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

GRAINSFIELD, KS AND HOXIE, KS TORNADOES

My Wednesday evening chase strategy paid off well for Greg Breneman and me on Thursday, May 22. Sitting on the immediate cool-side of the stationary front just east of the (secondary/eastern?) dryline led to three tornadoes between Grainsfield and north of Hoxie, KS. Geez, I even told a UK documentary company the evening before that our starting point would be Grainsfield, KS, but they never met up with me!

Tornado 1:
Touchdown: ~1SW of Grainfield, KS (Approximate...we viewed touchdown from 1.5E of Grainfield)
Time: 2229z-2250z (confirmed for accuracy)
Type: Rope tornado (good contrast, nice video)
Movement: due north at about 30-35mph
Dissipation: Unknown...but it dissipated about 3 miles west of KS Highway 23 somewhere between Grainfield and Hoxie

Tornado number one was quite spectacular since we filmed almost the entire lifecyle of a "clean," good contrast rope tornado. I called WFO Goodland shortly after their issuance of a tornado warning for this storm to report a wall cloud a few miles SSW of Grainsfield, KS that had little or no discernable rotation. The tornado touched down about 5 minutes later! :-0 This rope passed about 2 miles to our west. Wet fields led to little or no dust for most of its lifecycle. It did develop a dust bubble near the end of its lifecycle. Flat terrain led to a good view of the contact point.

Tornado 2:
Touchdown: ~3-4W of Hoxie, KS (approximate...we were in downtown Hoxie when it touched down)
Time: 2303z-2317z (confirmed for accuracy)
Type: 1/4 mile wide multi-vortex truncated cone, then truncated cone, then tapered funnel, the rope dissipation
Movement: due north at about 30-35 mph
Dissipation: Unknown...but it dissipated about 4 miles west of KS Highway 23, somewhere north of Hoxie, KS

A classic occlusion process led to this tornado. The old meso was shed to the WSW of this new meso which dropped a truncated cone-multi vortex tornado west of Hoxie, KS. Contrast was good, so we stopped a few miles north of Hoxie and filmed this tornado as it passed about 3-4 miles to our west and then northwest. It transitioned to truncated cone with condensation fully to the ground, to tapered funnel, and finally roped out.

Tornado 3:
Touchdown: unknown
Time: unknown, but we saw it on the ground at 2323z (confirmed). It probably touched down around 2321z
Type: Tapered funnel as of 2323z
Movement: unknown, but probably north
Dissipation: Unknown. It became rainwrapped about 6-8 miles to our north and we couldn't keep up with it.

We didn't get much of a view of this tornado since we were falling behind and then it got rain wrapped. We saw it as a light gray tapered funnel about 6-8 miles to our north as viewed from the south on KS 23.
 
I still haven't watched all my video, let alone get a solid chase report going. Still have to do one for the (22nd through the 26th) each day was decent chase, and four of which were tornado days, as far as I have got is to get this on youtube (the compression kind of ruins it but you get the idea). Tried to put uncompressed HD video up but the download times were 15+ min for each video....

Currently Some of my 22nd stuff can be found here....
http://severechase.com/5-22-08.html

The remaining days will soon follow here.....
http://severechase.com/2008chaseaccounts.html
 
Tony Laubach said:
Again, thanks to the ONE person among the parade of chasers that passed us that at least slowed to check to see if we were okay. The rest of them parade flew by without so much as a glance. Either way, I was able to drive this thing back onto the road on my first attempt, thus didn't have to spend the night down there.
Click to expand...

We were two cars behind you and saw this happen while filming (you can see your car slide off the road in our YouTube video). In fact, you can hear me start to say "We gotta stop" because I thought your car was about to flip, but then as we watched you slide into the ditch we immediately realized you were OK (a view that was reinforced when we looked back and saw the vehicle's occupants exiting while continuing to film). As a consequence we just kept on going because it was obvious no one was hurt/in danger, so we saw no reason to risk losing control/causing a pileup ourselves by slamming on the brakes on a downslope in those road conditions, and absent an emergency we did not want to lose the storm ourselves. It may have seemed as though we (and others) drove past without so much as a glance, but we watched the entire event unfold and were certain everyone was fine. Anyone who wants to can watch our YouTube video and judge the situation for themselves. As far as I'm concerned, as long as everyone is fine and there is not a safety issue, the storm always comes first.

Here's a link to our YouTube video:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rFItE14EeSU
 
Just now getting around to processing photos after a string of five consecutive chase days (Thursday-Monday).

In the days leading up to Thursday's event, I had been honing in on the southern dryline target around DDC-WWR - not so much because of distance concerns (I got off work both Thu and Fri, and departed Norman by 9 AM), but because I really wanted a more isolated, photogenic, high-contrast storm without the crazy chaser convergence and Mach-5 storm motions near the warm front. So with that in mind, I got into Woodward around noontime; there I happened to run into Wes Luginbhyl, who I stayed with for most of the day. We both liked the southern play, and meandered north to Buffalo OK by mid-afternoon. As the northern part of the dryline quickly lit up in W KS, we stayed put, confident our prize would come with time; at worst, we hoped, we'd have to hedge north to near DDC. Eventually, towers shot up across much of the eastern Panhandles, but the storms were surprisingly slow to strengthen and acquire rotation in the extremely-unstable environment. We followed one cell up to as far north as near Minneloa; by that point, it had all but dissipated, so we began hauling south to intercept the storms moving into western OK.

Though the Roger Mills Co. storm had a very good velocity presentation on radar, it also looked very HP with the circulation deeply embedded in heavy precip, so we opted to give another LP-ish cell coming into Ellis Co. a shot. We followed it from south of Laverne to Buffalo and north-northeastward, and while it had impressive structure at times, it appeared a bit too high-based (likely owing to the fact that dew points in this area had fallen off into the lower 60s) to do much. By this point, of course, it was far too late to correct my mistake and reposition to the wedgefest around the I-70 corridor, so I continued following this LP until sunset, when it rapidly dissipated. A nice consolation prize was in store, however: the mammatus display around Coldwater KS from nearby storms was easily the best I've ever seen. Here are a few shots of that, preceded by one of the dying LP storm from the OK-KS state line south of Coldwater.

2008-05-22_4063.jpg


2008-05-22_4070.jpg


2008-05-22_4071.jpg


2008-05-22_4080.jpg


^ I think it was around the time of this image that my weather radio was warning of a storm "capable of producing strong tornadoes" - in reference to the now-shriveled shell of an LP whose remnants can be seen on the left side of the frame. :D

2008-05-22_4086.jpg


All in all, not my worst chase by any means, but rather frustrating that the southern play underperformed Thursday - and then produced the photogenic Ft. Supply tornado Friday afternoon when I'd given up on the dryline and gone to KS! This day was a harsh reminder for me to keep a close eye out for areas of lower dew points that will limit tornado potential.
 
First Tornado!!!

This day is one that is particularly special to me, since it's the first day I've seen a tornado while chasing.

We left our hotel early in the morning, but I needed to repair my vehicle; the length of the repairs, of course, went well past the original estimation, and we took off just in time to arrive after the party began.

Our first intercept came in Dighton. We picked the arriving storm up on radar, went through the town just as the sirens went off, and then drove an extra few miles away from the town to make sure we were safe. We parked along a dirt road near a handful of other chasers and just enjoyed the day.

Soon, we looked toward Dighton and noticed a large number of cars exiting all at once. We thought it was some kind of orderly exodus at first, or maybe a train on tracks near the road or something, until it became clear we were watching the DoW and entourage. It was the first time I'd seen the vehicle, and subsequently the first time I'd seen a chaser convergence bigger than March 30th in SW Oklahoma. It looked like a parade was coming through town or something; I kind of took a species of pride in the fact that we got there ten minutes before the DoW did. Such encounters would happen throughout the next several days of chasing; the next day we caught the DoW and TIV apparently all alone save for a TV crew on the side of the road S of Wakeeney (an odd sight given the missing train), and then once again in York NE the day after while we were finishing our meal at Country Kitchen and gassing up at the station outside of there.

Soon after the DoW parked across the street on the dirt road, and watching all of them have to move due to a rather large tractor attempting to get through, I witnessed my first tornado while chasing - the piddly little dust whirl some have on footage already in this thread.

Since it looked identical - on the ground, at least - to the gustnado I saw outside of Ames on the 7th of May, and given its relatively harmless placement in a field approx. 1/4 mile away, we sat back and enjoyed the phenomena, not really knowing until the next day that it was my first tornado (even though the rotation aloft could be seen, we still weren't sure until confirmation that the rotation on the ground was 100% associated with the aloft rotaion). Nonetheless, it's now a moment for my memories.

Although we cannot be sure we personally witnessed the landspout that others witnessed very soon after that, we DID see the gigantic wall cloud - and the conversation went very Star Wars-like:

Me: "I wonder what everyone's looking at there under the shelf."
Craig: "That's no shelf."

The storm trucked it north, so we decided to follow it. Unfortunately, I had not been paying attention to the gas situation, and we lost the storm when we spent ten minutes trying to dig out coins from the seats of my car to cover the last few dollars at that cash-only gas station in Ness City.

Later in the day, we attempted to intercept the storm at Collyer. Unfortunately, we got ourselves into yet another "Lucy and Viv" situation where we found hills, ALL OF A SUDDEN, yet again (in hindsight the nearby "Hill City" should've given it away to us ;)) so we were forced to going down a road - effectively named "Dump Road" - where we went all out; I even tried to climb a (unfenced) hill to try to see the storm, but I couldn't see anything but tons of scud due to more and more hills.

After this, I was quite a bit dejected we'd whiffed on tornadoes, unknowing at the time that I'd already seen my first one; I blamed myself for taking off way too late, dawdling at a Wal-Mart after my car had been repaired, and not prepping up on the layout of the land the night before.

However, we decided to chase a TOR-warned storm just south of Wakeeney, which was certainly in reachable distance. We stopped at the Wakeeney airport parking lot to watch with a few other chasers, but Craig's good eye determined quite early that the airport was directly in the path (later, it turns out, it was hit and minorly damaged). With the wall cloud well E of the road and with ample time to reposition, we decided to do a flank from the north, which brought the wall cloud into perfect sundown-pumpkin color just as it was descending to form my second tube.

The tornado seemed at first to perhaps right-turn a bit. Perhaps it did not, but in any case, we wanted out of the path of the storm "just in case," so safety came before footage. Ready at any moment to swing around and bail, I kept the tornado in my peripheral and watched the motion, careful that it wasn't going to move left relative to me (coming from the north, that could've meant it might have been possible that the storm would cut us off later up the road). The worst the relative motion got to us, however, was the momentarily frightening effect for a few seconds of the tornado at a "stand-still," meaning it was heading right toward my relative direction. But the tornado began to move relative to my right hand side once again, and soon, the tornado was directly on my right and passing quickly behind me.

Of course my luck kicked right back in, and when we were at a point for a good shot the tornado became rain-wrapped and unwatchable. Not too much time later, we were hit by precip and EXTREMELY strong RFDs, so strong that my car began to lose control enough for us to pull over; with quite a bit of fortune, we stopped right in front of the only home at Treago Center (and thus the only home on the road for miles around). The owner of the home, a very kind preacher who looked exactly like Stephen King, saw us pull in and shepherded us inside. The winds had us forcing open the doors to my shuddering car and stumbling across the lawn. I thought for a moment it was not unlike the feeling of getting hit by one of those fire station's hoses.

Feeling quite a bit better but somewhat awkward in a welcoming home, we had a long discussion about stormchasing (including my excited relay about having seen my first tornado) and about the day in general, which had been very stressful for them and their friends after being in the middle of that supercell train.

I would later find out that a tornado "4 miles SW of Treago Center" had been reported separately from the tornado we'd seen. I wonder if it was truly a separate tornado, or if it had been the same tornado with the distance misreported. Nonetheless this gentleman and his nice wife could have potentially saved us from our doom had that always-feared separate meso developed a secondary tube in our location ... but whatever the case may be, that man really took a risk (on us and on the storm) letting us in his own home, simply from concern for the safety of two stranded strangers in a storm.

All in all, one heck of a chase for my first day of tubes. Our only evidence of the Wakeeney storm, other than a VERY small window of time when Craig captured the tube on camera (he of course didn't have time to adjust the zoom and focus since we had safety to worry about first at the time) is THIS PICTURE:

treagotor.jpg


It's quite a "Where's Waldo?" picture, and it was taken right at the moment that the tube passed on my RHS and started heading behind us. It was taken the moment before the rain wrapped it, so it's difficult to see; the funnel itself is to the immediate left of the rain shaft, and was indeed violently circulating on the ground (despite being disconnected visually) as testified by Craig, other videotapers, and myself. The cellphone photo here doesn't relay how close it actually was ... it was pretty damn close, and Craig confirmed it was closer than he'd been in all his years of chasing. It was certainly unintentional that we got that close, and we wouldn't do it again by any means. We're not sure HOW close it was, but I'd wager Tom Brady has passed for more yards in a football game or two.

It probably wasn't the most tasteful thing to do sticking my right arm in front of Craig's face to take a snapshot with my Blackberry, and it isn't the prettiest thing given the fact that my arm was probably shaking and we were traveling - but, at the time I was safely driving down a straight road with nobody else on it, and I thought I had a second to extend my right arm, press a button, and hope my two-second window for a potshot at a picture actually caught evidence. Thank goodness it did. I'd have been damned to not get some kind of memoir of what I thought at the time was my first tornado. :D

The subsequent days have already been documented - our stressful day in the same area on the 23rd where we just seemed to always be on the wrong side of things, our relaxing day on the 24th where we saw excellent structure and perhaps the only funnel cloud in Nebraska (near Tilden, when I got to witness up close the full evolution of a wall cloud-to-funnel process that I hadn't yet seen), and then the big sobering day on the 25th where we were on the unwatchable - and later, unbearable - Parkersburg storm. But the 22nd will hold the best memories for me, since I finally bagged my first tubes after a hard and expensive first year. :D
 
Last edited by a moderator:
GRAINSFIELD, KS AND HOXIE, KS TORNADOES

NOTE: This is a major update to my previous chase summary for this event. I've included more detailed descriptions and video clips.

My Wednesday evening chase strategy paid off well for Greg Breneman and me on Thursday. Sitting on the immediate cool-side of the warm front just east of the (secondary/eastern?) dryline (surface map led to three tornadoes between Grainfield and north of Hoxie, KS. Geez, I even told a UK documentary company on Wednesday evening that our starting point would be Grainfield, KS, but they never met up with me!

Tornado 1:
Touchdown: ~1SW of Grainfield, KS (Approximate...we viewed touchdown from 1.5E of Grainfield)
Time: 2229z-2250z (confirmed for accuracy)
Type: Rope tornado (good contrast, nice video)
Movement: due north at about 30-35mph
Dissipation: Unknown...but it dissipated about 3 miles west of KS Highway 23 somewhere between Grainfield and Hoxie

2008 May 22 Grainfield, Kansas Tornado - YouTube video clip

Tornado number one was quite spectacular since we filmed almost the entire lifecyle of a "clean," good contrast rope tornado from KS Highway 23. I called WFO Goodland shortly after their issuance of a tornado warning for this storm to report a wall cloud a few miles SSW of Grainsfield, KS that had little or no discernable rotation. The tornado touched down about 5 minutes later! :-0 From our position about 1 mile east-southeast of Grainfield, this rope passed about 2 miles to our west. Wet fields led to little or no dust for most of its lifecycle. It did develop a dust bubble near the end of its lifecycle. Flat terrain led to a good view of the contact point.

Tornado 2:
Touchdown: ~3-4W of Hoxie, KS (approximate...we were in downtown Hoxie when it touched down)
Time: 2303z-2317z (confirmed for accuracy)
Type: 1/4 mile wide multi-vortex truncated cone, then truncated cone, then tapered funnel, the rope dissipation
Movement: due north at about 30-35 mph
Dissipation: Unknown...but it dissipated about 4 miles west of KS Highway 23, somewhere north of Hoxie, KS

A classic occlusion process led to this tornado. The old meso was shed to the WSW of this new meso which dropped a truncated cone-multi vortex tornado west of Hoxie, KS. Contrast was good, so we stopped a few miles north of Hoxie and filmed this tornado as it passed about 3-4 miles to our west and then northwest. It transitioned to truncated cone with condensation fully to the ground, to tapered funnel, and finally roped out.

2008 May 22 Hoxie, Kansas Tornado - YouTube video clip

Tornado 3:
Touchdown: Somewhere in northcentral Sheridan County, Kansas
Time: unknown, but we saw it on the ground at 2323z (confirmed). It probably touched down around 2321z
Type: Tapered funnel as of 2323z
Movement: unknown, but probably north
Dissipation: Unknown. It became rain-wrapped about 6-8 miles to our north and we couldn't keep up with it.

We didn't get much of a view of this tornado since we were falling behind and then it got rain wrapped. We saw it as a light gray tapered funnel about 6-8 miles to our north as viewed from the south on KS 23.
 
Doug Raflik said:
While that one was still to the west of the road, a brief spin up happened just off the road to the east, right in front of us..
http://www.wxnut.net/5-22-08_18.jpg

First tornado crosses to east of road while second has formed to the west of 23...http://www.wxnut.net/5-22-08_20.jpg
chose not to follow the storm north after this point.
Doug Raflik [email protected]
Click to expand...

Doug, I've been trying to figure out the structure on that cell and you're the first one to post a good set. After Hoxie II roped out I drove north to this storm. At first the whole cell was a rotating concentric mass (as captured on your 14mm), but rain free. Then it quickly closed in with rotating curtains. All but one of the tornadoes and funnels were rotating around the outside edge of the circulation. I'm pretty sure your brief spin up was a tornado that had been going on west of the road, lifted and came down again near you. See the bottom of my page http://chaseday.com/ and you'll see the tip of the condensation funnel at the top of the image. Appears at that time we were pretty close together. Then you must have pulled over, or I passed you because I'm further north on this road. I have shots of one of the tornadoes passing right in front of my vehicle, but it's dark and noisy (shot at 800-1600 ISO). I saw three well formed condensation funnels that were likely on the ground at one time or another, two were long lived in addition to other brief funnels. Finally I got closed in by very dark rain and gave up the pursuit. I'll work on getting a set posted, but I hope others contribute so we can put this one together.
 
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