Well, if you want to read an account of spectacular tornadoes and a perfect chase, you might as well skip to the next post....here I present a look at this event from the perspective of chasers who made a key decision or two that led to missing the Big Show...
Chase partner Ben McMillan and I began the day in Garden City where we ended up Tuesday night after the dryline failed to produce in NW Kansas.
After waking up to dewpoints in the 40s and seeing the oh-so-obvious frontal boundary sagging southeast on visible satellite, it was clear that we weren't in quite as good position as we originally thought we might be.
We took full advantage of the high-speed Internet at our hotel and by checkout time at 1pm we had pretty much decided the Medicine Lodge area was the ticket. As mentioned in my 1158am post in the 5-12 FCST thread, the RUC was showing a moisture convergence bullseye in this region by 0z, and that was all the convincing I needed given that all of the usual key parameters were also in place.
We stopped for data at the Meade library around 330pm and I became even more convinced that the Buffalo-Medicine Lodge area was the place to be as a surface low was becoming inreasingly evident around Woodward with the dryline bulging into that area.
Thanks to a navigational blunder, we ended up heading E-NE on Hwy 54 towards Pratt instead of staying on Hwy 160 as I had planned. For awhile, I thought this might not have been a bad move as a very nice Cu field was bubbling away around Minneola with the first storms of the day trying to develop along the same boundary up towards Salina.
Around Greensburg we started paying more attention to the south as it was becoming increasingly obvious that some very robust towers were starting to form down around the OK border. The Hwy 54 mistake was looking worse and worse with time. By the time we reached Cullison it was obvious that we needed to get south fast, and we took off on a myriad of winding paved roads into northern Barber County.
By 6pm we found ourselves standing on a secluded gravel road in a beautiful area about 4 miles south of Sun City with a spectacular sight before us as the first two storms of the day were exploding right in front of us...one about 5 miles to our SW and the other about 20 SE. Within minutes the nearer storm went severe and began dropping hail as it hugged the Comanche-Barber Co. line. We noticed the SE storm's updraft starting to go gangbusters, but what we had right in front of us was commanding plenty of attention as a very small lowering began to form on the nearer storm as it moved toward Sun City.
Around 630 the northern storm seemed to be undergoing some kind of split with the right side moving NE toward Sawyer and the left moving N toward Cullison. This may have been a completely new storm as it was difficult to tell from our position.
Around this time came the fateful decision of the day as Ben and I wrangled for a good 5 minutes over whether we should stick with the northern storms or bail out and head for the mammoth updraft to our SE that was approaching Medicine Lodge. We knew that it was likely the often-infamous "southern storm." We LITERALLY started heading south on at least two different occasions only to stop within a mile and reconsider, as we did not want to let go of the closer storm, especially when it became TOR-warned.
Apparently while we were doing our indecisive "turn-around and go that way, no go that way" maneuver, the northern storm allegedly dropped a tornado between Coats and Lake City. We could only confirm a funnel that appeared to be about halfway to the ground, although by this time we were still several miles away. Somewhere in this time as we struggled to get back towards Coats on the windy roads, another cell split must have taken place as a new area of concern was coming into view SW of Pratt.
Around 740pm we caught up with the lowering SW of Pratt and it initially appeared promising. That is until we got out of the vehicle and felt cool outflow. At this point I knew things were just not coming together in our immediate area. There were too many storms in too small of an area, undoubtedly disrupting each other's potential.
At 752pm we "officially" abandon the Pratt storm and began a mad-dash south to get back down to Harper Co. where the Big Show from our original southern storm was well underway. Listening to local radio reports, it was becoming increasingly apparent that our key decision to head north was not panning out well at all.
In order to reach the Big Show, we had to pass through the storm in the Isabel area which did not speed up our southward progress any. Then, as we finally approached Attica from the W around 9pm, a new storm that had just formed blocked our approach to the TOR-producing storm that was several miles to our E. As we sat on the edge of Attica with darkness setting in, tornado sirens wailing and hail from the new storm falling, we were TOTALLY unaware of the drama that had taken place there less than an hour before.
Police and fire vehicles had Hwy 160 blocked at Attica so we crept our way south and east of Attica on gravel/mud roads keeping a very wary eye above as the new storm was putting out a variety of suspicious lowerings visible only by lightning.
As if we needed any more convincing that we had missed quite an event, just before 10pm we stumbled upon one of the damage paths on a gravel road south of Harper where a giant tree lay across the road while several other large trees were twisted and toppled. The huge toppled trees were an eery sight in the frequent lightning flashes.
A few minutes later we met up with chasers Chris Lenz and Tim Jones and they confirmed that Ben and I had just missed the after-dark tornado south of Harper. And to think that this whole chain of events unfolded with the decision made several hours before near Sun City...
This event was a big-time reminder of how storm chasing all boils down to a key decision here or there that can lead to a dramatic (or not-so-dramatic) domino-effect of emotion. And that my friends is what makes this little hobby of ours so fulfilling, no matter which side of an event you end up on.
I know that Ben and I were far from being the only chasers who ended up on the northern storms as we ran into many of you on the roads in the Pratt area. I would love to hear some of you chime in with your accounts of the "non-headline" storms.
A sincere congratulations to all of you who made awesome catches, although the incredible videos and photos haven't made this near miss any easier
Above all, and most importantly, our thoughts go out to those affected by the destructive events of Wed. evening.
Ryan Pfannkuch
Ben McMillan
Iowa State University
