5/29/08 REPORTS: KS/NE/SD/IA/WY

[Mark Farnik]

I'm going to make this brief given the extremely late hour. Left my place north of Fort Morgan around 10 a.m. this morning after seeing High Risk outlook. Intercepted initial cell near Stockville and followed it all the way to Kearney (where I witnessed numerous power flashes and suspiciously rapidly rotating rain curtains) then broke off the chase at Hastings, dropped south into northern Kansas and wound up in perfect posistion to capture the Mitchell County tornado-palooza from start to finish. Lost count at 12 individual tornadoes before it formed the large multi-vortex that wound up tearing up Glen Elder. Followed the tornado from a few miles behind, only to get trapped in Glen Elder, from which access to Highway 24 was impossible due to fallen trees, debris and power poles/lines in the roads. The damage in Glen Elder wasn't horrible, but it was certainly bad enough. Four foot diameter 100+ year old trees snapped and blown into houses, roofs and facades torn off of the buisnesses on Main Street, windows blown out everywhere... makes me sick to see a pretty little town get tore up like that. I finally got frustrated after a half hour of driving aimlessly around town and went back south to the Tipton Road and east to Highway 14, which if I had done earlier, I might have gotten to witness the Jewell and Belleville tornadoes. X(
But hey, that's a minor complaint - I witnessed at least a dozen seperate tornadoes of every shape and size on the Mitchell County storm between Tipton and Glen Elder, completely obliterating my previous record of three tornadoes from one storm and bumping my 3 year chase career tornado count to over two dozen.
Currently stopped here at the Russell Inn in Russell, KS for the night.
I will upload photos and video upon my return to Colorado tomorrow afternoon.
Having witnessed at least 21 tornadoes in the course of the last eight days, I hope this extremely active weather pattern holds on for another week or two... would love to add another 21 on top of that! Lol!

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

Man oh man, this season just keeps getting crazier and crazier for me, met up with Jeff Piotrowski along with Sean and Katie Mcmullen as well as Greg and Terry today. First I filmed a weak tornado to the South West of Kearney then I got on the Kearney tornado and power flashes in town. I then dropped South to the KS storm where I filmed tornadogenisis with the first tube"s" touching down less than 300 yards from my location, I then tracked the Multi-Vortex to eventual wedge all the way to the Dam, near the dam I was as close as you ever want to get to a wedge tornado, I stepped outside the vehicle and literately could not stand up, the TIV vehicles came close to intercepting as they came up right behind me. I then moved up on the dam as the tornado was crossing the dam, it was insane, looked like the Gulf during a hurricane, the water was being pulled out of the lake up and over the dam into the tornado just absolutely insane, I know Jeff got some sweet footage. Unfortunately the damage appears to be quite extensive, it was hard to get home as every route was blocked by debris. Will try to get some pics and short video takes on the web tomorrow evening, I have shot so much awesome tornado footage this year and it just keeps getting better and better...

 

[Doug Mitchell]

First off, I want to apologize and thank everyone that was in our little group. I stupidly had my driver pull up parallel to another chaser, temporarily blocking his view to his south where a large elephant trunk funnel had appeared. I want to thank that same chaser for helping me a little later, tending to my minor wounds as well everybody that went around and made sure everyone was okay.

Well, having said that, it was certainly a very interesting day. Jordan Wrecke, Josh Berg and I headed out from Lawrence around 12:30 or so with a target of Hebron, NE. Tried to go after the Kearney storm before our nowcaster told us to go south towards cells developing in Kansas. Got onto the first storm just west of Downs and was treated to a nice beautiful striated meso. The storm appeared to be quite HP so contrast was horrible so we decided to break off the cell after only about 15 minutes. We dropped south out of Osborne, KS to be treated to an absolutely gorgeous supercell. Right after we got in position just off 281 south, a wall cloud formed that was literally dragging on the ground, pulling in from the precip. Unbelievable. After the storm went over 181, the few people that were on it dropped south. I stupidly decided to try to go back to Osbourne and go east. As we were stuck in heavy heavy precip driving east out of Osbourne (no hail suprisingly), we received reports of a stovepipe just to our south. We finally got clear of the rain somewhere north of Tipton where a meso quickly got its act together just a few miles to our east and put down a large multi-vortex cone that was on the ground for a good 10 minutes or so before we lost sight of it due to poor contrast.

Trying to keep up with the storm, we went east on 9 to Beloit and then north on 14.It was here where we caught up with a mini convoy of chasers. Since it was getting dark and we had no GPS or Gazetteer (looked for one all freakin' day), we decided to follow them assuming they GPS to navigate the dirt roads better. We ended up coming upon a really shady dirt road somewhere north of Beloit forcing us to turn around. While going back west, we witnessed a large elephant trunk funnel to our SSW only about a mile away. We were unable to see any ground circulation at time because of trees but the funnel "appeared" to dissipate right after we saw it. Me and about 5 or 6 others cars sat at an intersection for about 60 seconds before the tornado/funnel we assumed to have dissipated hit us, blowing out the driver's side window. Josh, who was in the backseat, got cut on his arm and I received a small cut to my ear and a good bump on the side of head from the glass and debris. Jordan, amazingly, was completely uninjured despite being right next to the window. It'd be hard to estimate the winds since I was ducking most of the time, but based on the brief glimpse I saw outside and what another person said, I can say we probably got around 100-110mph. I had just turned off my camera before the tornado hit us so I don't have any footage or pictures unfortunately.

The broken window killed our chase. Some other chasers helped me clean up my cut before we left to try and beat out the squall line forming to our west.

Sorry for the poor quality of the vidcaps, my camera is awful in low light.

Amazing Earth-eating wall cloud SW of Osbourne.

Big cone multi-vortex somewhere south of Calker City.

A few minutes later, funnels just dancing around

 

[Erik Perozo]

Started out in OKC bc we had to pick up a chase partner from the airport. Left there and made it to Kearney just on time to see the power flashes as everyone else that was chasing it. Saw some good structure on that cell and thought that was the best structure of the day until later at Beloit. Pulled off the Kearney storm and headed south after the beast in KS after Brandon Clement advised us to go after it.
Got to Concordia and decided to head towards Beloit just in time to catch the tornadofest. I have to say that the structure on the Beloit storm was the best structure I have ever seen. Too bad it was getting dark and time was starting to be against us. Have to say not too bad after missing all the wedges last week. I know, I know. I'm still wondering what I did wrong on those days.


Shelf Near Kearny

Shelf Near Kearny

Cone tornado near Belleville

Wedge near Belleville

And for those that caught in the Beloit tornado don't feel too bad bc we got caught in the Wakenney, KS tornado on the 23rd

 

[Amos Magliocco]

A fun and productive chase day alongside mssrs Blair, Burtis, Deroche, Pietycha, Kampas, Davis, and Wellman at various points. Observed the Kearney, Nebraska tornado from inside Kearney, Nebraska. Condensation about two-thirds to the ground witnessed from the railroad bridge, but as would become the theme of the day we couldn't stop and shoot it. Too much traffic. Grew alarmingly clear a tornado was about to roll through town so I bolted for the eastern fringe on SR 30 and turned to watch. A narrow funnel to the southwest and a large, blocky tornado were ongoing simultaneously; some will claim the smaller funnel was a tornado, maybe so. But any question about the larger one was put to bed when it struck an electrical substation and a round of transformers exploded like pinwheel firework plunging Kearney, grid section by grid section, into darkness.

Debris floated overhead and I smelled acrid electrical smoke, almost within seconds of the transformers blowing. I don't know where the debris came from or what caused the scent, but the juxtaposition of phenomena made me decide to get the hell out of there.

Later we bailed on Nebraska to head south. What would become the "Glen Elder storm" was isolated with a consistent radar presentation for over an hour before we arrived about five minutes into its first tornado, very close or just west of Osborne, Kansas. This was a large cone that narrowed into a tapered elephant trunk with a great rope-out. I shot this on video for some reason instead of with the DSLR despite the calm circumstances and great, green foreground. I guess it was the camera I had in my hand at the time. Ten minutes later, rejoined by the rest of the crew, our storm opened a thirty minute round of barrels, cones, ropes, blocks, and bowls, a free-wheeling display of condensed tornadoes as if to make up for all the complaints about 2008 and the lack of clean tubes.

I shot over 80 stills and it's 3:00 AM. I reviewed a little over half and processed two, but it's time for bed. I will amplify and amend this report in the weeks ahead and post full reports to my website later.

For now, I'll post this image with the DOW (and chaser streaking the other way) as an apology to the DOW driver, whoever she or he is. I'm the fool who pulled out in front of you and then two minutes later slowed suddenly to find a place to safely exit the roadway (the giant bowl dropping behind us was interesting to me). I felt like the DOW was two feet from my bumper all the way across Tipton Road, and it was hard enough to stop for imagery as it was. I'm sure the DOW wanted to run over me, too. Anyway, a few poor driving decisions on my part.

 

[Laura Duchesne]

Ron Gravelle, Jack Kertzie, company and I stuck with the Kearney storm. We saw a nice stack of plates. We played with the storm on some back roads and saw a few areas of rotation. One area seemed to have anticyclonic rotation for a bit. Later on, we saw a dark cone/wedgelike feature under a wall cloud, but couldn't really discern what it was. We were facing north towards Kearney at the time. Off to the left, a brief tornado touched down kicking up a bit of debris. Visible funnel was halfway down. All of this happened around 5:32. Now, I am beginning to wonder if the dark feature we saw was the tornado that went on to Kearney... it seemed to get wrapped in rain obscuring our view for the rest of its life cycle. Afterwards, we pulled into Kearney to see the damage. Mostly tree damage, some big trees are uprooted, some roof damage but no real extensive structural damage. A few windows were blown right out. Power was out to a good part of town. During sunset, we photographed beautiful mammatus. Great chase, just too bad the storm eventually crapped out and picked up speed.

One of my partner's video grabs of the brief tornado
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v30/laurawx/Weather/20080529_BenTornado1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v30/laurawx/Weather/20080529_BenTornado2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v30/laurawx/Weather/20080529_BenTornado3.jpg

 

[cdcollura]

Good day all,

Another incredible and arduous chase day for me. I caught the activity in Kearney, NE then was able to drop south and west to catch the storm near Beloit, Kansas. A full chase log is at the link below...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/mwcl2008.htm#MAY19

Below are some pictures...

Above: Two tornadic circulations on ground SW of Kearney.

Above: Tornado moving into Kearney.

Above: Debris / Power flashes in Kearney.

Above: Beloit, KS supercell (yes, that's a large tornado under that kewl structure)!

Above: Multi-vortex stage (Beloit storm).

Above: Another large tornado from the Beloit storm.

Above: Wedge tornado phase (Beloit).

Above: Second weaker tornado (hitting Mesonet vehicle) after Beloit supercell moves N (or the INSIDE of that tornado)!

 

[George Grant]

Couldn't see much.

Made it to the Elm Creek exit and dropped south to Road 747 and west from US183 to intercept the storm. Saw a fantastic wall cloud as other chasers caught up from the south and west. Experienced tremendous outflow from this storm as it passed to my north and east. Did not see any tornado as others reported, even though I was just behind the circulation at times on alternating paved, gravel, and min maint roads. Finally made it back to SR44 and up to I80.

Traveled east on I80 following storms and being followed by other storms. Proceeded northeast to Grand Island as they were tornado warned. Made it east to the Giltner/41B spur exit and headed north to try and intercept shear markers up towards US34. Stopped at this intersection and viewed rain-wrapped circulation off the to NW. The rain cleared to my south and I dropped back south to the truck stop south of I80 still on 41B. I was going to continue south to find circulation on the tail end of this storm. But, the high wind kicked in about the time I passed the truck stop. I turned around in the road and made it back next to the truck stop and stopped. I noticed that the circulation that had been moving east along I80 was just west of the truck stop. The wind was now blowing harder than I've ever experienced as three of us sat in our cars just off the drive at the truck stop. I could not see the truck stop. I could not even see the two vehicles off my rear bumper. There was at least two times when I'm sure my little Grand Am was up on its right two tires. At this point, I was sure our three cars (if not a majority of the vehicles at the truck stop) would become airborne. This finally subsided after four or five minutes.

Straight-line winds or tornado? I would imagine the winds were at least 80mph and probably upwards of 100mph at times. Though, it doesn't really matter. I did not intend on putting myself in this immediate situation, nor would I ever do that. I would rather be behind a storm that is hp or rain-wrapped and lose position than be in front of it and experience some life-threatening situation. Where's my Depends?

Geo

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

Windshield was totally destroyed by a f*cking pheasant. 950 logged miles today (most of which was spent dodging the rain and taking a very disappointed crew home up and down I35 during the Iowa's crappy MCS) $120 worth of gas, one lost windshield, an irreparable wiper and wiper motor since the bird decided to divebomb DEAD BOTTOM CENTER before its droppings went out of its mouth on my windshield, and 23 wide awake hours since I left, I can STILL look back on this and say I had a good time. A storm we were intending to punch before I got whacked caught up to us as we were waiting for a mechanic to check out our window; the storm had bubbling like I'd never seen. It eventually turned into a beautiful shelf, and then a mushy, ugly shelf; it was all we got stormwise, since the storms in our readjusted target of South Dakota were too far off once we got the okay on the windshield.

Unfortunately, if and when my insurance company rejects my claim for whatever reason they're sure to find, I will have to be hawking precious possessions to chase again, since repairing all of this could cost upwards of a grand with the wiper damage and all.

 

[Bill Hark]

Congratulations to Charles Edwards, George Kourounis and Mike Theiss of Cloud 9 Tours for their catch!! I saw the power flashes under the Kearney storm. Like other chasers, I blasted south toward the tornadofest. Unfortunately, I got a big screw in the side of a tire. I didn't have time to change the tire and couldn't go driving up to a tornadic storm with air leaking from a damaged tire. I settled for a farther perspective just west of Beloit. Observed a few low contrast tornadoes but the structure was the best. I then had to change the tire. By then, it was too dark to continue the chase with the small spare tire. More images when I get sleep.

Bill Hark

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Here are some video stills of the tornadoes we saw. We should have been closer, but O well at least we made it! A video will be posted shortly.

Low-contrast picture of a massive wedge tornado. Inside the white circle and labeled. We are looking NW, somewhere W of Beloit, KS or SE of Glen Elder, KS.

Another large wedge or the same tornado I'm unsure, somewhere west of Scottsville, KS. SE of Jewel that was hit by a tornado, I'm quite certain this is the one.

In the middle of the image is of a wedge tornado too. We are SW of Belleville, KS. Must be 20-25 miles from the tornado.

Sorry for the crappy quality.

 

[Chris Hayes]

Not a bad chase day for us, but no the greatest ever. We intercepted the Kearney, Nebraska storm within an hour of it's formation. Following it east, we saw it produce several wall clouds, some of which were violently rotating. We went up 44 to get a view of the action area. As we were closing in on I-80 we saw several power flashes that illuminated a portion of the tornado. Looked like a cone or elephant trunk at the time. We went east on 80 trying to get a view of the tornado. Unfortunately the only view we got of it was through a couple more powerflashes. We followed the storm east for a couple more hours, not being able to see any more tornados. Not a bad chase, we saw our 20th tornado.

 

[Verne Carlson]

Wow what a day as it was another amazing High Risk Thursday in the plains. We caught the tornado with power flashes in Kearney, NE. The wall cloud vault was amazing on this storm. Damage is reported in Kearney and we hope that there were not any injuries as it went straight through town.

The Kearney storm was becoming disorganized so we all shot down through Hastings, NE into Kansas to the cell coming out of the west in a better environment. We caught sight of the tornado near Tipton, KS and chased it till dark north of Beliot, KS. Did a lot of driving to position on the storms today so I did not get a deploy with the Wicked Witch 3. Had we been able to setup in front of one of the tornadoes with atleast a few minutes I could've been in position but it was all we could do to get up to the storms today!

 

[Chris Nuttall]

Left Amarillo at 6am yesterday, and made it up to what would become the Kearney storm just as it initiated. Had perfect position as we sat about 6 miles north of Arapahoe and watched the meso go through several cycles over about 15-30 minutes. Eventually, we lost the storm as it moved north of us.

We had to play catch up all day, and the situation was made even more complicated by fast storm motions, no road options, and cell mergers. Wound up getting caught in the core in Grand Island, and coming south just behind a dying meso.

Spent the next 5 hours stuck in gridlock on US-34 through Aurora and York as I-80 was shut down about a dozen semis being blown over due to high wind. There was also a lot of wind damage in Aurora including an empty Burlington-Northern train that had blown into another full one an a neighboring track. Saw what looked like some tornado damage just west of Kearney on I-80.


Spent the night in Council Bluff, IA. Going to try to make a play in Missouri today. I'll probably come back and post pictures and videos when I get back to AMA in a couple of days.

Almost bailed on the NE storm to catch the one in KS, but didn't. It was a lesson in frustration today...and a reminder to quit second guessing myself.

Oh well, we nailed our target area of Arapahoe-Kearney. Gotta look for the positive in things!

 

[Jason Persoff]

First off, thanks to Bill Hark for persuading me to chase yesterday: yesterday was set to be my travel day to Denver for my flight today. But, I couldn't resist Bill's enthusiasm, and instead targeted W KS along the unbelievably well-demarcated dry line (I was willing to go to Quinter which would still give me a chance to get back to Denver before 10pm so I could spend time with my parents before heading back to Jacksonville, FL). As I write this, I'm at DIA, and am completely exhausted after 8 straight chasing days without a break.

The reason I liked the dryline along I-70 was from long experience of chasing this area when I first started chasing over 15 years ago. Strong SE winds in DDC up to I-70 with ongoing excellent moisture led was contrast very sharply with WSW winds just W of GLD down to Lamar. When I got into Limon yesterday, the Td was around 17 deg (but the Td in the Quinter, KS, corridor was close to 65 deg! Initiation was beautiful as I approached from the west.

Since the 15-mile stretch of I-70 from around Park, KS, to Quinter, KS, has proven to be a well-worn tornado alley for me this year (with tornadoes on 5/22, and 5/23). As I drove through the RFD of one of the cells, I saw a large wall cloud racing to the east paralleling I-70. Occasional mid-level feeders were nice, but nothing was really going there.

I got to Quinter to fuel up, and hoped that the line of storms that had formed from the NE to the SW would develop new dominant updrafts. While I sat sweating in sweltering SE winds and high Tds, I looked down the I-70 corridor only to see an amazing HP cell with gustfront along the RFD taking shape. Further SW, a more "classic" cell was evolving as well. I moved back west a bit for what ended up being the best structure I've seen this year (and to be fair, most of my photos this year have been of intense storms or tornadoes, but not many would be considered highly photogenic (save for the elephant trunk and 2 or 3 of the wedge then cylinder tornadoes from last week)). But I'm not complaining...

Considering I'd had no intent on chasing until that morning, everything I got on Thursday was a glorious and wholly unexpected treat.

The northern storm became highly intense with rapidly whipping RFD to its west contrasted beautifully by sunshine behind it. As the updraft intensified rapidly, a faint rain-wrapped cone tornado evolved from the wall cloud to my NW. Had I been a bit more north, I likely would have had a better contrast on the tornado, but I have about 95% certainty about the cone. It was definitely not a wrain curtain; it was a persistent feature underneath the wall cloud and appeared to be north of the rain wrapping. Photos will follow when I get home.

I met up with Robert Balogh (we had both assumed the chase season was over the day before in NM, so both of us were pretty jazzed about things). The gust front from the RFD began to approach leading to a boiling turquoise sky (the gust front was well SW of the updraft base). I got a photo of Robert that I thought was the embodiment of chasing: as I filmed up from a culvert of green grasses, Robert is seen watching the boiling sky above. It looks cool and I look forward to sharing this. IMHO, Scott Blair's photo of sunset mammatus probably trumps mine for catching the spirit of chasing, but I'm pretty pleased.

We had a few minutes before the storm SW of us was tracking toward us and had to skirt south from I-70 as quarter-size hail (and slightly larger) began to hammer the interstate (and briefly, us). A new wall cloud pushed off east after we cleared that core.

Wanting to get back to Denver, and knowing I couldn't stay on the storms as they continued on to give up the tornadoes in Republic Cty (Beloit) due to their speed and my large drive back to the west, I abandoned the storm, but left wholly and completely satisfied. Robert stayed on in Colby and for the second day in a row we said, "See you next year" ). I got some shots of crepuscular rays shining through the storms, of the rainbows on the RFD and eventually of the sunset off of long crenulated mammatus. The intense dryline was palpable as I drove through it (in fact, straight line winds from a dry microburst overturned a Fed-Ex semi in front of me (driver was fine)). Winds behind the dryline were warm (90s) with Tds in the 12 deg range (just minutes before the Tds were locally up to 65 (!). Wow.

Seeing the mothership that Bill Hark and Chris Callura filmed made me drool...Nice catch, guys.

My wife and kids are psyched I'm coming home today. Truth be told, so am I. What an amazing year! Notwithstanding, I now know that if you're looking for tornadoes, spend the night in Quinter, KS. All of my tornadoes this year were there (except one in SW KS)--all along a small stretch of I-70. Never have I been on such a major road so repeatedly while chasing. It was great.

Total miles this year: 3800 (about 1/2 of most years). Back to real life