5/22 DISC: KS

[Joe Lauria]

Just a quick note of thanks to the handful of folks who stopped and wanted to know if we needed any help while we were in our little "predictament." In about 90 minutes there were about 4-5 other vehicles that passed us...it could've been a long night...

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Kem, did you happen to look around for any other damage the next day? I looked a bit and it seemd pretty darn concentrated to our area near I70 there. Also, if you watch various radars you can see a couple pretty intense couplets that came right through there. It's too bad Hays is so far from all the radars, so I guess those aren't saying all that much, though they seemed intense for that high up. I wish Dodge City's radar didn't get all screwed up right at that time.

The activity along that boundary then was interesting, as the shelf was going sw-ne, and then the region where the couplet was forming was right where a curved base was aligned more n-s. The trend of the shelf taking over from ne to sw seemed fairly quick when I finally left my view and went to the motel. I was in my car in the parking lot at the super 8 when it happened(at least 3 cars near me had their windows blown out from debris). When it surged and ramped up, it only lasted about 5-10 seconds like that.

I'm guessing the updraft that was now just behind the shelf, was rotating pretty good and we just happened to be just south of it where the rfd would have been blasting east. The hook is pretty obvious on reflectivity, with the tip going right over us. Visually the thing looked much more shelfy than what you might think looking at the radar. Then again, that hook probaby formed just after I left my view. I had no view once I was at the motel.

 

[Brian Stertz]

I was out pumping gas in it...we were on fumes and the gas station people were heading for the shelter of the cooler. I went out heard the roar coming and thought this is interesting. Got the gas pump going and then this blast hits. I am estimating probably on the order of 60-70 mph and then some blasty gusts over 80mph. Stuff was really flying and I ducked behind the car while this went down. We were just down the street fromn the hotel that was damaged. It actually came in 2 waves. The first wave hit as we got off I-70 and tried to get gas at a pay at the pump to no avail. It moved off and things quieted down some wind/hail wise. The people inside looked at me like I was the man from Mars when I went in and pre-paid for gas. Then the blast from hell hit and things were banging and clanging & debris was lofted. Pretty wild scene in Hays, but heard no tornado sirens.

 

[David Wolfson]

We were eating at Whiskey Creek in Hays throughout the squall after checking into the motel next door, and watching the local tv Stormtracker radar coverage. This is less than a quarter-mile south of the Comfort Inn, and as I remember very near the Super 8.

There was no indication from our vantage of anything other than stout downburst/straight-line outflow winds, and we were watching the show with great interest. I don't recall that the radar was showing a MESO or TVS indication at the time. There was one particularly good gust from the wnw. The next morning we ate directly across from the Comfort Inn before heading out of town. The damage to the corner of the roof was the only damage or debris we saw, but didn't do any sort of survey.

 

[Brian Stertz]

Yeah it was definitely not a tornadic situation as that outflow was really cold and there was no indication of any real sudden wind shifts in direction. It was quite a blast of wind for sure and the roar was pretty loud as it approached. It looked pretty menacing when looking back at the solid wall shelf cloud east of Hays on I-70 with all kinds of kinks and lowered cloud features. I could probably believe there may have been some gustnadoes on that outflow blaster.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/rad...r=black&endDate=20070523&endTime=4&duration=2

You can see the tip of the hook go just over the north edge of Hays. I don't think it was a tornado either, but I'd think it was associated with that hook and the area of coupleting moving east right along that line with it.

 

[Brett Adair]

Yeah it was definitely not a tornadic situation as that outflow was really cold and there was no indication of any real sudden wind shifts in direction. It was quite a blast of wind for sure and the roar was pretty loud as it approached. It looked pretty menacing when looking back at the solid wall shelf cloud east of Hays on I-70 with all kinds of kinks and lowered cloud features. I could probably believe there may have been some gustnadoes on that outflow blaster.

Well, as we were driving towards Hays after we got around the tipped semi on I-70 the winds did take a massive shift on myself, Tyler, Jay, and the rest of the gang. We were more worried about the hail at the time until Tyler heard truckers ahead reporting a tornado on I-70 over CB I believe. We didn't visually see any debris on or to the side of the interstate, however it was dark and raining tremendously. We did note pretty good rotational signatures about 25kft deep.

 

[Dick McGowan]

We were watching that Hays storm from Yocemento for the better part of 30 minutes. It looked very outflow-dominant, and I don't think we ever worried about seeing a tornado, we just shot video and pics. We moved east of Hays a few miles, and filmed it some more. It had a very large shelf cloud on it by then. I'll upload some pics of it here in a bit.

 

[Kem Poyner]

The area of damage was very concentrated. The Home Depot just behind our Comfort Inn had thier utility trailers blown through the fence and out into a field. It was one heck of a gust. Wish I knew the official MPH of that gust.

 

[Brett Adair]

Well, here is some funnel video from the first storm that developed well north on 283 before the dominant storm took the tornado of the day. We were just south of Hill City looking west. There was a better funnel and possibly a tornado but we can't confirm...maybe someone else can. Will have some tornado video up shortly from 3-4 miles north of the Trego County line.

South Hill City Funnel

 

[Brett Adair]

The area of damage was very concentrated. The Home Depot just behind our Comfort Inn had thier utility trailers blown through the fence and out into a field. It was one heck of a gust. Wish I knew the official MPH of that gust.

Hmmm....that makes sense. What looked to be 2X4's laying in I-70 as we passed very near that HD.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

The area of damage was very concentrated. The Home Depot just behind our Comfort Inn had thier utility trailers blown through the fence and out into a field. It was one heck of a gust. Wish I knew the official MPH of that gust.

I wish I would have driven further north and looked for damage. It did seem VERY local from there south though. I saw nothing south of my motel, while at my motel several cars had their windows busted out(not by hail, it was never large enough) the satellite dish was ripped from the roof and thrown a good distance, billboard behind the motel was bent over, tin was ripped off the gas station west of the motel across the highway, one of those contruction zone machine signs was tipped over, then the damage Kem mentions on the other side of I-70.

I guess it'd just be interesting if there was any damage north of our location thrown back west at all. I completely agree with the whole shelf thing and nothing looking like it could have any chance in hell at producing a tornado(hence my sitting in my car to film the storm hitting.....though not having any view of it any longer). I have seen this kind of shelf intersecting a more sfc based storm before, and the area sw can change and get interesting pretty quickly(especially in the environment this night), and is quickly followed by that area becoming the shelf, and a new region doing it again sw of that....on down the line...which is what was happening. The intersection of these areas kept getting some lowerings in there, though very cold and grungy. Just looking at the velocity images from DDC and ICT, it's clear the updraft above this intersection was rotating pretty good(better view on ICT loop, though very far from radar)..and it was one location moving east that kept having the couplet.

When it began(which it let off about just as fast as it began) the first thoughts going through my head were, oh crap a torando is just about to hit me and start blowing cars around lol.....even if it was never close to that. That quick ramp up sure gave that sort of feeling, that that might be what was coming...or nearby somewhere.

It's just interesting for a couple reasons. Very localized and short-duration, which ramped up hard and fast, then quickly fell off. I believe Bill Dom's picture here is of it right over Hays, so you can see the shelf structure. As you can see on there, Hays doesn't appear to be at the edge of any kind of bows, but instead it's right under that intersection. It took some hefty gust to do the damage done, and that is one odd location to expect it....sort of.

 

[Jay Cazel]

Hmmm....that makes sense. What looked to be 2X4's laying in I-70 as we passed very near that HD.

So that was the stuff we drove over on I-70??

 

[Brett Adair]

So that was the stuff we drove over on I-70??

Yeah....seems to have been. You warned me of it about a mile before we drove over it. Then I believe it was a few miles up the road that we hit that hellacious outflow. Therefore, I guess it could have been the winds under that shelf feature. Quite interesting.