5/13/09 Reports: MO/IL/OK/KS

[Ben Holcomb]

I will be posting more on my website later, but I was on the same cell as everyone else in Northern MO. We were in Hannibal as it went tornado warned and went Northeast and intercepted near Edina, MO.

I didn't venture far enough north to see into the rain wrapped mess from Edina, and bailed enough in advance (because I didn't feel like being runover by a rainwrapped mess) to apparently miss the tornado. Damage path later was 1 mile north of where we were.

Here's 1 picture I snapped of the damage path, however, my still camera was acting up, and I forgot to hit the record button on the video tape when we were in the damage path, so I win the award for biggest idiot

I returned the 600 miles home overnight, and am at work today. My coworkers told me I need to have my head checked.

 

[Scott Bennett]

I was with Ben Holcomb (Right behind him where the picture above was taken) this is the roof that was removed from the home to our left, or the West side of the road.

This was about a mile north of Edina before it went thru

 

[Kyle Soldani]

I was headed for an initial target of Concordia, MO. Due to school, wasn't able to get out as far as I wanted. Anyway, ended up shooting for Lexington, MO few miles north of I-70.

Ultimately we intercepted a large powerful supercell at I70 directly south of Lexington. Experienced penny sized hail, winds around 50 MPH and torrential rain.

 

[John Farley]

As I mentioned in the FCST thread, we had tickets to the Beach Boys concert in St. Louis last night (GREAT show!) so I had to stay close to home. The parameters actually looked quite good locally, so not sure I would have made the long drive to northern MO anyway, but things did not come together in Illinois during daylight hours. I went out briefly twice. First time was from about 12 to 1:30 to see if stuff that formed over southern Madison Co. would backbuild west of the warm front and become surface-based. It did not. Caught exactly 2 hailstones as I crossed under a cell between Benld and Litchfield. The storms briefly looked OK near initiation but rapidly became elevated as they moved over the rain-cooled air (and also on the wrong side of the warm front, which advanced less than expected, perhaps due to all the earlier convection).

Went out again between 3 and 4:30 to try to catch something on the northeast side of the MCV that passed south of the STL area. Southwest of STL this was in an area with CAPE around 2500 so thought something might get going, but these storms seemed even more elevated than the earlier ones. Again, the cool air northeast of the warm front and where earlier rain had fallen kept anything from becoming surface-based, though there were some briefly strong elevated storms south of Greenville and near Highland. Most interesting thing I saw was a pheasant walking along the side of the road. Didn't even bother ducking in the brush the second time I came by after turning around because the storm I was watching was getting away across Carlyle Lake.

 

[sebenste]

Hey Gang,

Myself, Tyler Allison (from Allisonhouse), Dave Mayhew, and several COD chasers went with me. My target was leave DeKalb at 11 AM and then go to Quincy, IL. Well, then it was Macon, MO, when the cold front slowed down a bit more than I expected. And then it was head north to near Kirksville to watch the storms develop...and then we saw this:

http://davidmayhewphotography.com/~dmphoto/lightbox/index/category/gallery%7CStormChaseLog%7C2009log%7C090513/start/0

Check out all the pages. We followed it into Schuyler county, IL, for a spectacular nighttime light show before it completely gusted out.

 

[Benjamin Rock]

Awesome day! Got to meet with many other chasers(Ben Holcomb, Danny Neal, Scott Bennett, Adam Lucio, and many others) in southern Illinois before heading to MO. We shot to Hannibal and waited for the initiation and shot north. Caught the Edina storm and got some nice pics and vids(will post later) before running from the RFD. Got separated from the rest of the group and decided to head north, getting a few damage pics on the way. Thanks guys for letting us tag along. We will hopefully get to do it again sometime!

 

[Chris Allington]

I chased in Northern Missouri as well, we ended up bailing on the Kirksville storm as it was very rain wrapped and we were coming in from the South and didn't think we would make it in time. We ended up on the 2nd storm from Brookfield to Northeast of Bucklin as it cycled and eventually got caught by the line behind it.

Initiation near Chillicothe, MO:

Storm trying to develop ahead of the 'Kirksville' storm near Milan, MO:

New TOR warned supercell near Brookfield, MO:

Storm as it cycles again East of New Boston, MO before getting caught by the line:

I will have more pictures, and a video of an incredibly close CG up later! Time to get back to packing so I can move.

EDIT: Heres a video of the incredible CG we got, it should be set to public so you dont need a facebook account to view it, if not I'll be putting in on youtube here in a bit!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?a.../video/video.php?v=635227477053&subj=17220909

 

[Colin Davis]

Some impressive shots there, Chris!


I took my roommate James out on his first chase today, then chased alongside Pritchard most of the day, later meeting up with Garry Wellman, Caleb Lawrence, Sarah Wellman, and Ben Beilsmith near the Quincy area.

In short, it's obvious in retrospect we screwed up. We didn't blast west on 6 as quickly as we should have, and we backtracked east to get to a better road option when we probably should have been heading west to get into better viewing. Trees obscured our vision of what was likely the tornado McGowan referenced, but Missouri was the theme of the day.

However, we were still able to pay homage to an outstanding wall cloud while the meso was still somewhat viewable. As it got closer, it became obvious that the rain and RFD were going to wrap around and completely cut us off from the wall cloud, and Garry and crew dropped south. Andrew and I decided that we'd take the unconventional approach and shoot north toward Williamstown (we were no more than 4 miles south of town at that point) and stare down the notch.

Andrew got solid video of the wall cloud from within several hundred yards, which exhibited strong rising motion and violent rotation. It dropped numerous condensation vorticies, some of which (as Andrew showed in his picture on page 2 of this thread) were able to get their act together just enough to touch down briefly.

Just as quickly as they'd appear, though, they'd disappear gracefully, leaving us wanting more as the wall cloud grew hypnotizingly close. We got wrapped up in its flank, anyway, and went north to try and get back east, as the meso and its tagalong deluge blocked our south route. We attempted to get back ahead of the storm to the east, but the linear transformation had begun.

Andrew and I parted ways in Quincy -- he back to Champaign, James and I to Galesburg.

I find it tough to explain how I can feel like I busted when I saw a tornado, but I do. I know Andrew feels the same way. Knowing what we do now, it's obvious we should have done things differently, and we would have been handsomely rewarded had we done so.

But Mother Nature has a funny way of providing consolation.

 

[Peter Wharton]

So... this is the incredible chasing of Italian Storm Chaser - Thunderstorm Team...

Two Wedge Tornadoes, the first that hit Andarko -OK- and the second one 3-5 miles SE of Andarko -OK- at 9.45 pm, tomorrow morning we will go to see the damage.

...

Great shots! We have HD footage of the same tornados, but haven't processed the vid caps yet. Not sure that these are the ones that hit Anadarko - we sighted these identical structures NW of Apache (your original post before you edited said it was NW of Cyril) and they only lasted maybe five minutes max - not enough time to track into Anadarko, and storm tracks at the time were SSE. Think these tornados were too far west for Anadarko. Sighted a separate funnel NNW of Anadarko which may have been the parent rotation that went through Anadarko.

 

[Justin Avery]

Played southeast Kansas and wasn't disappointed. We started out on the tornado warned storm in Chautauqua County, KS. We arrived 15 minutes or so after a confirmed touchdown northwest of Sedan, KS and were able to film the wall cloud and remaining circulation which was quite impressive for a few more minutes before going completely vanilla.
We then busted back east and set up in Galena, KS to film the light show as it approached but got a treat when it became tornado warned and a large funnel passed by directly in front of us as we looked west. The funnel was well lit by lightning and officially did not set down but I wouldn't be surprised if it did briefly at some point. Video link below. All in all a good chase.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0oPt-YoxAY

FYI: I learned on this chase to be aware of the difference in humidity and temperature between your vehicle and the outside. First time we got out of the Rodeo to film the wall cloud my camera lens instantly fogged up and remained that way for 5-10 minutes and that could definitely be the difference between an awesome catch or the annoying "almost" story you tell for the rest of your life.

 

[Doug Raflik]

Chased north and west of Oklahoma City with Kirstie Johnson of England. I dont remember cities and counties, but we got on the southern most cell of the day. Well as far as the line coming out of MO. Wasnt the best looking structure, but stayed with it. After dark we got south of the now southward moving storm, just south of Gracemont, and set up for lightning. Here the structure really was looking good, and the lightning was just enough to evenly light up the updraft.

After it overtook us, we headed into Gracemont to ride out the storm in a
car wash. It was closer to the right edge of the storm, and all shear markers (threat net) were well to the west. I just thought it may be a good idea to avoid potentially large hail. JUST as we pulled into the car wash, 2 shear markers showed up right on top of us, and the power went out. The wind got pretty intense. 2 minutes later the wind increased to what I estimated to around 100 mph. This lasted for a couple minutes. For another 5 to 7 minutes, the wind was sustained around 75 mph. As someone else that posted in this thread earlier, who was just south of Gracemont said, it was VERY scary to ride out. Today we went back to see what kind of damage there was. A 40 pound piece of metal trim from the car wash was ripped off and blew across the street. Lot of tree damage throughout town. I figured it was straight line winds, but I see today a NWS survey puts a tornado forming near Gracemont and moving south to Anadarko.

Doug Raflik

 

[MikeWeingand]

I got a late start on the chase today and it was my first chase of the year, second all time. I started out from my hometown of Springfield,IL and shot west towards quincy,il. Checked the spc mesoanalysis page and decided to shoot north up towards Mt. Sterling. Sat and waited for the tornado warned cell that was coming out of MO ( I believe it was the same one that spawned the kirskville tornado). The cell went tornado warned and it was practically dark out so all I could get were some dimly lit pictures with my somewhat outdated digital video camera. I am somewhat of a newcomer to all this so if anyone can analyze the pictures it would be awesome. I believe one is just a rain band and the others are just cloud dipping, but i could be wrong. This was the cell in Adams county,IL.

 

[Scott Weberpal]

Some of my video from yesterday is now up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zya1UWFkAqw

 

[Bob Hartig]

Bill Oosterbaan, Derek Mohr, and I intercepted the northern Missouri tornadic storm a couple mile north of Edina on SR15. I won't go into detail here because I've already posted in my blog, and frankly, after yesterday's long haul I'm ready to cash in and get a good night's sleep. However, I'm attaching a couple pictures. If interested, you can read my full writeup, which includes a couple more photos besides the ones here.

 

[Adam Lucio]

Full log is up now with videos of the tornadoes north of Edina.

Screen cap of the amazing gator head inflow.