5/23/2010 Reports: KS/CO/NM/TX

[Chris Hayes]

Not a great day, but succesful none the less. Left Grand Island at about 1 in the afternoon and dashed down to 70 at Hays where we gathered some data. Headed west to interecept the first round of storms. Followed them north to Hoxie where I got a quick radar image and headed back to 70 and went west on 70 toward Oakley. Heading NW on 70 from Oakley we saw a brief tornado trunkated cone tornado towards the Brewster area. I looked out drivers window and saw it in the distance. Wasnt able to get any video as it was brief (>1 min) Watched the storm for a little while in Colby and due to time to get back to Grand Island to get some sleep for tomorrow we called it a day. Missed the tornadoes west of Goodland.

 

[Chad Cowan]

Got some good structure on the storm that fired near Leoti then saw two large tornadoes from a distance east of Goodland.

 

[Jay McCoy]

Incredible and surprise day. Decided to play the NW Tx panhandle from Dalhart up to Clayton and it payed off big time. Caught a number of large stovepipe tornados and a wedge. And the best part I saw maybe 5 chasers the whole day. Ahh the solitude of a nice western Panhandle/east NM supercell.

I and Steve Miller were sitting just SE of Texline watching a cell as it really started to take off. The AMA NWS called us and asked what we saw cause they were showing roation. It wasnt 30 seconds later it produced a funnel that reached about halfway down and remained for about 10 minutes before dissapating. That was about 820pm. I headed into Texline then moved east ona small FM that would curve back north towards hwy54. It then produced a small needle tornado that lasted a few minutes. I followed the cell north all the way to hwy54 just to the west of Felt,Ok. I sat ther watching it for a few minutes as it moved north out of reach for me so I decided it was getting late so I was going to head home. I pulled a uturn and to my SW saw a huge elephant trunk tornado 10-15 miles away. I almost fainted. How long had it been there?? I at ther ansd shot video for about 10 minutes as it grew larger and larger. I then decided to head back south and try and get closer. I made it baout 10 miles south and it was now due west of me and I had some backlighting so I stopped there and watched it drop 3-4 seperate tornados including a multi-vortex wedge while also dropping a nice cone satellite tornado to its north. All the time I was on the phone on air with the local tv station I chase for at times. I filmed about 20 minutes of this before it became too dark and I had to break off. When I did it was still on the ground heading NNE and was at least 1/4 mile wide or more. I then headed back to Texline so I could get back on hwy87 back to amarillo. As I pulled in town I ran into some half dollar hail and the sirens were going off. I hadnt had any data for a while so I had no radar and didnt know what was coming. I drove SE just out of town to get a view and about 1 mile to my SW wa sanother large trunk tornado moving north. You could barely make it out since it was almsot dark now. I tried to get a video shot but it was way too dark and there wasnt much lightning behind it. It missed Texline to the west so I broke off and came home.

All in all at least 5 tornados on a day I only expected maybe a small rope tornado. You usually dont see a large violent tornado in NE new Mexico or NW Tx panhandle with an elevation of 5000ft let alone numerous long tracked tornados.

I know Steve Miller also caught these. I will post video soon as I can edit it and get it loaded on Youtube. I need some serious sleep 1st. Been going since 645am.

Also a huge thank you to Marcus Diaz.. You saved my life bud. I had forgotten my power converter and my video camera battery was almost dead (thought I had charged it but never plugged it in good). If he hadnt loaned me a spare converter my camewra would have been dead and I wouldnt have been able to film any of these tornados. I owe you a dinner!!! PM your number and we will hook up tomorrow so I can return it.

 

[Mike Hardiman]

5/23/2010 Reports: W TX

Spent much of the late afternoon and evening hours following a lone supercell which developed along the dryline south of Pecos and slowly moved east and southeast towards Fort Stockton.

Initially, I was hoping for development farther south along the high terrain, which would lead me towards Marathon or Sanderson, but I eventually headed up US-285 NW of Fort Stockton as Cu development was pretty poor further south.

Strong upslope E-SE Winds of 20+ knots were noted at Fort Stockton and Sanderson... and the several small showers developed on the higher terrain south of the main cell and rapidly moved NNE.

During one of these little cell-mergers, I observed a brief tornado about 10 mi west of my location (which was along FM-1776 halfway between US-285 and I-10). Tornado developed between 6:54 and 6:59 pm CDT, while I was moving South to get some terrain out of my view. Stayed on the ground for a few minutes after that.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33443072@N04/sets/72157624124166588/

Storm was tornado warned, and while several lowerings developed under the RFB over the course of the next hour or so, no more tornadoes occurred that I could see... granted, I was along US-67 most of the time, and was 10-15 miles east of the "business end" of the storm, which was over roadless areas.

But... at least there were no traffic jams!

 

[Brian Stertz]

Back from a long chase out to WC Kansas with Dustin Wilcox where we watched a decent supercell track northward and run out of the instability axis. This small but nicely spinning supercell tried very hard to put down a tornado for the V2 massive crew...pics to follow. Sure had THE look for about 15 mins. in Wichita Co. KS. Decided to head home via Oakley missing the Goodland merry-go-round of sometimes very intense couplets/tornadoes.

 

[cdcollura]

Good day all,

I targeted NW Kansas today and figured I was making a tall order as I drove there from Aberdeen, SD! I was rewarded with some supercells and at least two tornadoes from the left supercell split!

Above: Approaching the storms from KS / NE border (this view is looking south along Highway 83 north of McCook).

Above: Truncated cone tornado viewed from Highway 83 just north of Oakley, Kansas. This storm was NOT the southern-most supercell near I-70, it was the next one north of it ... I saw NO ONE around.

Above: Same tornado during its later stages before lifting.

Above: Lightning west of Atwood, Kansas after dark.

 

[edward oneal]

5/23/2010 KS.

Chased in western Kansas around Leoti in the middle of the Vortex 2 crew. Only Tornadoes that I saw were well of to the NW of my location to far for pictures. Did get a surprise when taking picture of the developing Leoti storm, a very high mid-level funnel on a tower trying to go up south of the Leoti updraft. With all the traffic things seemed to go smooth from what I witnessed Here are a few pictures

 

[Jared Orr]

Woohoo

Saw my first tornado today!!! Was near Goodland, KS. The same one cdcollura intercepted. The tornado was short-lived and distant from us (10 to 15 mi), but not bad for the first day of our chasecation!

 

[Chris Hayes]

Congratulations on your first tornado, Jarred. I think Chris C, you, and I all saw the same tornado.

 

[James McCutcheon]

Springfield, Colorado tornado

My only chance to get out this spring, but target of Springfield came through with a tornado before sunset! Started out with a nice wall cloud and slowly tightened up to produce a tornado. I was surprised to see it quickly go from a thin needle to a cone with multi vortices underneath. Here is a link of the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4OZTrylf5Y

 

[Paul Stofer]

Today I chased with Jessica Trober and Dave Fick. Our target today was Northwest Kansas. We went west of of Salina on 70 and passed through Hays, and into Colby. Around 1Z storms began to rapidly become Severe. We turned around and went back East to Oakley and then South on US83 towards Scott City. Here we observed a very large rotating wall cloud to our West. The wall cloud was scraping the ground, and could very well have had a brief spin up underneath. Approximately 5 minutes later we observed a tornado near Russell Springs. This lifted and touched back down 5 times. We went North on 83 and back west on 70 to get closer to the tornado. By the time we got back to Interstate 70 the tornado had lifted. We went west to Goodland where a new Tornado Warning was issued. Here we observed another small tornado with rapid lower level rotation. The storm crossed 70 and continued to the North. We followed it North out of Goodland and chased a HP supercell with an embedded large tornado (we could not visually see this to confirm). We went East on 36 to Bird City and North on 27 to Wheeler. We followed this storm that contained a "large and dangerous tornado" for 30 miles. The storm began to lose its supercellular characteristics so we called the chase off. We stayed in McCook, Nebraska overnight to stage for tomorrows chase. Photos soon...

 

[Marcus Diaz]

We had a great day this day. We started off chasing the storms firing in extreme eastern NM. One storm dropped a nice wall cloud, but didn't produce. Pretty soon we had a line of cells about 15 miles apart. We decided to try and chase tail end charlie, so we dropped south. Then we finally had 1 storm starting to dominate and kept strengthening. With the LLJ howling from the SE, and surface winds sustained at a good 30kts from the SE, we figured this was going to be a good storm. This storm we followed dropped 2 cones, 2 satellites, and a large cone/wedge near Texline, TX. We couldn't get really close due to road options, and didn't want to be out of position for another intercept. The first tornado, I didn't get any pics but video of, the other 4 I did get pics.

 

[Dean Baron]

This was definitely one of the more frustrating chases I've ever had. Only chased one dryline in my life, and have hardly ever tried to forecast a retreating one, so this was a much different setup than I'm used to. Long, boring story short I ended up going for the storms south of I70 south of Grove, KS. They didnt have much going on. Tried to get myself in position north of I70 as it looked like the storm was organizing only to have it crap out by the time it got to me. Other storms tried to go, but most didn't do much. A little before sunset I made up my mind to head north and get in position for a short drive to NE/SD for the next day when out of the corner of my eye, for whatever reason I look off to my left and see something hanging off on the ground WAY off in the distance. I didnt think there was a tornado warning in effect to my west and the storm didnt look good on radar, only to realize a TOR warning had just been issued. This was about the only highlight of the day, and I still consider this day a bust because I only saw the TOR out of dumb luck. Not much more to say, there was some cool mammatus at sunset, but there were too many clouds blocking them to get any good pics. Anyways, a couple of screen grabs:
This was the TOR from ~17 miles away. Cant remember exactly where I was in relation to this, but I know Andy G. and a couple others reported this tor. Doesnt look like it's on the ground in the grab, but I did see it on the ground in person:

This is just to show how far away I was when noticed it. How the hell I saw it still amazes me.

 

[Steve Miller TX]

Caught incredible video of the large tornado and attendant satellite tornadoes between Texline and Clayton, NM.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7awaLT8G9I

I need to go back and redo Part 1, but part 2 above is pretty much the good stuff.

 

[Brad Nelson]

After dark tornado near Goodland! Crazy day and here is the log if you're interested: http://eyeonthetwister.com/index.php/2010/06/0523/