5/12/10 REPORTS: KS/OK/TX

[cstrunk]

A crappy chase day for me also, similar to Mike Peregrine and Mike Hollingshead.

Started in St. Joseph thinking the clouds farther north along the warm front would clear out and I would be chasing somewhat close to Kansas City. Headed towards Lawrence and teamed up with Zach Koenig on I-35. The storms were still tornado warned as we started heading west, but not for long... and that was about it.

Stuck around Florence, KS to watch the south end of a linear storm come through to at least try to get some decent scenery for our troubles. Saw a decent amount of 1" hail on the ground as we came back through town.

A more detailed report can be found on my blog, linked below. Thanks to Zach for teaming up with me and Mike Johnston for nowcast support.

 

[Marcus Diaz]

A surprisingly decent day for me. Didn't even think about chasing until about 4pm when I saw storms to my east from work. Called a couple chasers to get some info, and decided to just go for it. Started off by jetting out of Amarillo @ ~5.30pm. My initial idea was to just get east to Shamrock and adjust from there if needed. Got to Shamrock, and figured we'd dive south, east, then north to avoid the main core of the southern storm. So went south to Wellington, then east to Magnum. About that time I realized I made a mistake and should just punched through the precip to get setup for the eastern storm that was looking better. `We tried going north to Elk City, but figured we were too late for the big party. Just then, my roommate (who was with me, and hasn't ever been chasing before) point out what looked like a funnel to our NE. I wasn't too sure because we were really far away, and couldn't tell if it was rotating. Just then, we saw a lot of dust getting kicked up under it. We pulled over and got a couple pics.

We attempted to core punch the storm further north near Cheyenne, OK, but those storms died out quickly. Or at least the hail cores did. We returned home about 1am.

 

[Alex Fisher]

We dropped south along the Texas/Oklahoma border and intercepted a tornadic supercell near I-40. We then moved east with it, staying near the interstate. Caught a strong wall cloud, got nailed by a hail core and new mesocyclone wrapping around the old one, and booked it out through rotating rain curtains. Finally, with the last light of the setting sun, we caught a brief glimpse of a tornado as it crossed I-40 near Clinton, Oklahoma, but did not have time to stop and photograph it.

 

[cdcollura]

Good day all,

Finally got some of my chase logs caught up. Here is my "stuff" for May 12, as I was chasing west of Wichita, Kansas near Kingman along and around Highway 400 /54.

Above: HP storm near Kingman.

Above: Interesting feature with storm on northern end of bow / outflow gust front (gustnado?).

Above: Interesting RFD clear-slot noted on the northern storm (norteast of Kingman).

Above: Later on near Kansas City, a wind gust of over 70 MPH damaged this sign with the passage of an overnight MCS.

 

[Bill Tabor]

Update:
After Gene and toured the damage path and made map notes on Street Atlas documenting the path we determined Gene at his position behind a gas station probably had near 15 seconds to clear (drive across) the damage path (it broke off 5 telephone poles) before full impact. He was already in an intense wind field as he was breaking out. At the time he thought he had cleared the path already but the lights of the station had blocked his vision. The tornado killed the station lights, then primarily per instinct he fled knowing something was out of place.

My position was just north of Bessie looking NE on hwy 183. I have no doubt now that what I videotaped was the tornado or associated funnel - perhaps in it's earlier stages just before coming after Gene or about the same time. I still need to review my HD cam footage to see if it showed associated ground debris which I will probably do in a minute.

This was a fun / exciting and productive chase. In retrospect I wonder what would have happened had I not left my camcorder charger in Woodward and had to deviate to get it. Likely I would be behind Gene in the similar predicament. It should be noted that Gene was a bit disadvantaged this past week as he's having trouble getting his GPS to work with Gpsgate and Windows 7. Because of that he only had gps info in Street Altas - not GR3 radar. That makes it more difficult to more precisely compare your position to radar. The lower light conditions with precip, etc also made things difficult.

 

[Bill Tabor]

Another Update:

Just reviewed my video. While I do definitely IMO have the correct feature (laminar funnel) starting at 8:25 I am unable to detect any circulation at ground. For some dumb ass reason I say 'funnel' then after a few seconds stop recording. Sometimes I am a dumb ass. I suppose it is because I was then going north to I40 then east into / toward the wallcloud to get a better view. I never got a better view of the funnel. Based on the SPC log of 8:30 for the actual tornado I assume this was probably the funnel BEFORE it created the full tornado which Gene experienced - though it is possible because of distance and low light I was simply unable to see / record the dirt / or moisture / mist whirl at ground. No tornado for me though I know it quickly then became one. Gene may be the only one with the brief shot of the tornado. I saw his image and it only lasts a few seconds before he is forced to bail.

PS: Also viewed the video west of Cordell. At this point the wall cloud was just north of the E/W road and I was due south of it. I got good HD footage and it apparently can 'see' a bit better than me. Large wallcloud / funnel hanging almost to ground with rain wrapping - perhaps RFD related. Eventually the precip mostly obscures the lowering in fairly dark conditions. Appears that it could have been a rain wrapped tornado at this point - wedgelike in shape. No way to really confirm that as it was over rural country.

 

[Rebekah LaBar]

Chase log and a few photos are posted now.

Log: http://www.greenskychaser.com/chasing/2010/may12.htm
Photos: http://www.greenskychaser.com/chasing/2010/may12photos.htm

Short version: started up around Enid, drove west to Woodward to intercept the linear storms in the hopes of getting some hail...when all we got was pea-sized hail, we headed back south again towards I-40.

Intercepted the big southern supercell south of Clinton, at which time we saw a wall cloud or two and a possible funnel just after dark (lit up by lightning), but it was hard to tell what we were looking at at the time.

Good chase; saw more than we expected, especially on the HP supercell. Only disappointment was not seeing the tornado when we were looking right at the meso at about the right time (I assume we may have been in the wrong place to see a low-contrast funnel/tornado, just a few miles to the south).

 

[Adam Lucio]

Full account from this day is online. Got some mean looking storms and some gustnadoes.

Storms obviously had a hard time getting ahead of the cold front and became undercut and thus went outflow dominant pretty quickly...I guess we were lacking that extra push in the mid and upper levels to move them off the front.

http://www.aerostorms.com/051210-kansas-evil-storm.php

 

[Ric Burney]

Ran around Sayre, OK with several cells passing over the area during the afternoon. Dodged a few V2 mesonets here and there and saw many sticknet placements along 283.
We did manage to get a few interesting shots and video out of the day.
http://www.wxdallas.com/wx05122010.html

 

[Chad Cowan]

Video of the tornadoes near McPherson, KS here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPIUWK-NRb0

Sorry for the first part being so shaky... I think we were the only chasers on that storm and I was trying to submit a Spotter Net report while filming.

I chose the northern storm because it appeared to be directly northeast of the sfc low, according to Al Pietrycha's dense collection of sfc obs (here). This gave the storm a larger amount of time before being undercut by the cf. Also, the low level turning was enhanced in this area due to its proximity to the warm front. After looking at some archived level 2 data, the WF actually lifted through the developing storm and within one scan of it clearing the northern edge of the storm, it went bonkers. The first tornado in the video was on the ground at this point:

 

[Jason A.C. Brock]

caught a few tornados near Burns flat and some good structure earlier. will post total accound youtube.shadowchaser777 Nowcastede by Jeff Papak

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Finally getting around to posting old accounts. Full account is here:

http://bigstormpicture.blogspot.com/2010/05/i-started-out-morning-of-may-12-at.html

5/12 was a bit of an accidental chase for me -- it was the day that I broke off off from Vortex 2 for a bit to head back home to Nebraska (for personal reasons). My journey (starting from Weatherford) took me up through northwestern Oklahoma; I knew there was a chance of me not beating the storm initiation, but as tempting as a chase was, I really didn't want any delays. (8 hours of driving meant I'd be getting in late even without delays). This wasn't to be though, since as I was driving by the triple point, I saw this out the window to the southwest:

A nice little string of storms popped. At this point I was just looking for a gap between the storms to drive through. Eventually, though, I realized that the cell coming up on me looked pretty decent for an intercept, so I relented.

Ran into David Drummond at one point; he was gracious enough to let me take a few pics of him:

The storm I was on went gust-fronty; David sped off to catch a developing wallcloud further northeast (on a storm that later tornadoed). I stuck around for gust front shots.

I eventually found a gap between storms and after a few hours delay, I was back on my way.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

No tornadoes for me this day. Our excitement came on the Kansas Turnpike when a semi decided to smash itself into an overpass near El Dorado. Downbursts had taken some high tension power poles down across the interstate and I guess the semi hit it at full speed and got slingshot around and into the overpass. An incredible accident for sure.

http://www.benholcomb.com/Chase-Accounts/20100512