5/22/08 REPORTS: KS/NE/CO/OK/TX

[Skip Talbot]

Chad Cowan, Nick Lockwood, and I caught a supercell near Garden City, KS witnessing a April 24-esque dust whirl with rotation overhead in the updraft base that looked like a weak tornado just east of Dighton, a landspout soon after, and then the largest wall cloud I have ever seen in my life. Followed the storm until its sloppy death near Hill City.

Dusty debris cloud with rotation aloft:

Landspout:

Giant wallcoud:

 

[Mike Kovalchick]

Quick report...witnessed a rain wrapped wedge tornado about 3 miles SW of the town of Oberlin. Visibility was poor...didn't see debris but the wedge was clearly on the ground. The inflow was so strong into the tornado that it almost swept me right off my feet! Then the chaser became the chased as we fled from the storm exiting Oberling in a real hurry!

Edit: Pic of developing wedge. Sorry it's blurry..but the wind made it almost impossible to get a photo. Have some video of it..and probably have it actually pointed at the tornado for about 10 seconds..pointed at the ground..the air..and everywhere else the rest of the time as I tried to keep my feet on the ground!

 

[Scott Bell]

Due to work, got a late start today. Actually that worked out well as I was able to catch a cell just as it crossed US 36 to the west of Norton. I took a gamble on a gravel road and was rewarded with a brief funnel/possible tornado which was low contrast and over a hill. I will post a photo later. Unfortunately my road turned to muck and I had to turn back. I was in a cell-free zone and so I beat feet east to avoid the next cell approaching from the south. Decided to call it a day when that storm was reported moving at 45 mph

 

[Mikey Gribble]

We saw three tornadoes today in the vicinity of Dighton, Kansas which is SW of Wakeeny. The first one was a dusty stove pipe/wedge and while that tornado was occuring a rope tornado touched down on the other side of the road from us. Then about 20 minutes later we got a cone tornado, but the condensation funnel only came about 3/4 of the way to the ground on that one. I will try to get some pics posted soon. All in all a good day. The roads sucked and the storms were a ***** to keep up with. I will try to get some pics posted and a full report within an hour or so.
BTW I just sold my video to CNN so it should start airing on there within an hour or so.

 

[Robert Edmonds]

A friend and I were chasing around the Dodge City, Garden City area. Storms were very difficult to keep up with. A number of times we ended up jumping down to the next storm south. Saw some nice lowering on a storm, there was also ~1-2 inch hail for a good mile or so covering the fields. However, no tornado for my friend who was along for the first time ever chasing.

 

[Van DeWald]

Caught a short-lived tornado near Grainfield. On the ground for about 15 minutes before it roped out. Forgot to grab my Compactflash reader, so I can't get the pics off the card until later and my Vista laptop won't recognize my video camera to grab stills. Followed 5 other supercells that produced nice wall clouds, but they never did produce tornadoes for me. Then almost munched my wife's car in large hail twice, but it turned out to be quarter size (1 inch) both times (when radar was estimating 2 to 3 inches). Phew! Don't know how I would have explained that one. Drove in solid rain and winds of 40 to 60 mph from Hill City to Norton to Alma for 2 straight hours. Horrible. Only experienced 3 times when chasers had parked their vehicle smack dab in the middle of the road, doors wide open, tripods up. Guess they don't read Stormtrack. Saw perhaps hundreds of chase cars throughout the day. Quite the circus in some areas.

Van

 

[Damon Scott Hynes]

Good: I bagged. Bad: I got bagged. No damage, except to my skills and ego. Near Quinter and Collyer, KS, one of the countless storms in Gove and Trego counties today.

Me and a host of others got off I-70 at Quinter, we headed south for about a half mile before I decided it was gusting out (to my credit, so did everyone else--I was the last to leave.) I headed east with what was left of the storm off my right shoulder. Given the storm speed, I saw what I assumed was the same gust front that I had dismissed.

I was planning to go about a mile further to get some pics, but then I saw 20 cars on the shoulder, all pointing camcorders at me! My car was hit by two tumbleweeds that sounded like bowling balls...I bailed and taped toward my car as the circulation passed over us.

I'll get caps and vid later, going to be a busy weekend.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

What a chase day, saw a couple tornadoes around Gove County. Will post more later but here is a picgture

 

[Jason McKittrick]

My best chase ever. Shot tripoded video, 15min of the entire lifecycle Cone to Multivortex to wedge to cone to rope to ribbon to segmented. Also shot wedge with horizontal vortex all from the same location. That was quite a show.

These pics were all taken from exactly the same location over the coarse of about 20 min.

 

[Matt Grantham]

What a day! Followed a storm from south of Garden City with the idea that it would produce further north and boy it did. We saw at least 3 tornadoes today, 2 of which were on camera. The 3rd was near Dresden and appeared to be large but it was very obscured. Here is a short clip of our 2 best tornadoes of the day. How about that car ahead of us? I'm hope they are okay, but that was hilarious.

http://daniellamb.com/mattg/5-22-08/tornadoes2.wmv

 

[Stan Rose]

What an incredible day! Started the day in Goodland after chasing the electric show in NE CO the night before. Drove south to get out of the warm frontal guck and caught the supercell screaming north from Garden City at Scott City. As we followed it north, finally became clear that heading north was not the best option, so went back south based purely on logistics and rotation near Gove, saw the wall cloud near Hoxie and knew the storm was on its way to tornadogenisis. Miinutes later, got great views of a multi-vortex, then near-wedge, finally a great cone until roping out 10-15 min later. Gene Moore later showed us some pics he took of crazed chasers driving directly into the tornadic circulation. We followed this group of cycllical tornado-warned cells up through srn NE until darkness and HP wore us down. Will try to post some pics later. Almost regretted not staying in Colorado, but not any more! Now in McCook. What made this chase particularly satisifying is that we had no live radar, no nowcasting, did it all on visual and intuition.

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

Filmed several tornadoes today some were from same parent rotation, four different families of tornadoes all together. Fast storm motions and mud roads made for somewhat difficult chase at least in terms of getting good video. Will have to go back and pin down locations but first I filmed multi-vortex that morphed into a wedge, the next was a large tornado just SW of Oberlin, I then raced back South for a nice treat, I shot by far the best video I ever have of a tornado (though not tripoded and shaky) just North of Dresden, I filmed from the West side of a tornado in the field next to me 150 yards or so, it morphed from wedge to multi-vortex to stovepipe back to wedge, I could clearly make out the roar from the tornado, just an awesome sight!! Might try to get some video up tomorrow....

Here's some vid grabs that don't really do the video justice all from the same spot within 2 minutes of eachother...

 

[Mikey Gribble]

Click on the pictures to enlarge. Here is the first tornado. It was kicking up a ton of dust so the video grab is very hazy.



Here is the rope that touched down while the first tornado was still on the ground. This rope touched down on the opposite side of the road from us.



Here is the last tornado we got.



We had a british film crew with us shooting a documentary and part of their crew was following us in another car. They said they saw one more tornado that we missed. I wouldn't be surprised because there was a lot of dust getting kicked up. The first storm we were on kept getting rain wrapped and I know there were at least two tornadoes reported out of it, but we never saw those. The tornadoes we got actually came from the second storm we got on today. We dropped back south after the first storm we were on crossed the warm front and that's when we got our tornadoes near Dighton Kansas.
The video should be on CNN if you are interested.

 

[Tony Perkins]

We saw a nice rope that lasted 5 minutes, one of the string of reports that continued north from I-70. We left for a cell to the south that had a monster low meso at an exit west of McKeeny. Unfortunately for us, the original tornado storm went on to produce at least 5 more!

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

UNBELIEVABLE! is all I can use to describe this chase! 9 tornadoes from around WC Kansas. I have pics and video of every single one. Here are a few pics of the tornadoes we saw. The first one is on the white elephant trunk north of I70, the second is of the nice cone tornado that formed just a few hundred yards to our east, and the last is of the stovepipe/wedge that occured at the same time as the second one but to the west.

More pics, video, and logs up over the weekend as we have another chase day tomorrow.