5/31/08 REPORTS: KS/OK

[Brandon Ivey]

Mods, please add states as they become needed throughout the day.

I documented a nice little elevated storm early this morning, west of Wichita. The storm that moved through prior to this cell had much larger hail, but hey, we all have to sleep sometime. Can't get em' all! This storm had vivid cloud-to-ground lightning and the largest hailstone I measured with it was 1.50" in diameter. The good thing about the morning convection is that an outflow boundary is already evident on the vis. sat. This could be the only player for tornadoes later today if a storm can interact with it. With forecasted storm motions and the orientation of this boundary, a storm could easily ride along it and possibly become a cyclic storm. We will see what happens!

http://thestormreport.com/blog/2008/05/may-31st-2008-sedgwick-county-lightning-and-hail/

 

[David Wolfson]

After quickly leaving a mixed-out Meade, KS, target for points south and west, and parting with some other chasers who basically hung it up for the day, I headed east on US60 toward I-35 at Ponca City, OK. About as I reached the Interstate, the cell directly east started showing some real life and I continued east. About as I reached Ponca City it was tornado-warned.

Continuing east toward Burbank a wall-cloud was quite evident to the ese and there were multiple scunnels, including a stubby cigar-type lowering about halfway to ground. Just short of Pawhuska about 00:30Z I stopped to observe a briskly rotating wall cloud with scunnels to my immediate southwest. Motion from about 310 made this a safe location for this particular storm.

Together with many other chasers I pursued southeastward toward Barnsdall where the storm died a quick death with the setting sun. Note this is a report for OK.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

Tyler Costantini and I left Pittsburg, KS during the 2:00 with an initial target of Stillwater Oklahoma but decided not too after we began to notice initiation not too far from where we were along Highway 60 west of Pawhuska. That storm was the storm that became tornado warned, Tyler and I hoped back over towards Bartlesville and got south on 123 just north of Barnsdall where we were able to watch the storm from atop of a nice hill overlooking the area.

We stayed with the storm until the tornado warning expired on it at which time we decided to head back to Southeast Kansas to try intercepting the storms up here. All in all, not bad for a local chase.

Looking west off Highway 123 north of Barnsdall, Oklahoma:

Further south on Highway 123 just north of Barnsdall:

A shot I snapped as Tyler and I made our way back towards Kansas:

Had a pretty good lightning show back in Southeast Kansas:

More pics at http://www.kschaser.com/cpg1410/displayimage.php?album=58&pos=0

 

[Bill Doms]

MN severe and tornado warned cells

Was kind of surprised at the location of the storms. Original plan was to find something in the area of steeper low level lapse rates. Dumped the storm which went on to be the first tornado warned cell which once again tracked pretty much right down the highway 10 / I94 corridor. Weird how that keeps happening. Anyhow, settled for a nice cell to the north in Benton countywhich had a slowly rotating wall cloud complete with the moving rain curtains. The video is definitely Skywarn training video material on what is not a tornado.

More pics HERE

 

[Joel Wright]

Didn't have anything severe in the area yesterday, but a few interesting small thunderstorms did "pop up". Went out and experimented with some time lapsing.

Here's a small thunderstorm as it approached Erie, IL mid-afternoon. Got chased back into the car at the end due to rain.




Here's a short clip of a building storm at sunset. You can see the rainshafts drop as lightning increases. This storm dropped golfball sized hail an hour after this near Princeton Illinois. This one is really short as I just went out to shoot lightning. Didn't intend on doing an actual time lapse. Wish I would have kept the camera in this position longer.

 

[Melanie Metz]

MN Tornado warned cell

Dave and I were just spending time at home when the tornado sirens went off. The hook was just 5 miles NW of us so we grabbed the camera and took off West down Bass Lake Road in Plymouth. Saw a nice wall cloud immediately and followed the cell as it moved SE.

We came back North on 169 and returned home....just East of 494 off Bass Lake Road. Our apartment complex was covered with hail, many golf balls. Luckily we took Dave's new truck to chase so my old car was the one left to suffer the hail. Well, I finally get to claim hail damage! And it wasn't even from a chase! My car is covered in dents on the top and the side panels (passenger side, facing N).

Here are a few images from our backyard chase. Some of the most beautiful pics so far this year and only had to travel ~ 15 miles round trip!!

Note the pink hail shaft in the last picture. That was a new one for me!

Melanie

 

[Glenn Schubert]

Southern IL Chase

I missed out on the tornadic storms through the Springfield area yesterday because my band was playing that night and I wouldn't have made it back in time. So yesterday afternoon I was sitting on my girlfriend's deck in Salem, IL and we heard some thunder rumbling. We checked radar and saw that there were some storm cells heading east from the St. Louis area. As the leading cell crossed I-57, the NWS put a Severe Warning on it although we were not even in a slight risk area. We saw a lowering on the southwest side of the storm that appeared to have some slight rotation (see first picture). The NWS stated that there was rotation in this storm and we confirmed this on SMR as there was some gate-to-gate shear, although not very tight. We followed the cell east on Rt. 50 into Clay County. A more distinct wall cloud developed at this point on the west side of the storm (see second picture). We never did see any funnel from this wall cloud. There were reports of penny-sized hail in Clay County, but we did not encounter any. The cell moved of quickly into Indiana, and we called off the chase. This was not a bad impromptu chase, but it did not make up for missing out on the Springfield area storms yesterday.

 

[Brandon Ivey]

My wife and I took off from Wichita and sat in the muggy heat in Enid for about an hour, waiting on storms. It became clear that this area would remained to capped for diurnal storms and we headed east as storms started going in northeast Oklahoma. We got one of the tornado warned storms before dark, but nothing looked very impressive other than some slow, elevated rotation. The real treat came later that night as I witnessed at least half a dozen "bolt from the blue" lightning bolts from thunderstorm towers in southeast Kansas. These bolts came from the upper portion of the thunderstorm updraft tower and would strike the ground, well away from the thunderstorm. This was, by far, the best lightning display I have ever watched. I was able to capture a few bolts on video and all the bug bites were worth it!

http://thestormreport.com/blog/2008...homa-rotation-and-kansas-bolts-from-the-blue/

 

[Scott Weberpal]

Sat along I-35 near Tankawa at a gas station with numerous other chasers. Decided to head east toward Ponca City when the DOW/TIV/Discovery side show arrived which drew numerous gawkers and it soon became a circus - and I began noting congestus to the east, opposite wimpy struggling cu to my west...my mind was made up. Followed the Pawkhuska storm from initiation to it's beautiful demise at sunset. Didn't witness any tornadoes, but saw numerous scuddy funnel-looking things which never maintained any significant rotation. In fact, the storm never exhibited any signs of strong, organized low-level rotation. However, I was amazed at the classic/quasi-LP structure, as the storm was very photogenic and yielded a great end to my chase vacation (joining Blake Naftel and Brian Morganti as a driver for Tempest today). Ended the night in OKC where I was treated to a fantastic CG show.

http://www.tornadofx.com/images/053108_01.jpg
http://www.tornadofx.com/images/053108_02.jpg
http://www.tornadofx.com/images/053108_03.jpg
http://www.tornadofx.com/images/053108_04.jpg
http://www.tornadofx.com/images/053108_05.jpg
http://www.tornadofx.com/images/053108_lightning01.jpg

 

[Paul Knightley]

We spent most of the afternoon at the McD's in Enid, OK, but nothing fired. Then the big central OK supercell fired close to sunset - we headed south and watched the lightning light up the bell-shaped updraught of the left split, but decided against hauling it southwards to pick up the right-split, which was moving quite deviantly. Shame the storm hadn't popped about 2 hours before!

 

[Steve Miller TX]

Weatherford/Hinton OK Supercell

Here are the best pics I got of this monster. I shot a ton of photos and most are duds. However, I did get a few good ones out if it. Pardon the one with the "Batman" angle on it. ;-) This was a spectacular supercell with the most amazing anvil zit displays I've seen in a very long time. The only way I could describe it was the underside of the anvil overhead was "sparkling".

 

[Chris Robinette]

Haven't posted in awhile, really didn't have much to contribute.

At about 7:30 a.m. a severe storm rolled in. The hail core hit my town of Cedar Vale, Kan. dead on with baseball sized hail. There's a good amount of property damage throughout the town.

Looking north east, from the Highway 166 turnoff into Cedar Vale.

Looking west from the same turnoff.

Looking through the empty frame of the passenger side T-top on my 1986 Nissan 300zx. Also lost the hatchback window.

 

[Alan Switzer]

MN Tornado Warned Storm

I was in Minnesota from Oklahoma for my sister's 50th B-day and graduation for master's degree. We were watching the weather when this storm moved into Minneapolis. Didn't ever look like it would actually tornado so I went fishing. Didn't catch any fish either. But it was an amazing view we had on the lake.

 

[Laura Duchesne]

We almost gave up the chase day but saw explosive development along the boundary to our south at sunset. We were on the same tornado warned supercell as Steve Miller. When lightning flashed, I could note the beautiful striations in the storm. I couldn't grab a picture because we wanted to get to the wall cloud near Binger. When we watched the wall cloud, the winds in the area of the storm had that howling tornadic sound to it. We gave up on the storm near midnight because we had booked rooms in Liberal, KS and that was a 4 hour haul to go.

 

[Stephen Levine]

Report, 5/31/08, KS/OK

We hung out between Pittsburg and Baxter Springs, KS until about 2:30 pm to enjoy the storms north of the stationary front. This included beautiful cloud structures, nice C-G's, and clouds cascading earthwards behind the storm cells.

Around 5 pm, we headed towards Tulsa with the aim of taking 412 west and putting our cards down on the southern and western areas of the outflow boundary.

As we approached Tulsa on I-44, the first towers explosively arose to our north.
Radar showed a rapidly building storm near Barnsdall, OK. We took 11 north to intercept. With the winding roads and dense trees, and not knowing this part of OK, I was kind of freaking out, wondering if we would ever break into open sky again on this trip.

Glimpses through the trees revealed a breath taking anvil/sun intercept along with stacked and vaguely circular layers of dark cloud within the storm.

We finally broke into open sky north of Avant. Seeing more hills to the NW, I felt reluctant to risk driving back into trees and passing up what was now a spectacular supercell storm, complete with stunning anvil and wall cloud.

With the storm having a NWS tornado warning on it and moving at a declared 9 MPH, we stayed put on the ridge and watched the beauty, splendor and scud/funnel teases that this storm had to offer.

At one point, I got excited as one of the lowerings took on a smooth funnel shape and rotated at a fast rate of speed. However this did not last long.

After awhile, one car stopped and parked behind us. Eventually a few more cars pulled over and all silently watched the show.

The storm had one of the most bizarre structures that I had ever seen, as a disk shaped hat on top of the main tower rotated just underneath the anvil.

At sunset, the storm shrunk into a narrow and high based column, still punctuated by beautiful outbursts of anvil lightning. With the salmon- like colors of sunset blending in and the now high bases to the clouds, the scene reminded me of beautiful NM monsoon skies.

I will be posting pictures within a couple days to my blog site, www.joyfulstormhunting.com