tornado only to have my passengers give me an excited play by play on what I could not see in my rear view mirror… My plan worked out flawlessly except I was not expecting the ensuing bowling balls that began falling from the sky.
We waited at the intersection of 11 and 132 for a few minutes, staring up at the wild circulation just to our south with a laminar, bowl shaped funnel. Ryan was in the back seat and was the first to notice the huge hail falling and suggested we move. Scott was trying to get himself unstuck between the door and car frame as RFD winds slammed us and I began driving east to keep up with the developing tornado.
Chasers began flying by us – not sure if they wanted to get past the developing tornado, get closer, or just stay ahead of the hail – I was content to ride a few hundred yards behind them as the first tornado dropped just north of the road then track back south across it as a satellite rotated around in front of the meso. It was an incredible site that video just can’t do justice with multiple vortices twirling right on top of the road.
Meanwhile I became auspiciously aware of my “great†decision as softball size hail bombed all around us. We continued just behind the low level meso that spun away with intense motion and dropping occasional vortices, snapping power poles and doing extensive tree damage. Amazingly, we were able to continue driving east along the road only having to dodge a few trees. As the circulation moved further north and became rain wrapped, we continued to blast east just trying to get out of the intense RFD winds and large hail. We passed a few vehicles that had taken extensive window damage including a tour vehicle full of passengers. As we neared the east side of the RFD, we saw incredible downward cascading motion in the rain bands.
We eventually got out of the Bears Cage and drove past a few chaser convergences on our way to the nearest Walmart in Blackwell to buy a tarp and duct tape. We were back on the road soon blasting south on 35 to try and catch the storm just east of Ponca City but realized we would never catch it so we turned around and called it a day.
Driving back north on 35 we saw 2 separate areas of trucks being blown off the road, the southern area likely from RFD winds and the northern area from a likely tornado crossing with lots of tree damage seen.


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

 

[Jeremy Ludin]

Full chase log now up on my site http://www.furiousskies.com/5_10_10.html