Hey! This was the first of a three day adventure I had the honour of sharing with Bobby Prentice and the American Heathen himself, RJ Evans, along with a new chaser you'll hear more about, Michael Ratliff.. and it was an adventure that even with a frontal lobotomy, I won't forget.
First off, we did not get to the Greensburg tornado, and it may have been better we did'nt... I applaud everyone who braved the chase and still have their wits about them. Most importantly, I want to personally acknowledge all who stopped and rendered assistance in that community after the fact.
It shows there still is a majority of those on this list that will do what is right in the times of need. My prayers and thoughts are out to all whose lives have been adversely affected by this disaster, I know in my heart that you all will come back stronger than ever.
As for my day... we had a late start as Bobby and RJ picked me up around 1pm, with Mike tagging along, we did our best to aim northwest toward Woodward, we were concerned about capping issues in KS. but a surge at the 200/300mb. level that I was anticipating as the vortmax was starting to eject out would hopefully pop the cork unleashing that near 4000+j/kg cape.. which it did as you know, in an unforgetable way. Despite RJ and Bobby gnashing their teeth over constant computer glitches, we made our way toward Kiowa KS. late in the afternoon, KS. was still clear, at least in my target zone which was between Dodge City, Ness City on east to Great Bend/Pratt. But, our GRL 3 data indicated that cells were developing explosively to our southwest over Lipscomb Co. TX. I was hesitant about backtracking southwest as I thought our "powder keg" would blow anytime initially up toward I-70 and unleash a string of rotating pearls on down the dryline.
We all agreed after looking at data that heading back southwest was our best option, we noticed that the supercell that took shape had Arnett in its crosshairs, we were also hearing reports of a tornado on the ground in that area, we were still about an hours drive away. We did notice that the storm had developed a left split, and then that cell split, so we were witnessing these storms about 40mi. to our west, we eventually got near Curtis, Okla. off of Hwy 412 and watched what was left of the Arnett storm do its swirling swan song... and a graceful way it went too... a striated classic LP supercell, that we experienced with the exception of some anvil precip. and very occasional cg's. At one time, I had three of these strung out, corkscrewed updrafts I was seeing. It was quite a sight. I compare this storm to the Pampa, TX. LP of 4/23 except even better. We all hung around as dusk approached, illuminating the shrinking cell and witnessing the birth of what would be the Greensburg disaster off to our north... we gave very serious thought about going after it, but decided that by the time we would have caught up to it, it would have long gone through Greensburg, and we probably would'nt have made that much progress once north of Coldwater anyway. Later as we were dining in Woodward we were in shock as we watched with a heavy heart the radar data of that spectacular hook heading right over Greensburg... I slept uneasy that night thinking about those poor souls... and a town which I have passed through many a time, was erased from the map.
