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

[Tim Marshall]

Target was DDC to Hays. It was a long haul from Dallas, TX but Kay and I made it to DDC by 3 PM, just in time to see the tail end storm develop south of Garden City. We followed this storm north-northeastward the rest of the day through Utica and then to Collyer, KS. We saw several dusty "gustnadoes" north of Utica -although there was cloud base circulation above. Then observed a large wall cloud with dust around it south of Collyer that crossed I-70 -same one that Phil Kurminski and CD saw but we had low contrast. My chase reads exactly the same as Dr. Bill Harks which included the steak dinner in Hays. No pretty tornadoes for us. We'll try again today. UPDATE 5/23: Went back to my film site south of Collyer and discovered a large tornado track of freshly broken and flattened trees, so the presence of a tornado was confirmed. TM

 

[Jerry Funfsinn]

Managed to catch a few tornadoes. Frightening to say the least as I ended up intercepting a rain wrapped tornado north of Hoxie,KS on 23 and while that was roping out another developed just to my south and I became the chased. Suffice to say if I was not on a paved highway I would have run out of headroom quickly. Scariest thing I witnessed was someone in a car stuck on a side road as I'm bolting north on Rte 23 with the tornado close behind. Just south of Dresden I stopped and watched as the tornado became really violent and at that time decided I wanted no part of that thing and quickly rushed to the NE of Dresden.

Posted video on my website.

 

[J.B. Dixon]

Day started in Colby, which was absolutely packed with chasers for the night. Good thing the hotel called to see if I was still coming.....the Discovery team was wanting my room. Lunch was in Quinter, then I drifted to Wakeeney when the firts SVRs came out around Garden City. Sat at the intersection of 4 & 23 for a while north of Dighton, then got out ahead of the bulk of the chaser parade up 23. Sat north of Gove for 10-15 minutes as the storm continued to organize. Finally got its act together south of I-70 west of Grainville. Find some real estate off the gravel roadat Grainville, and decided to stay put as the circulation crossed I-70. After watching dozens of chasers all train down one gravel road towards it, I decided against joining them. Drifted north on 23 a little further, then decided to break off heading north, as the new storm to the soutrh near Dighton to the south seemed more isolated.

Quick refuel in Quinter, and I was off for the 2nd storm. I went south from Wakeeney in anticipation to zig-zag SW to meet the circulation (now looking classic on GRLevel3) somewhere north of Utica. Finally met up with it probably 4-5 miles NE of Utica, and observed a massive dirt-ingesting tornado. Filmed from probably 2 miles away. Circulation estimated to be likely 1/4 mi. wide at this time. Beautiful light blue hail shaft wrapping around the back side at this time. Simply incredible. Tried catching up to it from the south and filmed what looks to be a stovepipe as the circulation approached I-70. Filmed from at least 2-3 miles south with poor contrast, though. Other chasers images tell me that's what I was looking for sure now.

I continued north to Hill City watching the storm die an outflow death. Numerous tornado warnings were issued on it, but it was tough to say if it ever could produce after that. Drove through some nasty wind & rain to Norton, where started the long drive to North Platte for the Night.

Man, what a day. I'll see if I can get some video posted of the large tornado N. of Utica in Trego Co.

Couple thoughts::

The Chicken Fried Steak at the restaurant just off I-70 (north side) at Quinter comes highly recommended. Those ladies know what they're doing there. Thank me later after you have lunch there today. You know you want to.

Pretty much everyone has mentioned the massice crowds out there yesterday. All in all, I thought things went pretty well, traffic-wise, from my experience. It could've been so much worse. I only ran into one bonehead incident at Grainville, right at the turn off to the gravel road from Hwy, 23. A couple chasers decided to have a conversation right in the middle of that intersection. But that's all I can feel compelled to complain about. So I'm giving kudos to everyone. Well done!


Ready to do it all over again today.

 

[Charles Kuster]

We also had a good day of chasing in Kansas. We started off the day heading south towards Dodge City which was a mistake. We saw the storms form near Garden City and raced north to try to intercept them. Due to rapid storm motion, we were not able to approach the storm until it was near Collyer, KS where we saw a tornado 2.6 miles E of Collyer.

After the storm raced off to the north we headed back to Wakeeney to get gas and check the radar. We decided that we had enough time to go back towards Collyer and see if we could find where the tornado crossed the road. There was not much evidence, but 2.6 miles east of Collyer on old highway 40, a power pole had been snapped.

We then headed back to Wakeeney where we dropped south towards the next tornado warned storm in Trego County. The tornado passed about 3 miles or less to our west and then was quickly rapped in rain as it raced past us. Just after it passed, we got hit by the RFD in Trego Center. We then headed back towards Wakeeney where we experienced about 1" hail several miles south of town. Overall, a very good chase day!

 

[Chris Hayes]

Cannot confirm seeing any tornados yesterday, but did see some awesome HP structure. Spent the day hopping from storm to storm. Got on a storm as it was crossing I-70 with a reported large tornado heading for Hill City. Traffic was really backed up with chasers, semis, and standard traffic. It was a very chaotic looking storm, and we pursued it northward toward Hill City but never did see the tornado. Hoping for classic supercells today.

 

[Patrick Martin]

I left Denver at 9:15am with an initial target of WaKeeny, but it bacame obvious en route I did not need to go that far. I targeted the storm moving out of Scott City and made an initial intercept south of Oakley. Saw some nice motion and then repositioned east to Gove on hwy 23 to targe the next storm on it's heals. I followed the storm north to Grainfield and joined the chaser convergence on the dirt road just north of I-70. I opted to attempt and follow the storm and zig zagged up hwy 23, dirt roads and hwy 83. Witnessed a tube north of Hoxie, and again just outside of Oberlin, at which point I let the cell go opting to intercept a storm coming up from the south.

Intercepted the next storm at 6:21pm CT just east of Selden KS at hwy 23 & 233. Had 2 tubes on the ground at same time for short duration and watched the main tube morph into a brief stovepipe before dissapating as the storm screamed off to the north. Still going through pics and video, but a sample below. All in all, an amazing day of chasing! Total round trip miles 740.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Yet another video... this of the first two tornadoes we saw, including that dusty monster from close range. I only know of George K. being any closer.

 

[Chris Wilburn]

Wow what a day indeed! Our group saw at least 4 tornadoes and possibly more due to the rain wrapped nature of some of the mesos, but can confirm 4 for sure. First tornado was a nice white rope type tornado northeast of Gove City, KS with a visual dust whirl at the ground. The next three tornadoes came from the same supercell in western Trego County south of Collyer/ southwest of Wakeeney. One tornado was a beatiful rope way high in the sky with a very nice dust whirl at the bottom. I am pretty sure this was a satellite tornado because after viewing video just to the right of this tornado was a brief rain wrapped large tornado. The fourth tornaod was a nice small cone tornado. Got caught up near Wakeeney like a lot of people and got blasted by the rfd as we blasted east on I70. Man was that insane and very scary, esp. since our latest radar update was 15 min. old. Sitting in Wakeeney now in the target area so we are good to go. I will have some short video clips and pics up later sorry. Very tired and going to go at it again today.

 

[Mike Umscheid]

I left work at 3pm and decided to chase the dryline instead of the warm front because a) storm motion would be a bit slower and b) I didn’t want to be a part of the zoo of chasers that were targetting the I-70 corridor. I did not see a tornado yesterday, but I’m not really disappointed with the chase. I (along with Chris Whitehead) observed a very nice but small supercell from southwest of May to Buffalo, OK to near Coldwater, KS. I observed large hail at to different locations 1) 1.25" diameter hail about 4 miles ENE of Buffalo and 2) up to 2.5" [tennis ball size] hail 8 miles east of Coldwater. The storm took on excellent rotation as it crossed the OK-KS border on approach toward the Coldwater area, but the overall size of the storm and dewpoints only in the 62-63F range really prevented a significant chance at a tornado. Nevertheless, the storm cycled through numerous classic RFD occlusions, etc. It was very photogenic toward the mid-evening hours.

 

[John Wetter]

Had a great day seeing 5 or 6 tornadoes. Pictures are all here:

May 22, 2008 Pictures

-John

 

[Paul Knightley]

[FONT=times new roman,times]A fantastic day! We remained in Hays until early afternoon when we decided to head out west towards developing [/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times]storms on the dry line. We got onto a power supercell not far from Gove, which had a very low tail cloud feeding into the wall cloud. We also had a CG lightning bolt hit the field about 50 metres away as we drove along – this was very loud and scary! This moved away quickly to the north, but be pursued it for a time. A new storm was developing back down towards I-70, and we heard of a tornado on it. We headed east and then south, to a point just south of Hoxie, Kansas. As we crossed the brow of a hill a beautiful elephant trunk tornado appeared. We watched this for almost 10 mins before it began to rope out. However, the storm wasn’t done – a new low-level mesocyclone quickly developed just to our SSW, with rapidly rotating rain curtains passing within a mile of us to the west (heading N). We heading north back through Hoxie – by this time, a large “bowl†shaped lowering had developed to our west, with extreme rotation/motion. This quickly developed into a multi-vortex tornado, which was almost a wedge tornado for a time. It stayed down for a good 15 mins, morphing into a wide cone, and then an elephant trunk. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times][/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]By this stage the storm had moved north, so we attempted to catch, witnessing another wedge for about 15 seconds before it got obscured by rain, but decided to play a new cell coming from the south. [/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times][/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times]We saw no more tornadoes, but a great RFD, and some awesome lightning. For our first chase of the trip it was about as perfect as they come! We’re all absolutely amazed by what we’ve seen today![/FONT][FONT=times new roman,times][FONT=times new roman,times]
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To cap it off a storm came through Hays at about 0500CDT knocking the power out and starting the fire alarms at the Sleep Inn - cue all the guests to hang around the lobby for about 30-40 mins!

pics of the chase here

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

I crossed the OK/KS border atleast 2 times and the whole day felt like I was driving in circles (because I was). I didnt really want to be part of the zoo up north and also thought the southern target would play out a bit better. I ended up on the same storm as Mike U. as I was going south for the southern most storm. Right near the OK/KS border I was about to call off the chase when I had a small area of tight rotation pass right over me. I stayed with it past Coldwater where it look like it might sqeeze something out, but all it did was leave the area with some tennis ball size hail laying around and some amazing mammatas (best I have ever seen). This storm would have been more entertaining if I had not heard about everything up north before hand.

I did have some fun with a Sheriff at Coldwater. He followed me from in town till I pulled up very close to the back side of the rotation (decent but not that strong) along highway 160. After I stopped I look in my mirror to see the Sheriff backing down the highway in the wrong lane of traffic because he realized he had followed me somewhere he didnt want to be.

I got in one nasty storm after dark near Woodward while driving home. If I had not left the radar up I would have either drove into some good size hail or right under the rotation. Craziest lightning I have ever seen. I stopped on a hill north of the hail core, but had near continous lightning striking near me so I decided to try my luck in the hail core and get of that hill top before my jeep got struck. I turn the camera on while this was going on, but I dont know if it captured anything.

 

[Cameron Redwine]

We had a fun and exciting chase today. We were on I70 heading east from Denver when we heard about the large tornado near Greeley -- I didn't see that coming.

We (Scott Landolt, Seth Linden, Rob, and Dan) witnessed 4-5 tornadoes in Gove and Trego Counties: the rope tornado between Grainfield and Grinnell, two on the ground at once south of Collyer in very close proximity, a big rotating dusty thing -- looked more like a large rapidly-rotating wall cloud with dust getting kicked up, and a tornado after dark near/north of Palco.

 

[Bobby Prentice]

Grainsfield, KS and Hoxie, KS tornadoes

GRAINSFIELD, KS AND HOXIE, KS TORNADOES
My Wednesday evening chase strategy paid off well for Greg Breneman and me on Thursday. 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 documentary company on Wednesday evening 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.

Now sitting in the Hill City, KS library planning today's chase.

 

[Ryan Shepard]

Tornado near Hoxie, KS

We caught this tornado near Hoxie, KS. We watched it develop with multiple vortex structure. We rushed straight for it as it matured into a large tornado. Power lines went down on the road in front of us and debris flew across the road almost hitting our car. We almost got caught up in the power lines.

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