5/26/08 REPORTS: TX/OK/KS/MO

[Shane Adams]

After video review I can't say we saw the tornado near Pratt as it's pictured here...however I do have what I'm 99.9% sure is a rain-wrapped cone/carrot-shaped tornado somewhere east of Pratt/Cairo. The time was 7:24pm CDT. It appears as a dark gray cone inside an area of wrapping rain, and intermittently reaches to the ground and then becomes truncated. Surely someone else saw this, as we were on highway 54 looking west and the probable tornado was just south of the highway. Lasted about a minute that I saw, but it was fully in-progress when I first noticed it so not sure how long the actual duration was. I reported this to DDC as a "possible tornado" but after further review, I'm fairly certain it's a tornado.

We bailed and started for home when we decided to stop in Blackwell, OK for some Mickey D's. I was starving, and had been looking forward to some food for hours. Chad and Mick ordered first while Bridge and I visited the restrooms. We came out and ordered our own food, when suddenly a tornado warning was issued for the storm just southwest of us. I could not believe my bad luck!!! The drive-thru woman started freaking out and walked through the restaurant telling everyone to get in the walk-in freezer. She looked at me as if to say "sir you need to come with me" but I said "we're chasers, so we're just gonna leave." She said "You guys are crazy" as we walked out the door.

Damnit they had just taken my order too.

Anyway, we drove across I-35 onto the west side of the bridge, and shot video of a very pronounced lowering southwest of town. It was coming up at us closer than we expected based on radar, so we moved east through town and took up a position about 2 miles east of downtown, and watched this beautifully-structured storm roll right over us. That was pretty much our day.

 

[Willoughby Owen]

Ultimately, we targeted a storm that had a very promising appearance moving through Ellis and Woodward Ctys in OK and were especially pleased with how it looked like it was going to intersect with the OFB as the storms moved NE; we knew that the storms were likely high based, but could begin to benefit from the insane sfc moisture. To our shock, the cells went from good-ish appearing to gone in a matter of 30 mins. Worse, having been in Pratt only hours before, we watched as the OFB enhanced the cells near Pratt and realized that the shape of the boundary favored enhancing those cells with attendant risks for tornadoes. Which, now, we know did exactly that. Ouch.

Yes Jason likewise here but we were sitting in Greensburg then Coldwater just before we went for the southern option where it looked very dominant.

After about an hour we thought it'd busted pretty badly and hung around Woodward for a bit before deciding to play the dying cells. Noticed a funnel by the stormchasing.com crew to our west; stopped and looked at data. Then after getting eaten alive by flies and mozzies we decided we were still able to catch the dominant messy-storm near Pratt.

As we gapped it north some huge busting congestus fired to the SW of Dodge City and appeared isolated and easily broke over the anvil of the aging storms there. Headed for Ford but then went around on the US54 and went for the intercept. Was met with an amazing outflow band and very soon became a gust front attached with it's parent. Very pretty storm and even began to notch on radar.

Photos show the stuff we left behind as convection fueling the fire for the Coldwater/G'burg/Pratt storm and the storm we were on to the south of Dodge City.

 

[Jason A.C. Brock]

Far W OK chase

Jeremy Wilson (of holytornado.com) along with his wife Karla and I chased the Greer Harmon County Supercells in Far SW OK late this evening and witnessed some of the most amazing structure I think ive ever seen with a supercell. I wont have pics and video up till at least Wednesday. Jeremy finally was able to break free and chase today and I wanted us to do well after I had witnessed some 9 tornadoes since Thursday & Jeremy had to do only nowcasting.
We witnessed perhaps as many as 3 tornadoes with this monster cell that moved slowly and would Jog NE after each occlusion and then back SE or E when the storm would wrap up a new meso. Some of these tornadoes were nearly very large and there were several attempts at large twisters at different times during the storms life cycles. Im sorry i cant be more specific but I have so much video and pics to review it may take a bit to realize exactly what it was we were seeing at times. We did get into baseball size hail at times along with winds to 80 mph. Storm was also very electrified and the structure was just awesome. I wish Mike Hollingshead had been there to work his magic on this thing.
Anyways it was a great drought buster chase for Jeremy & an amazing continuation of the past week for myself.
Thx to Michelle White for Nowcasting today for us especially in far Western OK North of I-40 where the signals arent too good.
Ill have pics and video of things later this week at
http://www.texhomastormchasers.com and on our Myspace and youtube pages which have links on the mentioned site to them.
The following pics are just a taste of this beast.....tons of other great shots we got of this cell to tho.

 

[Joe Acord]

We initially targeted Woodward with the hopes of at least positioning ourselves to move east if the storms fired near the OK/KS border. While we drove into the city, two towers were exploding to the south. We decided to set up camp west of town in these soccer fields full of 2 inch fire ants. About 4pm or so, we decided to shift west due to reports of quarter to half-dollar size hail moving into the area within the next 15-20 minutes. We did get hit with numerous pea-dime size hail in central Woodward for about 10 minutes. Once receiving another nowcast call, we proceeded east of Mooreland and sat in a car wash with a tin roof with the hopes of getting some great hail, and not damaging the car.

As the northern storms weakened, we got reports of a tornado wared storm to the south in the NE TX panhandle. We made a decision about 515pm to shift to the south for an intercept. About 6:30, we pulled to the eastern side of an amazing storm with a small, but rotating wall cloud on it. Once we set-up on HWY 9 to the west of Vinson, we noticed that the inflow of the storm was increasing and the size of the wall cloud grew to twice the size it was when we showed up. There were 3-4 times that it cycled in front of us, and there was numerous CG lighting strikes in the area setting off 3 to 4 grass fires.

We stayed with this storm to near 8:30-9pm, then headed back to Norman.

Please find the photo below that show a little of the action to the SW of Vinson, OK. Pic 1 = initial sighting of the wallcloud, Pic2= Massive inflow, Pic 3=rapid rotation above our head

People involved in the chase were: David Swiniuch, Matt Beulen, Brad Mehlman, and Joe Acord

 

[fplowman]

Chased around Pratt.

I wasnt going to chase. As I'm getting old and went home for some much needed rest after chasing Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It hurts to sit in a car for days on end.

Anyways SPC went from moderate with a well defined target to a slight covering the entire Midwest and Ohio valley. I went to sleep thinking Im calling it off. Then around 11:30 or so I woke up and realized its back to moderate again.

So I called my crew and we left town promptly. Heading south on I 35 I passed the Cannuk's Ron Gravelle and Laura as she stated. Havent seen him since 2005. Wish we had more time to chat.

Got to Pratt and set up at the Super 8 for Data. Ran into Mikey G. and a British film crew. Gave an interview for their "Fear Junkies" show in the UK.

Good meeting Mikey and the film crew were fun folks.

Anyways ran after a cell south east of Greensburg that quickly began to overtake us due to road options. Mikey and the Brits took a dirt road east which I was reluctant as of our harrowing story Im putting together for last Thursday of being stuck in the mud overnight. Instead we had to drop south to get out of the way. We then followed the storm to NE of Pratt almost to Hutch and finally broke off of it as it significantly weakened.

We went to Wichita for dinner and ran into another intensifying storm along the highway. We had no choice but to punch the core as we were trying to get to Wichita before everything closed. Experienced 1 - 1.5 inch hail on that one. Which created a little excitement for me and the crew.

No tornadoes that Ill call a tornado. A few lightly rotating mesos, wall clouds and some interesting lowering's and lightning is what we came away with on this chase.

Had a good time overall seeing everyone and enjoying the weather. Stay tuned for my other chase reports for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

Left from Lubbock sometime after noon yesterday and got on the storm that would move through Wellington and western OK just after it formed south of Clarendon. I started to see some rotation and a few spinups south of Quail. It went HP almost immeadiately, but since it was moving due east along the highway it was fairly easly to stay right in front of the storm. This storm put out the most intense CG I ever saw, which kept me in my vehicle most of the evening. Didnt see any other chasers on the storm other than media vehicles till after Wellington near the OK border. Kinda weird to be chasing and not see any other chasers around for so long, doesn't happen very often anymore.
Here are a few pictures. First pic was the reported tornado north of Wellington, TX.

Wall cloud near OK/TX border.

Wall cloud of Second storm near OK/TX border.

One of many CGs, which were near continuous.

 

[Sam Sagnella]

Briefly, Tommy Winning, his fiancee Grace, her friend Erin and I saw the lifecycle of a gorgeous LP supercell in the Vici, OK vicinity yesterday afternoon. It slowly moved northeast, producing golfball-sized hail before weakening rapidly south of Woodward. We dove south to try and intercept the storms entering WC Okla, and got bogged down on a "Bob's Rd" that showed up as a paved CR on DeLorme (damnit!). We had to turn around and get back east as quickly (I use that term loosely) as we could to avoid getting munched by the core. Some of the most intense CG lightning we've ever experienced was slamming into the ground all around us, sparking grassfires in a couple of instances (we had to call 911 to report them). Overall, it was obviously hard to top the five tornadoes we saw on Sat., so this chase seemed more lackluster than it may have a week ago; I really hope I don't continue feel that way on future chases.

 

[Tim Marshall]

SHORT: We were on the Pratt supercell from the beginning. But, we dropped south of Pratt around 7 PM, so we didn't get to see the tornadoes. But it was an incredible chase, none-the-less.

LONG: Kay and I departed Salina, KS in the morning. Target was Canadian, TX to Meade, KS. Stopped in GBD to analyze data and noticed the surface low remained north of DDC with GBD winds remaining easterly. So, we decided to stay in GBD and have lunch. The wife wanted to pick up a few things at Wal-Mart and there we met the DOW armada. I enjoyed visiting with Josh, Herb, Robin, and crew while the wife shopped. Then, a storm exploded over town but was quickly undercut by advancing outflow from the east. So, we drove southward to Pratt and hoped that a storm would develop at the south end of the advancing boundary -which it did near Greensburg. We headed west and played tag with the core barely avoiding the hail bombs while marching east back to Pratt. We saw helical striations the east side of the updraft and lines of strato-cu roaring westward into the base. Soon, low clouds began to obscure our view of the storm base. Also, the core elongated southward on radar so, I decided to turn south at Pratt and set up the film site near the town of Coats where we met the Aussie crew. There we watched the storm go over Pratt, so we did not see the tornadoes east of town. I did notice the echo shrank quickly and formed a large hook at the south end of town. Also, the velocities increased rapidly. We gave up on the storm, and headed south stopping to chat briefly with Howie B. and his crew. Then, it was on to dinner at the Pizza Hut in Medicine Lodge where we met chase veterans Jim Leonard and Gene Moore. Not a bad end to five days in a row of storm chasing. Saw tornadoes on three of the five days with Saturday being our best day. We are totally exhausted, and have returned to Dallas to recover for a day or two -feed the cats -cut the lawn, etc. before returning to chase mode perhaps as early as FRI. Then its only two more weeks of chasing until its back to work. TM

 

[Brian Stertz]

Chased the Coldwater-Greensburg-Pratt zone where my morning target was focused. Got the first nearly tornadic phase of the supercell between Coldwater and Greensburg. It looked good and then the supercell sensed that Brian was in the area and took a turn for the worst. We got into some pretty serious hail on US 54 between Greensburg and Pratt...mostly half dollar to golfball sized. Many tennis balls and baseballs had already fallen on US 54, and this made us cautiously work our way east to Cullison and then into Pratt. Managed to avoid winshield breakage....whew. We then saw the tornadic phase of the Pratt supercell from the distance. Even though the structure was not exactly thrilling, it did seem to develop a turret type updraft column that remained pretty prominent until it got up into the Preston-Penalosa area. It seemed the good LL east wind benefits was neg. offset by the stabilizing effects of active and westward transitioning outflow. Things may have been much different & exciting if the I-35 corridor action had not been so darned vigorous. But that was not meant to be....

The traffic at times was...you know...."frustrating"

 

[Bill Hark]

I don't have too much to add after Jasons's detailed account of our bust. We spent a couple of hours in Pratt checking data and watching the sky before continuing south toward Alva. After we gave up and got hotel rooms in Alva, Jason turned in for the evening. Robert suggested that we drive 12 miles to a barbecue restaurant. With nothing better to do, I joined him and luckily I brought my camera. I saw a beautiful storm in the distance as the sun set. Although my pics aren't as good as Scott Blair's awesomeimage, here they are:

http://www.harkphoto.com/052608sunsetstorm2.jpg
http://www.harkphoto.com/052608sunsetstorm3.jpg
http://www.harkphoto.com/052608sunsetstorm4.jpg
http://www.harkphoto.com/052608sunsetstorm5.jpg

Bill Hark

 

[edward oneal]

05/26/08 Kansas

I Chased two storms today, the first was in Hodgeman Co. Had to break off that chase as my wife thought that my presence at family meal was more important. So after spending a little time at home was off again this time to a cell that was ramping up SW of Dodge. Followed this storm until dark west of Greensburg. This storm had a wild shelf cloud with some wild things going on north of Bucklin. Precipitation started to fall at the north end of the shelf, at the surface wild looking circular vortices started forming and rotating horizontally visibly making circular holes in the falling precipitation tried to video this as it was happening, but quality is poor not sure it can be seen that well, may post it later. Here are some stills of the storm before that happened. here is the video now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVTuV3Om7R4

 

[Paul Knightley]

Video of Pratt tornadoes **Strong language!**

Here's a clip of the 2 tornadoes at Pratt - ***please excuse the very strong language*** used by one of my chase partners - it's his first trip to the Plains as these were our 6th and 7th tornadoes of the trip so far, so he was fairly excitable!

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

The reason we'd targetted this cell was the OFB which had passed through Pratt earlier when we'd been hanging around (2 hours in the McD's car park!). We'd been very close to the NE side of the RFD about 1/2 hour before it got to Pratt, and then endured the hail west of Pratt. Knowing it was an HP-type supercell, I wanted to stay just in the notch NE of the RFD - we found this again as we drove into Pratt from the west, and then stopped just east of town to look down the notch - this is where the first tornado developed -the second then quickly developed to the NE of the first, as a new RFD cut surged in.

This was a classic situation where we went "visual" and put structure knowledge to good use, rather than trying to use WxWorx to navigate - it wasn't a great deal of help once we were in position.

 

[Scott Nicholson]

This is long overdue... I've (finally) converted and made available tornado/storm chasing videos from years past and posted them on the Videos page on my website at www.springwx.com. There are several videos available for viewing...and I'm adding more as I find archived storm chase videos in my collection.

The video available for this date is titled Pratt, KS Tornado:
May 26, 2008: Another 2008 tornado in Kansas...this one around Pratt, KS. This weak multiple vortex tornado caused a little damage as indicated by a few pieces of debris floating just above the tree line.