5/18/10 REPORTS: TX/CO/WY/KS

[Tyler Burg]

I chased with Chris Allington, we left Omaha at 11:30 planning on just driving to OKC to chase the next day, but by the time we got to Salina we decided to chase, targeting the Oklahoma Panhandle we nearly went after the beast everyone else was on, but realized road options were non existent west of Stinnet. A storm was rapidly developing in the OK panhandle now, and we noticed a very low wall cloud from about 25-30 miles away. We intercepted the storm about 20 miles NW of Guymon, it produced two brief tornadoes, approximately 3 miles ahead of us on the muddiest road I've ever been on, it was more like boating on the road. I really can't believe we didn't get stuck in the ditch. Unfortunately due to being on this incredibly crappy road images aren't good...

 

[Tim Stoecklein]

I chased the southern CO storms, after a little battle with myself over the N vs. S targets. The south won out, and I got on the first cell firing near Pueblo. It gave it a go, putting up a good show of structure, but in the end couldn't manage anything more than some 1" hail. The rest of the day had me hopping around along the Hwy 96 corridor, and there were some great storms to be seen. Ultimately a little trip down "Bob's Road" left me out of position on a couple TOR warned storms. All in all a good day!

Pictures and details at:

http://tornadotimmy.wordpress.com

 

[Matthew Piechota]

did a nice write up on my blog for this day, was on the channing/dumas storm then caught 2 tornadoes near dalhart/stratford with a supercell at night. caught 4 tornadoes total but no pictures due to driving during them and 2 of them at night.

http://bataviastormchaser.blogspot.com/2010/05/4-tornadoes-in-tx-panhandle-on-tuesday.html

here are some pictures of the day.

northeast of Channing rapidly becoming a supercell


southwest of Dumas


amazing structure looking west east of Dumas


looking WNW towards Dumas

 

[Tony Cook]

Dumas, TX supercell

Chased the Dumas supercell from Hartley to Miami. Caught a few tornadoes around Dumas, TX, and a lot of other interesting sights as day became evening. Full report on the chlog:

http://twistedtexas.blogspot.com/2010/05/chase-report-18-may-2010-dumas-tx.html

TonyC

 

[Laura Duchesne]

Incredible day! Missed the wedge tornado, but saw several other tornadoes around the Dumas area, including wicked structure. I have never seen so many wall clouds on a chase before!

http://laurawx.blogspot.com/2010/05/tx-panhandle-tornadofest.html

 

[David Conaway]

I was working in Amarillo on this day, so this was a great opportunityto chase in an area that I normally don't.

The Storm had already produced in Dumas when I was approaching from the south. I went east on 1913 and then 687 to parallel the storm up to Stinnett. I did witness nice funnel at highway 1913 and 152 and again at highway 152 and Stinnett. The storm continued off to the east and I went back to Amarillo once it got dark.

Overall it was a very nice chase because of the slow storm speed, wonderful terrain and a relatively small amount of chasers on the roads.

One item of note was the lack of convection in the areas south of Amarillo. I wonder if the large MCS that took place over south Texas and the NW GOM, limited the return of surface moisture to the area resulting in the isolated nature of the storms.This was probably a good thing, since no other storms could disrupt the supercell that we were on.


David Conaway

 

[Rebekah LaBar]

A little behind in posting this, but nevertheless, here goes.

A full chase log and photos are found on my website; here's a recap of a few of the highlights.

Jeff Makowski and I were out on the Dumas storm as well, pretty much from the first blip on the radar. It was a great chase, and the structure on that storm was just jaw-dropping.

We thought we saw a tornado come out of the rain briefly near Stinett at about 7:57pm (we were looking north, so it would have been just north of Stinett) before roping out, but as it was difficult to tell if it was actually on the ground, we were only about 90% it was a tornado until we later reviewed footage and compared the time and location of our funnel cloud/tornado with the time and location of NWS Amarillo's tornado reports/survey info.

We saw several other funnel clouds and suspicious lowerings, but were not sure if any of them had ground circulations, either. In reviewing later photos, I determined that one of the bowl-shaped funnel clouds I saw, just east of Dumas earlier in the day, must have been a tornado as well (I had to really increase the contrast on the photo to see it, but it does look to me like it reaches the ground, and it matches the time and location of the tornado 2 E of Dumas).

Jeff and I still maintain that we would much rather stand back and get amazing views of the storm structure than just get up-close photos of something you have to squint at to tell if it's a tornado or not...so we were just fine with the idea of not seeing any tornadoes.

We were also treated to the amazing light show near and after dark, almost all the way back across the Oklahoma border.

Sample photo:

 

[Brandon Brown]

We (College of Dupage) hung out in Dalhart and had lunch waiting for clearing to take place, and when it didn't seem like it was going to clear out in our area we decided to head northwest towards the Clayton, NM area because satellite showed clearing up that way. Half way there we noticed a tower go up to the south (in a pocket of clearing if I remember correctly!) so we turned around and eventually caught up with this storm near Channing. We chased and observed 2 tornadoes with this storm, a brief touchdown to the northeast of Channing and the other one near Dumas. No photos unfortunately since we were in the vans during both touchdowns. We chased the storm to Stinnett, where the towns sirens were activated and people were seeking shelter. That was pretty surreal to see since you don't see that up here in Canada. We left the storm for a new storm in the Dalhart area, and observed two nightime tornadoes with the storm, one near Dalhart and the other near Stratford. We spent the night in Amarillo to prepare for the next days chase in western Oklahoma.

Developing supercell with inflow band in the Channing area.

A photo of me standing in decent inflow.

Rotating base west of Dumas.

A few structure shots west of Stinnett.

 

[Tyler Burg]

Full report now up... http://www.tonightssky.org/accounts/051810.html

 

[Brad Nelson]

Good evening all. I am finally getting around to putting together more thorough chase logs from my chase trip this year. Check out the log, pictures, and video from this amazing chase day here if you wish:

http://eyeonthetwister.com/index.php/2010/05/0518/

 

[Dennis Oswald]

At this point the rotation became pretty strong, but no tornado was visible from our perspective

Hey Jason same perspective from my point.