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5/31/10 REPORTS: CO/OK

Timelapse of tornadogenesis

Not much to say, since we were at the same position where (almost) everyone else was observing from.
But I wanted to share my timelapse movie of the main tornadic stage, including the 15min prior to the touchdown. It is uncut, no zooming and with hardly any move of camera.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsBILVA8J2I

Nice ending of our this year's trip. Enjoyed this season ;-)

Greetz,
Janek
www.schaple.com
 
Janek Zimmer said:
Not much to say, since we were at the same position where (almost) everyone else was observing from.
But I wanted to share my timelapse movie of the main tornadic stage, including the 15min prior to the touchdown. It is uncut, no zooming and with hardly any move of camera.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsBILVA8J2I

Nice ending of our this year's trip. Enjoyed this season ;-)

Greetz,
Janek
www.schaple.com
Click to expand...

Janek: that is a phenomenal time-lapse! While we were out there there were multiple attempts at splitting storms and your timelapse confirms what we were seeing in a way that is fairly unparalleled. What is so fascinating on timelapse is the way the more northeasterly updraft (attempting to split) suddenly collapses and merges with the main tornadic updraft. I think this could explain at least some of the tornadogenesis: the collapsing may have offered the tornadic updraft some added lift which explains both its occurrence and perhaps some of the "why did this happen?" answers.
 
we ( Extreme Tornado Tours ) left Kansas City in the morning, drove a long distance all the way to the storm, we were still in Dodge City when it got tornado warned, still had a long way to go... and made it . We got on a dirt roads west of Campo, on Co Rd J, to get closer to the base, then south of it, and on another dirt road to stay ahead of the rotating base... and suddenly, we found another Microsoft Streets error, another road that dead ends , while the software map shows a road that continues east . Luckily, RFD hit right there and so we saw the tornado , from another angle, in different light. Awesome tornado indeed. We caught up and got the nice rope out at the end in OK.

2066003546.jpg


slideshow with lots of images ( need to wait a few moments till all images are loading before it auto-starts ) , click here >

http://www.kyte.tv/ch/klipsi/tornado-31-mai/p=lpw&c=9038&s=912395&l=2507
 
It's not often that I am able to post here (this is my first attempt), but, this day was too much to pass up.

Chasing this year with Lynnette Evans, and we got on this storm right after the initial funnels were spotted. We eventually got through some hail and pulled over with some other chasers/tour groups and saw this near Pritchett.

888787847_SErgP-M.jpg


It eventually had some nice little vortices dancing around underneath it.

888787928_PEp4v-M.jpg


Of course, here's what everyone else saw near Campo.

888787755_5HTUh-M.jpg


And the rare shot of a tornado adjacent to a rainbow.

888788008_MycHj-M.jpg


All in all, a very fun day. Met a lot of new folks and saw the show of a lifetime.
 
This was our last chase day of our 2 week chasecation. Helen Rossington, Brendan Jones, Matt Clark, and me had seen several supercells and other great storms, but a definitive tornado had eluded us thus far this year. We couldn’t have dreamed what the last day would bring us!

We began the day in Garden City, KS, and left the hotel at around 1200pm CDT. Our initial target was Springfield, CO, and we headed there in time for lunch. En route, we noticed some early convection developing to the west of town and by the time we reached there (1.10pm MDT) thunder was grumbling overhead. We ate lunch at Subway listening to this, before heading to the west of town for a better look at the updraught.

By the time we got into position, there was a decent base to the west (10-15 miles west). We decided to hold back in order to appreciate the structure although before long a couple of brief funnels developed. We headed west to Pritchett, but decided against going to the south because of the approaching hail core. A cell merger seemed to occur as a cell to the south moved in. Shortly after we observed a funnel/tornado to the SW, although it was partially hidden by precip from our angle. We then headed back east to Springfield, and then dropped south towards Campo, stopping about 7 miles to the north. We then spent over an hour watching the cell go through various stages, including at least one stout funnel, which I think may have been a tornado, having read other reports. We also saw frequent, multiple CGs close to our location, one of which started a grass fire a few hundred metres to our north. Our UK phones didn’t work, so we decided (after some debate) to report it on SN, via the ‘other’ section. It seems that this may have lead to the local fire department arriving, although perhaps someone else reported it too.

Once it began to rain/hail, we headed south to Campo. By now, the storm seemed slightly outflow dominant, but there was still a lot of motion in the updraught/wall cloud area, which was close to being overhead. We then continued to the south of Campo, stopping at am intersection with a few dirt roads, where other chasers were too. We were also there when a small dust whirl passed right across us! A few stray hailstones dropped occasionally. Then, Matt suddenly pointed out a new funnel (we’d already seen one just to the north a few mins earlier) just to our south. Of course, as many others observed, this quickly developed into the most amazing tornado I’ve ever seen! We headed south once the large hail began to drop, and stopped several times to observe the tornado, complete with rainbow! Eventually, we headed as far south as Boise City, OK, and could still see a tornado to the north – whether this was the same one or a different one I’m not sure.

We then headed east towards Guymon, observing some great structure, but no more tornadoes. We ended up staying in Guymon, before heading to Denver, and ultimately the UK on Tuesday!

Helen has posted many pics on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=218236&id=675845395&l=c0fea5e8e5

Brendan has a blog of all our chases here: http://www.eots.co.uk/chaseplains2010.htm

Finally, I have some raw YouTube HD footage here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VJrECx38AY

Amazing stuff!
 
I think everything has been said about this fantastic tornado.
Arrived under the storm at 2:45 PM and saw the first tornadoes and several (large) funnel clouds. Then, at 7 PM this incredible tornado :

IMG_6914.jpg


IMG_6934.jpg


 
Campo, Colorado and Keyes, Oklahoma Tornadoes

2010 May 31 Campo, Colorado Tornado - Direct YouTube link

2010 May 31 Keyes, Oklahoma Tornado - Direct YouTube link

Greg Breneman, Scott Fitzgerald, and I got on the Baca county, CO supercell too late to see the first few tornadoes. We got there around 23Z. The storm went through a few occlusion cycles and had a chilly RFD that had me concerned at one point. Road options got a bit tricky so we decided to take a windy gravel road across the northern part of Cimmaron county, OK that came very close to the Cimmaron river before rejoining US287 south of the CO/OK state line. We only saw a Denver Chase duo and one tour van on the road.

We crossed a stretch of road with a spectacular carpet of yellow flowers bathed in sunlight and decided to stop and film the storm structure. Lo and behold the white funnel touched down at this moment and we shot the most picturesque tornado of our lives. We all shot pics and I got 15+ minutes of tripped video of the event. At one point the tornado began to get partially rain wrapped and a rainbow appeared in front of the tornado..."the end of the rainbow led to a pot of" tornado!

We saw the tornado again (or a new one) a short time later from a nice overlook just west of US287 on the same gravel road. Saw a final rope-out to our north from a few miles east of Keyes, OK. Don't know how many tornadoes there were, but this entire tornadic period lasted nearly an hour according to our camera's file times.

Shot more structure and rainbows until sunset when we parked a few miles south of US64 between Keys and Eva, OK. Observed a severe (50kt+) RFD feeding into a meso 5-7 miles to our east and I was sure it would produce yet another tornado. SPC log says it did, but we couldn't see it to our east due to rain, twilight, and distance.

This was the biggest positive surprise I've had in 20+ years of chasing. I sure didn't expect this based on morning analysis. The storm apparently found a hidden boundary it liked and spoon-fed itself by dramatically increasing it's east-southeast motion.
 
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