5/4/07 DISC: KS

[Mark Manchester]

When this was discussed earlier, it was thought that this chaser was actually a sheriff's deputy who's car was caught up in the storm while he was out spotting. During my reading yesterday I saw that one of the deaths was a law enforcement officer, but it didn't say whether he was on duty, at home, in a vehicle, or what. Unfortunately, it sounds like this is the same person, but I can't say for sure one way or another.

 

[Eric Flescher]

Amazing video Dick.
Also Monday night they had another video of the Greensburg tornado on channel 08 NBC news with Gary Leizak. He said it was a video from his stormchaser crew. I saw it Saturday morning. The video first showed the tornado starting to form. Then it showed as it morphed into the huge F5 as it crossed the road in front of them heading for the town. Have not seen any photos of the tornado thought.

 

[Craig Maire II]

05/04/07

Does anyone know where I can see a copy of the tornado emergency/tornado warning that was issued for Greensburg?

 

[Bobby Prentice]

"Tornado Emergency for Greensburg"

Here is the "Tornado Emergency" Special Weather Statement issued by Mike Umsheid of the National Weather Service WFO in Dodge City, KS:

[FONT=lucida sans typewriter, lucida console, courier]SEVERE WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DODGE CITY KS
941 PM CDT FRI MAY 4 2007

KSC097-050300-
/O.CON.KDDC.TO.W.0025.000000T0000Z-070505T0300Z/
KIOWA KS-
941 PM CDT FRI MAY 4 2007

...A TORNADO WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 1000 PM CDT FOR CENTRAL
KIOWA COUNTY...

..A TORNADO EMERGENCY FOR GREENSBURG.

AT 937 PM CDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE METEOROLOGISTS AND STORM
SPOTTERS WERE TRACKING A LARGE AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TORNADO. THIS
TORNADO WAS LOCATED 5 MILES SOUTH OF GREENSBURG...MOVING NORTH AT 20
MPH.

A VIOLENT TORNADO WAS ON A DIRECT PATH FOR PORTIONS OF GREENSBURG...
ESPECIALLY THE EASTERN PORTIONS OF TOWN. TAKE IMMEDIATE TORNADO
PRECATIONS...THIS IS AN EMERGENCY SITUATION FOR GREENSBURG!!

A TORNADO WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 200 AM CDT SATURDAY MORNING
FOR SOUTHWESTERN KANSAS.

LAT...LON 3749 9936 3745 9929 3760 9901 3764 9936[/FONT]

NWS Dodge City office deserves a NOAA Gold Medal Award for this event.

The closest analog for this 1.7 mile-wide, after dark, EF-5 is Woodward, OK 4/9/1947 which was a 1.8-mile wide, after dark F5. The main difference? Woodward killed at least 116 people, while the Greensburg storm killed 11 as of (5/8/2007)

 

[Amos Magliocco]

If this isn't the ultimate benchmark of our progress since the mid 20th century, I don't know what is. The stakes could not have been higher. Everybody in the warning system from Mike at his radar up to the SPC and NSSL can share in the sobering knowledge that many more would have died or suffered injury without their work through the years.

Chasing had a few heroes, too, like Dick, Darin, the Meso crew, Bob Fritchie, Rachel Sigler and others who dropped their pursuit to attend the victims. They did us proud. It was a good day to be a chaser, wherever you were.

NWS Dodge City office deserves a NOAA Gold Medal Award for this event.

The closest analog for this 1.7 mile-wide, after dark, EF-5 is Woodward, OK 4/9/1947 which was a 1.8-mile wide, after dark F5. The main difference? Woodward killed at least 116 people, while the Greensburg storm killed 11 as of (5/8/2007)

 

[afischer]

I'm curious, is anyone on board who noted when and where the Greensburg tornado initially touched down? Those who went north out of Protection probably had the best look. I went east and north toward Coldwater and saw a distant cone/stovepipe starting at 905pm... and assumed it was the early stage of the Greensburg tornado, but am not sure. By 917pm there was a large tornado on the ground to my northwest, and I know that this one went on to grow very large and hit Greensburg as I was quite close to it by then.

Edit: I did see the damage survey map that someone posted... I'd be interested in the time of touch down as well, since then I could correlate it with what I have on video. Thanks!

 

[Mike Peregrine]

I'm going to cross-post this thought over here too, since I just can't get it out of my head. I'm really impressed by the example of officer Robert Tim Buckman, who died trying to protect this little town. His son said: "He was sworn to protect people and that’s what he was doing the night he got picked up by a tornado." If that isn't an example of a real man, I just really don't know what is.

There is seldom an event on this scale that requires every hand on deck like this tornado did. A small community, isolated from mainstream resources, miles from Dodge or ICT either one. Like Amos, I also feel like the chasers involved did a fine thing in working to help their neighbors that night. What a refreshing, selfless attitude! I'm sure that the images currently stuck in their heads will be there for quite a while ... every chaser who has ever been confronted by a similar situation has a few ghosts of their own to cope with afterward. But you should feel very good about lending a hand. People needed you that night and you came through for them -

 

[Brian Stertz]

It certainly looked as though the SRV track/trend on this supercell supports that this tornado did form over Comanche Co. KS in the Coldwater area. It really is amazing to compare the SRV images and match them up with tornado structure in the various chaser photos. The stovepipe involved a more concentrated/smaller strong couplet, but when it made it's transition to monster wedge, the couplet was very intense and became a more complicated combo of inflow and RFD features. Certainly not unexpected but interesting to look over. Then the debris donut was pretty spectacular (and spooky) too as the wedge moved away from Greensburg.

 

[Rich Thompson]

The closest analog for this 1.7 mile-wide, after dark, EF-5 is Woodward, OK 4/9/1947 which was a 1.8-mile wide, after dark F5. The main difference? Woodward killed at least 116 people, while the Greensburg storm killed 11 as of (5/8/2007)

I'd say the Mulhall, OK F4 from 5/3/99 was a little more similar event. Each had ridiculous reflectivity and velocity signatures, each tornado exceeded 1.5 miles in width, though Mulhall (fortunately) did not encounter very many people. 20 kt storm motion gave people plenty of time to move to shelter, and it sounds like almost everyone in Greensburg took some sort of action prior to the tornado reaching the town. The warnings and information flow from the DDC NWS office and local media were outstanding, which undoubtedly contributed to the relatively low loss of life.

I had nothing to do with the forecasts for this event, but I can empathize with Mike and the other NWS and SPC forecasters that are in the hot seat. Great job! Same goes for the chasers that made the effort to help those in need.

Rich T.

 

[Bill Schintler]

Interesting to see, that the grain bins/elevators are still standing and not heavily damaged? Is this due to them being on the edge of the most intense tornadic circulation or are those things really that sturdy. Its amazing to see that the water tower has been toppled.

Elevators are massively built structures of steel reinforced concrete, with walls a few feet thick. Look at old photos from the Woodward tornado sixty years ago. One of the few undamaged structures was the grain elevator which stands to this day.

Water towers are also necessarily strong structures as they support a heavy load of water, so it’s amazing to see this one flattened into a heap of rubble. This one had a capacity of 25,000 gallons or just over 200,000 lbs. The water tower appears on the left side of the photos in the links below, while the buildings that appear in the photo, including the “Big Well” visitor center, were swept clean of their foundations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bigwell1.jpg
http://www.kansasphototour.com/bigwell.htm

- bill

 

[Bill Tabor]

I find it interesting looking at the Greensburg reflectivity animation as it shows the initial area of rotation (the hook) moving toward town to the NE. It then arcs across town and toward 183 to the NW before moving NE again. Looking at the larger image of the entire cell and the other cells nearby it appears some type of merger is constantly ongoing from the northwest cell components to the southeast ones near Greensburg. If you look you will notice the northwest components (initially almost a separate cell) "flow" downward to the southeast. At one point the original hook near Greensburg seems to die out a bit or occlude as the next flow from the nortwest rebuilds it. It even appears in a few frames as if a separate hook forms from the northwest and very quickly merges in and replaces the old one over town. Perhaps this is what happened when others described the cycling. Some said they observed the tornado never lifted. This is just fascinating radar animation to look at. If you were in town, you might think you were out of the hook as it starts to move off to the northeast but is immediately reinforced back west. Very odd it seems to me. It almost appears similar to how some storms backbuild on a boundary against the flow but instead this one seems to forward propagate into it. We need a case study of this with examination of mesolows and boundaries in conjunction with the action of the RFD pulses that others have described. I'd love to understand further what made that storm so powerful and potent.

 

[Bob Fritchie]

I'm curious, is anyone on board who noted when and where the Greensburg tornado initially touched down? Those who went north out of Protection probably had the best look. I went east and north toward Coldwater and saw a distant cone/stovepipe starting at 905pm... and assumed it was the early stage of the Greensburg tornado, but am not sure. By 917pm there was a large tornado on the ground to my northwest, and I know that this one went on to grow very large and hit Greensburg as I was quite close to it by then.

Edit: I did see the damage survey map that someone posted... I'd be interested in the time of touch down as well, since then I could correlate it with what I have on video. Thanks!

It looks to me like we had the touchdown at 21:06 CDT.



This was taken at 21:07CDT looking to the Northeast from our position ~6.7mi north of Protection. This would put the initial touchdown of the Greensburg tornado at 21:06 CDT ~9mi NNE of Protection or 7mi NW of Coldwater. The tornado >>appeared<< to be on the ground continuously after that. I say >>appeared<< because we could really only see it when it was illuminated by power flashes and lightning. However, those light sources were failry continuous.

 

[Dick McGowan]

I'm not sure on the time, but I know for a fact that it formed on that county road directly north of Protection, about 300 yards to the east of the county road. The funnel cloud itself was directly on the road, but the tornado didn't touch until it was in the field. It was very near where the pavement turned to mud. It seemed to skip up and down for the first couple of minutes before it became more defined.

Edit:

It was on the dirt road, as u can see 26 seconds in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU3iqkDEpKw

 

[Matthew K. Hartman]

05/04 DDC Radar Loop

In the interest of some friends and some others that have asked where the parent cell that went on to produce the devastating Greensburg tornado, initiated... I've put together a rather extensive loop from the DDC radar spanning from 2213z (05/04) through 0931z (05/05).

This period pretty much spans the time from when the first echoes were picked up over Hemphill County (in the Texas panhandle) and continues through and up until convection finally departed the DDC radar's coverage area.

I apologize I'm missing a few frames near the beginning of the loop. Also to note, for those of you that have anything less than broadband, be patient, there are 160 images to load! The link to the loop can be found in my archives here:

[URL]http://www.mhartman-wx.com/mwx_eventList.html
[/URL]
Do what you will with the images...

* My thoughts and prayers go out to those in Greensburg and in surrounding areas affected by this past weekend's devastating storms...

 

[Willie Dines]

I find it interesting looking at the Greensburg reflectivity animation as it shows the initial area of rotation (the hook) moving toward town to the NE. It then arcs across town and toward 183 to the NW before moving NE again. Looking at the larger image of the entire cell and the other cells nearby it appears some type of merger is constantly ongoing from the northwest cell components to the southeast ones near Greensburg. If you look you will notice the northwest components (initially almost a separate cell) "flow" downward to the southeast. At one point the original hook near Greensburg seems to die out a bit or occlude as the next flow from the nortwest rebuilds it. It even appears in a few frames as if a separate hook forms from the northwest and very quickly merges in and replaces the old one over town. Perhaps this is what happened when others described the cycling. Some said they observed the tornado never lifted. This is just fascinating radar animation to look at. If you were in town, you might think you were out of the hook as it starts to move off to the northeast but is immediately reinforced back west. Very odd it seems to me. It almost appears similar to how some storms backbuild on a boundary against the flow but instead this one seems to forward propagate into it. We need a case study of this with examination of mesolows and boundaries in conjunction with the action of the RFD pulses that others have described. I'd love to understand further what made that storm so powerful and potent.

I know what you mean, Bill, as I too am becoming more and more intrigued with this particular supercell.

Could it be possible, that the inflow to the supercell, that spawned the Greensburg Wedge, may have been powerful enough to draw the some of the other weaker cells into it, kinda forcing a merger with the larger cell, thus the stronger one becoming more powerful and sustainable, because of the extra heat, energy and rotaional momentum that was being added to the larger supercell, by the merging from the weaker cells.

Here's another thing that I have been wondering, is there a pattern or a frequency to the regularity of extremely large tornadoes?, like the Greensburg Wedge, e.g. Hallam, NE 2004 and other tornadoes, that have been wider than a mile.

Willie