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

[David Wolfson]

Reading Mike H's post makes me feel a bit better, because my experience was similar (except for the ear and head part -- ouch!)

I arrived nice and early, in time for lunch at my Garden City target with some time to kill until I was to meet up with the people also coming down from Oakley I was to join with at the airport southeast of town. Eat lunch, get to the airport, park, look back to the ssw, and there's the storm already -- 1:30 in the freaking afternoon. Called my friends to urge them on, and they told me then they stayed in Oakley - oy. Followed the developing storm for almost three hours, including one race in toward the meso around Gove just before it decided to finally tornado. Backed off down I-70 toward WaKeeney rather than try to play catch-up and hail inspector heading north to Hoxie. Besides the storm was being outflanked by development to its south. Apparently it didn't know that.

Passed the Quinter exit at just in time to see funnels over my shoulder from the aforesaid flanking development. Watched and waited at WaKeeney until it was time to head north or bust. No funnels then of course. It was really cranking by the time it passed just west of Hill City with car-door-freezing quality inflow. But then it also got time to go as flank junior approached from the south (chase time +5 1/2 hours). Screamed east from Edmond just ahead of the hail core, watched from an unproductive angle a few minutes at Densmore. Then spent the rest of the evening threading my way through just ahead of the storm core (though not the ten miles of blinding rain and wind after dark including the stretch of road they'd milled off all the paving and line markings -- what a treat) -- and on to McCook. Nighty night, OPEC $50 richer.

 

[Bob Schafer]

I was going to embed a vidcap of the Grainfield tube, but Drew's pic is so much better than my vidcap I won't bother.

Vid of two tornadoes, though the contrast was so bad for the second one you may not even be able to see it, depending on what kind of monitor you're using:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDAQK1o1ib0

Cool day.

 

[Jonathan Merage]

Quick post--saw three, possibly four tornadoes roughly in the same line along H23 from near Gove (15 miles south) straight up to Hoxie, where Sean Mullins & I watched almost the full lifecycle of the multi-vortex tornado there from close range.

Once the tornado morphed into a large multivortex cone it crossed the road in front of us, where strong RFD winds & wrapping precip forced us to slow down. Chased the tornado visually from just west of Hoxie 'til its rope out near Selden, where the storm apparently cycled & dropped another one at Dresden. Will upload my video in a couple days when I get back home.

 

[George Kourounis]

Well, that was wild!

Yet again, I get to see tornadoes on my birthday except this year I got to see several of them including one at extremely close range.

To make a long story short, we intercepted at least 4 tornadoes today including a slender hose near Grainfield, Kansas and an up close encounter with another near the town of Collyer where we got into position ahead of a rapidly rotating wall cloud. We chose a very close position where we knew that the circulation would pass just slightly to our west (And I mean JUST slightly). As the violent rotation approached, it became clear that any tornado that formed would touch down right beside us...

It did.

A white cone shaped funnel came down and circulation appeared on the ground. The winds at our location increased rapidly as we filmed it from outside the vehicles. We held our position in between the edge of the collar cloud and the tornado as the winds increased to near 100 mph. Rain and mud splattered us and two of the van doors were damaged when they over extended in the wind. I eventually tried to climb back into the van but I couldn't close the door and it was rocking so hard that we thought it might flip over. In the process, the wind on the edge of the circulation sucked our atlas and GPS unit out of the van and into the storm. Where they ended up, I'll never know. The motion in the clouds was unlike anything I've ever seen. The rotation was so strong that it looked like a sped up timelapse movie but it was real and it was directly overhead.

We eventually blasted further east to get away from the most dangerous part of the storm which was no easy feat considering that the inside of my windshield was plastered with water and mud making it almost impossible to see.

George Kourounis
www.stormchaser.ca

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Video very close to the tornado south of WaKeeney near dusk.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=l_K2fBXkcyc

 

[Marko Korosec]

I really don't know how to describe this day... just WOW! We have seen at least 5 tornadoes near I70 in central KS (with 2 more possible in the beginning, cannot confirm yet). Let me just post few photos...

The best chase day in my life, thats for sure!

 

[Doug_Kiesling]

Just a quick post here since it is late.

Chris Collura and I chased with a new chaser, Brandon who we met up with us out in the field today and asked if he could tag along. He was from Hays and seemed pretty cool so we said sure.

We were on the dirt road about 5 miles west of the cluster... that I heard about on Hwy 23. I did run into the Discovery storm chasers crew standing in the road a couple times. GET OUT OF THE FN ROAD A-HOLES. I need a Fn Train Airhorn in my truck.

I do have to say other then a few people, everyone was pretty cool on the roads today.

Anyways, enough ranting about the camera crews standing in the roads. We followed the first line of storms up to I70 where I said ewww and did not want to follow them after looking at how it looked like a massive HP in the works.

So we hung out by Grinnell Kansas for a while since I was watching the southern storms and just did not want to go after the junk to the north that a lot of people followed up 23.

After a little while, my hunch paid off and the three of us were rewarded with a picture perfect tornado.

We saw several tornadoes today but this was the best looking one with the best road network setup for chasing. All in all a good day.

 

[Willoughby Owen]

Destruction from rain-wrapped tornado 8mi north of Oberlin near the NE border.


Poor folk were searching for stuff 150 yards down the road in the thunder, wind and rain. Hearts sure do go out to them.

 

[Bill Hark]

Storm Chase May 22, 2008


Today was a very frustrating day due to rapid storm northward motion over poor road networks. I started in Colby and waited until lunch time checking data. Eventually, a line of storms developed to the east in a north-south line. I decided to head south toward Scott City to intercept the more discreet appearing cells that were near Garden City. I turned east at Scott City on 96 and awaited the first storm. It developed a wall cloud and lowering but then lost some of its structure. North of 96, it strengthened. I couldn’t follow it due to the poor road network. More storms were forming to the south. I waited for the next storm that also passed to the north. The last storm was moving slightly more northeast of north. I drove toward Dighton, then south on 23 to intercept it. Tornado sirens were sounding in Dighton. I turned east on a dirt road to get away from the approaching storm. At the intersection on county road 80 and Turkey Red in Lane County, I observed a spinup tornado under a wall cloud at 5:30PM. I headed north on 380 Rd following the storm to my west. Keeping up with the storm was difficult. At 5:37 PM, I turned east on 96, then north on another dirt road (county road 523) just west of Beeler. The storm was still to my west and strengthening. I reached route 4 by Utica, then north on 82. I was barely keeping up with the storm. At 6:12PM in Trego County, I could see a massive meso with rapid rotation. I approached it as it was lowering. At 6:15 PM, I filmed what I thought was a massive wedge tornado south of Collyer. It became wrapped in rain. I followed it northward along dirt roads, jogging slightly eastward to stay away from precip. At 6:21, I saw a brief funnel. My progress northward was delayed due to damaged trees. Luckily, several carloads of other chasers arrived and we all moved the large downed limbs. I reached I-70 and followed the storm northward on 283 past Hill City. I ran into Cloud 9 Tours. We turned around north of Hill City to avoid a rain wrapped meso. I called off the chase due to darkness and poor visibility. Later in Hays at a steak restaurant, I chatted with Charles Edwards, George Kourounis, and Mike Theiss of Cloud 9 Tours. They were east of the storm that I was on and closely observed a brief tornado to the east of the meso 6:30PM. My “wedge tornadoâ€￾ was actually a very low rapidly rotating mesocyclone. Oh well, it was still very cool to watch. Over all, a disappointing storm chase due to the many reported tornadoes. I saw only one confirmed tornado in Lane, County but the large rapidly rotating meso was very cool. Thanks to Dave Lewison for some nowcasting.

Youtube video of the rapidly rotating storm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BKEzd1iiEg



Brief spinup tornado in Lane County, KS.
http://www.harkphoto.com/052208tornado530.jpg

Storm at 5:37. Town in foreground is Alamota.
http://www.harkphoto.com/052208storm537.jpg

Rapid rotating storm in Trego County, KS.
http://www.harkphoto.com/052208massivemeso613.jpg

Very low collar cloud/mesocyclone that appeared to be a wedge tornado.
http://www.harkphoto.com/052208meso615.jpg


Bill Hark
http://www.harkphoto.com

 

[afischer]

Just a quick post. Chased two long-lived supercells today. The first early one was from birth near Dighton to up north of Grainfield. Finally saw it looking non-trashy with a RFD cut, but let it go (apparently right as it went bonkers) in favor of a new storm to the south. Intercepted the southern storm via the gravel road off Highway 283 that straddles Trego and Ness counties... reaching the updraft about 610pm ~6NE Utica. Followed this beastly storm up through southwestern and westcentral Trego counties and witnessed a number of tornadoes. Initially, there was an absolutely crazy, cylindrical, ground-scraping tornadocyclone, with a train of RFD dirt blasting in front of it (strongly reminiscient of the Alexandria NE tornado 4 years ago today)... though I could never get a glimpse of a tornado in the murk for certain. A high-based, likely anticyclonic tornado developed well out on the forward lip of the meso and lasted about 4 minutes with a vigorous debris swirl for a while. Then a third brief truncated cone. Then the main meso reorganized with violent rotation and became high-contrast as it passed my longitude... and produced another dusty tornado as it began to approach I-70. Saw a substantial cone funnel south of Wakeeney at darkfall with a third tor-warned cell; may have been tornadic as a couple reports of a tornado came in at that time near Trego Center. Back to work tomorrow, so nice to have some success today.

 

[Phil Kurimski]

Met up with the chase team of Randy Baker, Mark Rader and Dave Inmon in Kansas City around 10 am and decided to head west towards Hays, Kansas to wait for storm initiating along the dry line to move north and interact with the warm front. When we arrive at Hays around 230 pm convection is firing to the southwest and heading rapidly north. We decide to head west to Grainfield then south to Gove on 23. We saw a nice cell coming at us from the north...but decided to follow a cell further south. By the time the first cell had a confirmed tornado we were too far south to intercept, so we kept chasing the southern storm. We waited just east of Gove where we met up with Kirk Swain, then followed the cell north along 23 as it developed a nice mesocyclone and wall cloud. As we approached Interstate 70 we noticed a low contrast tornado just to our north. Despite some heavy rain, we caught some pictures of the tornado by adjusting our camera settings to account for the low contrast around 538 pm.

We did not have long to celebrate as another cell to the south was developing a mesocyclone and heading northeast. To intercept this cell we headed east on Interstate 70 and stopped 5 miles east of Collyer where we watched the developing mesocyclone to our southwest. We noticed some inflow dust being kicked up to our south with 35 to 40 mph winds. As the storm got closer to the interstate, the inflow became stronger as a tornado developed within miles of our location. The inflow into the tornado was strong enough to completely knock me off my feet as we were close enough to the tornado that it took a few frames to capture the entire width of the tornado as it passed across the interstate around 635 pm.

We then headed east on 70 then north on highway 283 to keep tracking the storm as it headed northeast. However the storm became outflow dominent as it moved north of the warm front. We headed back south towards Wa Keeney as another tornado was headed towards our location just before 9 pm. It was too dark to get any good shots of the tornado so we headed east on 70 where we encountered very strong winds as the tornado passed within a mile or so of our location. With darkness upon us we waited the storms out in Ogallah to try and get some lightning before calling it a night in Hays.

This account with pictures from the day here http://www.mesovortex.com/Storms/may22-2008.html

The tornado near 23 and I-70

The tornado that crossed I-70 east of Collyer

 

[cdcollura]

Good day all,

Long day here ... But caught at least 4 tornadoes in W/C Kansas. Some pictures below...

Above: Near Grinnell, Kansas.

Above: Beautiful rope NE of Grinnell, KS!

Above: Dusty multi-vortex near Collyer, Kansas.

Above: At sunset in "bears cage" near Wakeeney, Kansas.

Full chase log (in the works) at the link below...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/mwcl2008.htm#MAY19

 

[Donald Giuliano]

Started in DDC this morning with John Esterheld, David Demko, and my wife Nicole. We wound up getting on a storm a little south of Garden City, KS, and followed it for a good 4-5 hours, and were finally rewarded as it put down some monster tubes between Gove and Dresden as the storm paralleled KS highway 23. We lost track of exactly how many tornadoes we saw, but depending on how one counts it was at least 5-7 and possibly more. Any exact number is probably debatable since there were multiple tornadoes forming, dissipating, dancing around, and evolving in the most highly variable manner I've ever seen all from a single parent mesocyclone.

Anyway, here are a few pics...sorry for the low quality helter skelter mess of attachments, the machine I'm using at the moment only has mspaint. Reed will upload a video clip from our chase to YouTube in the morning.

 

[Verne Carlson]

An amazing chase day along I-70 in western Kansas today for many including our group.

We left the large damaging tornado north of Denver and missed it in our backyard by only an hour and a half and less than 30 miles from where we started. It was very disheartening to hear of the 3 lives lost and all the damage in Weld County which was a historically strong tornado that went northwest almost into the mountains near Laramie, WY.

Here's the tornadoes we saw today, some of which Michael's already posted some amazing pics of and Eric got the best video to come!

1) Grainfield, KS white rope tornado
2) Multi-vortex truncated cone south of Collyer, KS
3) Stout Cone south of Collyer, KS
4) Needle tornado south of Collyer, KS
5) Circulation passing over I-70 east of Collyer, KS
6) Truncated cone tornado west of Trego Center, KS

I flew one of the WW3 planes on the Stout Cone south of Collyer, KS but lost site of it in the dark conditions and it was taken far out of range and lost. I may get it back if a farmer finds it next fall during the wheat harvest and calls my cell phone number written all over the tail!

 

[JoelHamburger]

Very successful chase day in the Wakeeney area.

Arrived MCI 8:30 a.m from NYC, drove west on 70 to Gove by 4:00 p.m.

My girlfriend witnessed her first tornado, the gorgeous rope 7-8 miles south of Hoxie. Followed the cranking meso north and witnessed a cone with multi vortex spinups and then a nice elephant trunk north of Hoxie.

Was exhausted from the trip and decided to head in early for some dinner in Wakeeney (around 7:15). On 70 between Gove and Wakeeney witnessed a very suspicious wedge looking lowering 5 miles to the north.

After dinner at the truck stop in Wakeeney, decided it would be best to bail east and had some white knuckle rain band/tumbleweed moment before we were clear of the rotation (around 8:20). Saw some unlucky chasers who were caught in the tornado and had their windows blown out. Thankfully they seemed OK.

Without a doubt the best day of my short career.