5/13/08 REPORTS: KS/OK/TX

[Chris Hovanic]

Started the day in Bartlesville, OK with co-worker Mike Knechtel. After heading southward a bit and seeing updrafts collapse upon themselves in N-C OK, we decided to head after the southernmost storm in a cluster of storms across Southeast KS. This storm would soon be moving into an area with modest instability, low LCL heights, and reasonably decent low-level shear, and most importantly had become isolated.

During our approach this storm gradually became more organized, and by the time of our intercept just north of Oswego, KS (Hwy 59/160 Intersection) a low-based HP supercell became evident, packing a large RFD cut, with the remnants of a few occluded mesocyclones located to the west of the RFD cut. We passed through the small towns of Sherman, West Mineral, and Roseland via county roads before eventually reaching Hwy 7, which we took north to Hwy 160 East near Cherokee. We continued to observe old, occluded wall clouds but still had not seen the 'current' iteration given precip from the RFD wrapping all the way around and obscuring our view.

Shortly before reaching the Missouri border, the storm became tornado warned, with a more defined wall cloud beginning to come into view as we finally were exiting the RFD precip, and beginning to peer northward into the 'notch'. We continued eastward on 2-lane roads for a bit, before heading northward toward the town of Nashville, MO on Hwy 43. It was at this time the storm began to look the healthiest it had all day, with a massive RFD clear slot wrapping all the way around the storm, just to the west of a very low, well-defined wall cloud. Shades of the late May 2007 Guymon, OK HP-beast danced through my head as the storm's huge, cold RFD cut was starkly reminiscent of that particular monster. We did not personally observe any funnels/brief tornadoes, however some were reported around and shortly before/after this pronounced wall cloud had developed.

Darkness then began to set in, and we soon called it quits for the day. An interesting HP supercell which seemed to occlude and redevelop a new meso every 10-15 minutes....perhaps this could be in some way related to the sharply veered LLJ across the area this evening, arguably killing optimum inflow into the storm despite very high ambient moisture content of the air.

All in all, a reasonable chase not *too* far from home, but somewhat disappointing given excepted better structure and the hope for non-HP storms with forecasted anvil-level SR winds > 50 kts.

-Chris

 

[Darin Brunin]

Dick McGowan, Eric B'Hymer, and I initially targeted Coffeyville and ended up chasing the tornado warned storm in SE KS. It was pretty easy to tell from the get-go that the storm wasn't going to be a tornado producing machine as it always had a cold and almost even outflowish look to it even though it was still able to survive. We also didn't see the reported tornadoe(s). The storm just seemed too ragged. Even though it was still a decent chase due to storm speed and the road network not being bad at all.

Here is a photo from the time that it probably came the closest to producing from our perspective right after it went tornado warned. A big notch wrapped around but it just couldn't do it. Like Chris said...the storm seemed to cycle too often and could never get a sustained updraft because it was cut off too early before it could really get down to business.

 

[Shane Adams]

Chad Lawson and I targeted southern OK, along the US70 corridor between the Healdton/Wilson "Y" and Ringling. It was like going down memory lane, as I lived in Healdton for 19 years, including my entire K-12 schooling. After a 20-minute delay at Curley's Tire and Wheel to get yet another right front bulging tire replaced (had the same problem on April 3 in Bowie, TX), we drove to Ringling, and set up north of town along OK89. Just before 5pm, a robust tower appeared through the low clouds to our west, and it looked like the show had begun. However about 15-20 minutes later, the tower vanished. This would be the theme for this area the rest of the day.

Ran into Amos and company at the intersection of OK89/7. We all sat there for about an hour waiting for something, anything. As he was leaving, he drove by, leaned out his window, and said "2008 sucks man." LOL, indeed.

We drove back east to Ratliff City, grabbed a drink, then headed east to I-35, noticing new development along and just west of the interstate about 40 miles to our north. Finally ran this thing down near Asher, where we stopped and just sat watching, enjoying, as the setting sun created a very beautiful, but benign, close to our day.

With activity going both north and south of us down the dryline, the automatic diagnosis would seem to be subsidence. However, we had hard towers most of the evening making repeated attempts, so subsidence wasn't the culprit. I'm assuming it was a combination of cap and lack of convergence, although both really disappointed me because we were working with around 3000j/kg and the DL didn't seem to retreat much (if at all) during the evening. I figured getting tornadoes might be difficult, but I figured sups were a sure bet. Oh well.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Was on that same se KS storm for most of its life. It mostly sucked. It gave a decent attempt east of Parsons with a pretty nice area wrapped up, not all that cold looking either. I thought it could do it there. Then I was going to go home as it got really linear, but at Pittsburg I noticed it finally reformed on the ne side. Hate that evolution where you know that ne "base" ahead of teh area of interest wants to be the new area(see this "dual" area often in mostly linear shear that has speed shear). Well it took over very near Pittsburg with a lovely rfd cut and lowering. What was coolest were the cg barrages. I got several close ones on video. It then got crappy again. I stopped south of Lamar MO after racing ahead, to try and get some of the cg barrages that kept happening well downstream. Got one bolt about 2 blocks away at 10mm. Was stopped down to F11 but it wasn't enough. It would have been had it not pulsed about 8 times. I should have stopped the shutter since I had time, as long as it was pulsing. At first I was like, yes, I got that! Then I was like, no no no, stop pulsing(going to blow it out doing that crap). It was close enough it was still pulsing while the crack boom was happening. I love that crap. Will have to post that one when I get home and maybe some video of the others(even though the top portion is blown out...bottom is ok).

Edit: Couple quick images from late in the chase.

This would have ruled had it not pulsed over and over and over on whatever it was igniting into flames. The other channels are about fine, it's the damn strobe flashing off the cloud that kills it...plus the blown out main channel obviously. Dang it!

Full sized crop.

Low cloud twilight op killers!

 

[Joey Ketcham]

Only one word could describe today, BUST.

Tyler Costantini, Chris Wilburn, Bart Combstock and myself targeted southern Oklahoma. In short, we drove all the way to Davis Oklahoma and sat there for a while watching a tornadic storm on radar as it passed over Tyler and I's hometown, Pittsburg. Talk about frustrating, drive all the way to southern Oklahoma only to have a tornadic storm pass over our town.

 

[Tim Marshall]

Short: Intercepted a slow-moving, non-tornadic, supercell west of Graham, TX that evolved from classic to HP. The storm cycled twice and produced wall clouds each time.

Long: My target was Wichita Falls, TX. Kay and I departed the Dallas area about 1 PM and drove NW up Highway 287. We encountered a windshift line (winds out of the NW) and drier air at Henrietta, so we headed back southeast and waited for storms to fire in Bowie, TX. After about two hours, and some serious antique store shopping, storms fired in Throckmorton and Shackelford Counties and headed toward us. We drove southwest and saw a beautiful, crisp anvil and vertical towers punching through a blue hole in the cirrus shield. We met the storms west of Graham, TX. The southern cell became the dominant one and originally had a classic appearance but quickly evolved into HP. I noticed there was a lack of surface based inflow (winds in Graham were east-southeast at 5 MPH), but there were plenty of inflow bands and striations that indicated the storm was ingesting some inflow aloft. Just west of Graham, the storm made an abrupt right turn and headed southeast. A wall cloud developed, but the storm remained high-based and quickly became outflow dominant. The heavy precip core passed right over the town of Graham and golf ball size hail was reported. The storm cycled again southeast of town producing a nice wall cloud but the updraft began to shrivel up and the precipitation core weakened. We gave up on the storm at dusk and returned home. The 350 mile chase cost $65 for fuel. With fuel prices approaching $4/gallon, even short chases are now expensive. TM

 

[Brian Emfinger]

Chase Report / More Pics - HERE

Target south central Oklahoma as well. Saw quite a few attempts and am quite surprised nothing could come out of all of it. About 730pm I gave up on anything firing between the Texas storms and the line of storms E/NE of OKC and headed east to intercept the southernmost of those storms that was NE of Pauls Valley:

I got ahead of that storm and then chased the severe warned storm that passed through Holdenville.

I continued after that one in a homeward direction until McAlester when I called it a day.

 

[Chris Sokol]

Waited around the house for initiation, which was essentially right over my head, and targeted the first severe cell that was in NE Pott/SE Lincoln Counties. This is where I discovered problem #1 for the day, about 5 miles from the house(my chase car is down, so I am using other family vehicles)...the small inverter that I had rigged up to run my laptop, docking cradle, and power for my handheld 2m/70cm ham radio (the DC cord is nowhere to be found...the radio was MIA for 2 years until yesterday...lol) was essentially dead, and I had 60% battery charge. Oh well..so I punched through the line and headed into Prague...problem #2: no data connection, either on my phone or via internet sharing. Great...so I fueled up and head north out of town, only to find nothing. Head back to town and receive a call from Mike R. (who knew of my data woes) telling me about a storm that was trying to separate itself from the rest. Race back north and...nothing. Back to town, and mess with the phone. Still can't get anything. At this point I am pretty much frustrated to the point that I decide to call it a day. So...head south out of town and...wall cloud to the west. So I figure I might just stay a bit longer!

Zig zagged on county roads back up to 62 East, which unfortunately placed me on the north side of the storm. As I am headed through Boley, the data connection suddenly comes back. Fire up GRlevel3 and...wow. Made it into Okeema and jumped over to 56 and head back to the storm. Stayed with it all the way to Okmulgee before letting it over run me. Managed to get some decent vid and a few good photos. Grabbed a quick bite in Henryetta before heading back to OKC and work.

I did take a detour to another storm south of the interstate that had a nice lowering on it, but only briefly. I also noticed that at the Pharoah exit, power was out.

So...a frustrating chase, but a marginally successful one (probably the best storm of the day). Hopefully the rest of May will be a bit kinder.

 

[Kevin Myatt]

Our 12-member Virginia Tech-aligned storm chase team bailed out of Ardmore, Oklahoma, at about 5:30 p.m. to run south on the storms in north-central Texas that Tim Marshall wrote about. His analysis of it, as would be expected, is spot-on, as we also noted the lack of low level inflow. We finally pulled near to it at almost 8 p.m. as the storm was moving east of Graham over hilly, wooded terrain in southern Jack County, Texas west of Jacksboro. Above is a photo of its last, best effort at a wall cloud. We found a beautiful setting for a late-evening storm cycling one last time, with lots of CGs, contrasting colors, and a slow rotating wall cloud.

For more on our chase trip, see my weather blog at Roanoke.com.

 

[James Siler]

Well like a good chunk of chasers who decided to play central and south central Oklahoma, it was for the most part a bust. I sat for about 2 hours at a Shell station just off I-35 in Purcell across from the McDonalds there. Watching towers go up hard and crisp and then to flake out. There were some other chasers there but I don't really know any one so didn't go visit with them. I went ahead and traveled west for about 3 miles then north on a county road that was titled Sooner road, couldn't find that one on my map. I sat there for about another 2 to 2 and a half hours still watching the towers stuggle to go but just not doing it. I did help a turtle cross the road and got eaten by a bunch of bugs. I headed on down towards Pauls Valley cause I was reading a post by Mickey Gribble on ST on my cell phone about some towers looking promising. I went west on highway 19 towards Maysville. I parked about 2 miles outside of Maysville were I had the bad luck not to notice I parked the car in a way that would allow my to plant my foot on a fire ant hill. After having my foot and leg swarmed with fire ants I repostioned the car for a better spot. I continued to do things to make the fire ants mad for about 30 minutes before I went west of Maysville. About a mile west I parked on a side road to watch an area that I notcied to have some quick rising motion. I got on camera some "funnels" that were sideways up in the air. Do we still call these funnels? Anyway there were roatating rather fast and lasted about 5 minutes before they drifted back into the main body of the clouds. This was about the only action I got. Aside from the fire ants. The funnels had a few various shapes and sizes but it made me happy. and I have chased this entire season with out a laptop. Haven't got it replaced yet. And have done fairly well going on my knowledge fo weather. I will attach a pic or two of the funnels since I don't know how to attach all the pics.
James
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[Evan Bookbinder]

I guess you can call it a chase success when you're on the only TOR warned storm in the country, and outside of the MDT risk area. I think this is a great null case event worthy of further review.

Initially targeted SE KS, but having left early we decided to head down to Bartlesville so we could play the dryline either way with a great road network.

Our northern target area was based on rapid low level moist surge, strong heating along the western edge of the moisture/stratus band, a mid level circulation evident on visible sat imagery, as well as modest S/SSE surface flow. Most importantly though, we wanted to be on the northern/cyclonic side of the incoming mid level jet streak. When we fired up StormLab and overlaid the SpotterNetwork, I was amazed at the percentage of chasers/spotters (> 90%) plastered on the radar scope in and south of the OKC area. I'm sure always staying close to home is part of it, but I just hate being on the subsidence side of a strong jet streak. Also the orientation of the dryline down there with respect to deep layer shear suggested a greater potential for seeding storms, with more discrete potential into SE KS.

Anyways, we didn't stay in Bartlesville very long. Initial updrafts along the dryline would go up quickly and then glaciate. So, we went north on US75 and cut across OK10 back ENE toward Coffeyville, trying to tag along the southern-most storm in the line. A couple observations were made on the way back.

1.)Dwpts behind the dryline were not that dry – still low 60s
2.) Despite initiation *just* to the west, BVO never had dryline passage, meaning that the OK portion of the line had basically run out of gas, and forcing in that area would be lacking for any storm that hadn’t already developed.

Meanwhile the non-severe storm to our north continued to struggle. It had that NW-SE arcing shape of a supercell, but higher elevation slices on radar showed it was comprised of several updrafts, and really a multi-cell cluster at this point. We vectored up toward US166 and then toward US400. It was around Parsons where the storm finally took on a single identity and looked like it was trying to organize. Given the downstream environment of modest backed SSE flow and dwpts in the mid 60s, we were hoping that it was now just a couple evolutions away from becoming a formidable supercell. So, we headed east along US400 and parked just NE of Cherokee on K7.

To make a long story short, the storm really developed a nice structure just west of Cherokee and continued across Pittsburg into SW MO (SW of Lamar) as darkness fell. The first wall cloud and a couple of ‘tendrils’/brief funnels were observed in Cherokee, before the RFD blasted through the circulation. Joe Lauria grabbed some NEAT video from the Cherokee school parking lot on US400. Probably the best example of a visual cascading RFD I’ve ever seen, with precip/cloud debris sinking rapidly behind the dissipating wall cloud.

Best attempt at a tornado IMO occurred on the next meso which quickly evolved off to the northeast... just east of Pittsburg. We ended up almost right under the beast at the 260th/MO123 intersection. Looked very similar again to Darin’s photo above…maybe a bit lower with an incipient funnel that tried briefly before getting blasted again. Of significant note, the CG lightning in this area was absolutely AMAZING. A number of violent staccato positive CGs struck very close to our vehicle, many of them with repeated (5-8) illumination strokes. Saw the tornado report near Mindenmines, which would have been 4-5 miles NE of the circulation through some heavy precip, and not sure that any one else saw this either – I know we didn’t.

As for why this storm didn’t produce? Low level helicities were really never that great yesterday, even where the flow was slightly backed. Furthermore, the warm sector temps east of US59 or so never got out of the mid 70s thanks to abundant stratus all day, limiting surface buoyancy. Definitely some mid level drying observed visually behind the storm which I think helped contribute to these aggressive cold RFD surges that just never gave the occlusion enough longevity to get going. Lastly, inflow was severely lacking. Surface winds right in front of the meso could not have been more than 10-15 mph. Balance just wasn't there.

Thanks to Matt Dux for his great in-situ navigation skills and meso-analysis.

Some odds and ends noticed along the way:
- Coffeyville KS Subway offers $500 foot longs on their billboard in case anyone is interested.
- We (inadvertently) parked under a storm siren at the intersection of MO123 and MO43 watching the storm’s last gasp attempt as dusk. Upon activation, the siren bellowed a one second “whoop” and then spun around without a further peep. One of those you ‘had to be there’ humor things I guess.
- We must’ve passed Mike Hollingshead on 4 different occasions. Gotta stop one of these days my friend J

Data quality was outstanding. Using a Sprint HTC Mogul tethered to my laptop, boosted with one of Maximum Signal's amplifiers, we had generally 3-5 bars coverage the entire chase, averaging 500K-1 Mbps downloads. Level 2 data was not a problem, even in remote areas. In fact, we were even streaming Chris Rice's live video for a while. Gordon's amplifiers are incredible and must be given due props. Other than its inability to log your GPS track, we found the nRoute software that came with my Garmin GPS18 puck quite a pleasure to use with all roads accounted for. A nice accompanyment to the radar data.

Evan

 

[Paul Redmond]

Oklahoma did not posess a monopoly on busts. Being limited in travel time and gasping over expensive gas, I confined my hopes to south and central TX. They were waning hopes. Finally around 6pm some action began to break. There were splitting cells in old mexico heading for ever so slowly towards maverick county that had my initial interest. But they split and faded crossing the rio grand. I finally started heading north at 6:30 on 281 targeting cells that had formed northeast of the edwards plateau. My target being marble falls for some lightning and hail video and maybe a free carwash. But they died out and I headed south. When I was at the junction of 46 and 281, I noticed a new line of storms that had formed over the edwards plateau again moving northeast, with one cell over edwars/real looking particularly interesting as it rapidly expanded and bulged at the expense of surrounding cells. However as it moved east, instead of northeast, it too pulsed out around 8:30. At that point I had enough with pulse storms for one day and headed home.

 

[Buddy W Bradley]

OUR CHASE DAY WAS ONE OF MIXED EMOTIONS. DAVID TONER, RYAN SELL AND I ALL LEFT SPRINGFIELD AROUND 1:30. OUR INITIAL TARGET WAS GOING TO BE PARSONS KS, BUT WHEN THEY ISSUED THE TORNADO WATCH FOR EASTERN OKLAHOMA WE THOUGHT WE WOULD HEAD SOUTH ON 69 HWY TO ADAIR. ON THE WAY WE GOT OFF THE BEATEN PATH AS ONE OF MY PHOTOS WILL SHOW. ANYWAYS ... ABOUT 4:30 WE DECIDED TO HEAD NORTH TOWARD OUR ORIGINAL TARGET. WE HEARD THEY PUT OUT A SEVERE TH. STORM WARNING FOR THE PARSONS AREA. SO WE THOUGHT JUST MAYBE THINGS WERE GOING TO CHANGE. THEY HAD ALSO ISSUED A TORNADO WATCH FOR THE AREA UNTIL 11PM. JUST ABOUT THE TIME WE ARRIVED IN CHETOPA KS THEY (NWS) CANCELLED THE WARNING. OH WELL. THE STRUCTURE DIDN'T LOOK ALL THAT BAD TO OUR NW AND WE COULD SEE SOME TOWERS TO OUR WEST. WE DECIDED TO HEAD NORTH UP TO US-400. WE STOPPED AT US 400 AND HWY 2 AND TOOK SOME SHOTS. THERE LOOKED LIKE A WALL CLOUD TRYING TO FORM OFF TO THE NORTHWEST. AFTER A LITTLE WHILE WE DECIDED THINGS WERE JUST NOT GOING TO HAPPEN SO WE HEADEDEAST ON US 400 TOWARD MISSOURI. FOR SOME REASON WE HAD GIVEN UP, BUT I CHECKED MY CELL PHONE AND MYCAST@ FOR AN UPDATE. TO OUR SURPRISE THE STORM HAD BECOME TOR WARNED AND WE WERE BACK IN PURSUIT OF IT. WE BASICALLY FOLLOWED IT FROM CHEROKEE KS TO NORTH OF GOLDEN CITY MO. THERE WAS SOME VERY INTERESTING CLOUD FEATURES AND THE CONTRAST BETWEEN DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT WAS INCREDIBLE! ! WE JUST NEVER SAW A WHOLE LOT OF ROTATION NOR ANY FUNNELS. STILL WE SAW THAT INCREDIBLE CG OFF TO OUR NORTH AND EAST AS WE CHASED THE BEAST!

 

[Brandon Ivey]

Matt Hughes and I left Wichita shortly after 2:00PM for Southeast Kansas. We chased the storm (that eventually went tornado warned) from the Mound Valley, KS area all the way to Lamar, MO. It did not impress us at all during the first few hours. Then it went tornado warned and we were able to get up close to the business region of the storm. We were within two miles of this area of strong rotation on highway 126 (North of 400) near McCune and got a good look at it. Looking back at our video, there had to be a tornadic circulation briefly on the ground with this thing as heavy precip associated with the RFD was wrapping around it. I am curious as to if anyone was a little further north or northeast on highway 126 looking back into the notch of this thing? We lost it pretty fast with the amount of rain that wrapped. We also documented a couple other wall clouds and funnels into Barton County, MO, including a funnel over Pittsburg, Kansas (not filmed). We were also right in the Mindermines, MO area when GRLevel3 was showing the area of rotation just off to our south. We never observed the touchdown in that region that was in the SPC reports. The largest hail we got into while punching the storm was dime sized. Wow, what an intense supercell! I am surprised that it even produced what it did. Take a look at the video and you be the judge. Tornado or large funnel? What do you think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KylW9q7KqQM

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Hmmm, looks like something I'd probably call a tornado, and I'm pretty picky anymore. I'm a lot confused on when and where it did that though. I went east of Parson's and watched it approach.

I must be near McCune on these from highway 400 looking sw. This was the only time I saw it where I thought it had a legit hope to tornado in there. It had a nice bowl wrapped back in there.

It would make a lot of sense to me if your video was taken at this time.

After this that bowl slowly gets smooshed east up against the gust front of the storm. Northeast of it at this time was getting a big cold shelf bowing se ahead of it. I don't get how it could continue to about my location and end up doing what it does in your video. But evidently it did if you're sure that's right where you were at that point. I must have been driving east again. That area was smashed, sheared out to hell and gone when I left though, with a big cold undercut mess just north of it. It was that ne portion that went on to become the main area at Pittsburg though. I wasn't paying the storm too much attention after this area on my vid captures lined out with the rest of the shelfy look ne of it....until I reached Pittsburg and could see it morphed ne and was cutting in hard way up there now.