afischer
EF4
I've posted an account and some images of the Greensburg event: http://www.tornadohead.com/050407chase.htm
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5/4/07 REPORTS: TX, OK, KS, CO
- Thread starter BrandonWhittington
- Start date
James King
Chase Report 5-3/4/5-07
Left Little Rock at 1:30 p.m. on Friday the 3rd; work kept me off the early road. New laptop, new cell phone, and all the DeLormes I’d need to augment my chase. I’d been to South Central Kansas three or four times. I prefer southeast Kansas.
Got to Ponca City, stayed at the Holiday Western Express Midtown La Cootchie Suites. It had a good bar, and I watched the action pulse on my laptop while sipping Grey Goose. I cringed at the thin but ominous reports from Greensburg, my favorite town in Kansas (the Big Well, the Meteorite(s)). The laptop showed the scariest radar signature I’d ever seen, with three hooks to the south and two more to the north as the storm churned through Larned and Great Bend. Morning would tell the devastation, but meanwhile I enlightened the staff with radar and warnings to beware in the next day. Should have said the next few days.
Left at nine and got to Pratt by two. The good segment of the chaser community was there, checking, clicking, repairing, preparing. The dryline had already set up just west of Dodge City, and I stole all the data I could from the Seventh Days Comfort Western Budget Inn.
The line of storms seemed to end at Buffalo OK.
I HATE to chase in the Flint Hills, but I’m impatient. So I hooked on down to Medicine Lodge. Data there (by cell phone tether) showed an intensifying storm at the southern end of the Dodge City line.
I smiled. Broadly. I was expecting this.
What can I say? I’m a tail-end Charlie kinda guy. There were other tail-enders to come, but this was the first. I said I’m impatient.
The road west had two bridges under construction, and the ten-minute traffic lights (with no traffic) made me crazy.
But they also gave me a chance to look at the maps and decide that the only way to follow this young storm was to take the dirt road north to Sun City (deep in the Medicine Lodge River Basin) and hope those roads didn’t turn to mud by the time I got to the place they turned to macadam (ten miles north).
I sat at the crossroad of 160 and Whatthehell Road as two tiny sedans filled with chasers screeled onto the dirt track. Gone in a second. ‘I guess I’m not the only one on this cell,’ I thought, giving them two minutes head start before committing.
The road was washboard at best, traversing the most beautiful part of Kansas; but the Flint Hills are murder to chasers. Yet I continued north as the cell to the west dropped weak-assed wall clouds visible as small, dark squares beneath the butt of the storm. The flanking line began to blow up in the distance to the south, but I stuck with this cell. My fault. I knew I’d pay for this commitment, but whether it was with blood or footage I’d have to wait to see.
I hop scotched with some trucks that came up my butt pretty early on, and by the time they turned on the eastern jog to Coats, I turned north onto a dirt road that would let me intercept the wall cloud. If the road wasn’t soup from the rain core.
It wasn’t, and a sudden westward jog put me right under the wall cloud, now rotating invitingly. I stopped and got out, filming the most seductive dance I’ve ever seen. She dipped, she moaned. She shimmied, she spit. She sucked herself up into the mothercloud.
Then she spread open and said,
“You want it? Here it is.”
The base of the wall cloud opened, and less than two hundred feet from where I stood, a grey wisp of smoke seemed to whip into the atmosphere in front of me. It twisted and turned, it tried to make a tornado, but failed to do so. Or even create an organized funnel.
I stood there, dumb and enchanted, still wanting to have it form, to shape-shift, to mature into a real funnel, dipping, teasing, then DROPPING onto the ground three hundred feet ahead as it moved away to churn its destruction and mayhem.
Just let me film you, wench!
Then it organized.
Alas, she teased and shimmied, but she would not touch down. The funnel became clearer. Even a brief dust whirl below (which pretty much made her an Official Tornado) wasn’t enough. And I was no more than five hundred feet away!
The wall cloud sucked her up and turned to me, sticking out its tongue.
“Next time, suckah.”
The rest of the chase was a dream at best. This was the best moment.
I raced north to Cullison, where I tacked east back to Pratt. The storm was moving slowly north of town, where I joined a manic caravan intent on this cell. We all joined together in a snake-like line of chasers on 281.
A chaser in a green mini-van with a SKYWARN sticker on the rear windshield was impatient; passing in the shoulder then zipping through spaces in the cars to pass in the oncoming lane without looking, he set a bad example for us all. I should know; I’ve done stupid things in the heat of the moment, but not THIS stupid. It cooled my head.
I joined the train of chasers up to Stafford, caught a few funnels and a couple of brief touchdowns that proved what a lousy videographer I am, and after a brief conversation with a Stafford County Deputy near the town of CHASE (I had cruised a stop sign and he was right, and gave me a friendly and gratefully appreciated warning), I headed west to Claflin and Holyrood, where I chased until the darkness became too much for me.
Apparently some of you did better with it.
Not wanting to spend the night in the Danger Zone, I headed to McPherson, where I ate steak and flirted with very pretty girls. I chased the next day into OK, caught a very impressive storm at Camp Houston, but had to get back to Little Rock in time for work, and gave it up at 4 p.m. I ran upon the Doppler on Wheels just west of Alva and caught a glimpse of the team’s core-punching car, decked out with aerodynamically fastened sheet metal armor and plexiglass windshield covers.
It was the roiling, boiling, always-forming wall cloud directly over my head south of Cullison that was the best part of the trip. I chased it for more than an hour and saw more structure and development than I would have had I been stationary with a view of the twister. Some funnels and the rest of you made it even more worthwhile. Easy thing to say, when you have nearly nothing on the ground.
Tornadoes are nice (turns out I caught several more on film…funny how I didn’t see them at the time) but adventure is where you find it. 1900 miles to catch a wall cloud? You bet.
But what a cloud.
I’m not much of a chaser: I’m a writer that likes to chase.
Left Little Rock at 1:30 p.m. on Friday the 3rd; work kept me off the early road. New laptop, new cell phone, and all the DeLormes I’d need to augment my chase. I’d been to South Central Kansas three or four times. I prefer southeast Kansas.
Got to Ponca City, stayed at the Holiday Western Express Midtown La Cootchie Suites. It had a good bar, and I watched the action pulse on my laptop while sipping Grey Goose. I cringed at the thin but ominous reports from Greensburg, my favorite town in Kansas (the Big Well, the Meteorite(s)). The laptop showed the scariest radar signature I’d ever seen, with three hooks to the south and two more to the north as the storm churned through Larned and Great Bend. Morning would tell the devastation, but meanwhile I enlightened the staff with radar and warnings to beware in the next day. Should have said the next few days.
Left at nine and got to Pratt by two. The good segment of the chaser community was there, checking, clicking, repairing, preparing. The dryline had already set up just west of Dodge City, and I stole all the data I could from the Seventh Days Comfort Western Budget Inn.
The line of storms seemed to end at Buffalo OK.
I HATE to chase in the Flint Hills, but I’m impatient. So I hooked on down to Medicine Lodge. Data there (by cell phone tether) showed an intensifying storm at the southern end of the Dodge City line.
I smiled. Broadly. I was expecting this.
What can I say? I’m a tail-end Charlie kinda guy. There were other tail-enders to come, but this was the first. I said I’m impatient.
The road west had two bridges under construction, and the ten-minute traffic lights (with no traffic) made me crazy.
But they also gave me a chance to look at the maps and decide that the only way to follow this young storm was to take the dirt road north to Sun City (deep in the Medicine Lodge River Basin) and hope those roads didn’t turn to mud by the time I got to the place they turned to macadam (ten miles north).
I sat at the crossroad of 160 and Whatthehell Road as two tiny sedans filled with chasers screeled onto the dirt track. Gone in a second. ‘I guess I’m not the only one on this cell,’ I thought, giving them two minutes head start before committing.
The road was washboard at best, traversing the most beautiful part of Kansas; but the Flint Hills are murder to chasers. Yet I continued north as the cell to the west dropped weak-assed wall clouds visible as small, dark squares beneath the butt of the storm. The flanking line began to blow up in the distance to the south, but I stuck with this cell. My fault. I knew I’d pay for this commitment, but whether it was with blood or footage I’d have to wait to see.
I hop scotched with some trucks that came up my butt pretty early on, and by the time they turned on the eastern jog to Coats, I turned north onto a dirt road that would let me intercept the wall cloud. If the road wasn’t soup from the rain core.
It wasn’t, and a sudden westward jog put me right under the wall cloud, now rotating invitingly. I stopped and got out, filming the most seductive dance I’ve ever seen. She dipped, she moaned. She shimmied, she spit. She sucked herself up into the mothercloud.
Then she spread open and said,
“You want it? Here it is.”
The base of the wall cloud opened, and less than two hundred feet from where I stood, a grey wisp of smoke seemed to whip into the atmosphere in front of me. It twisted and turned, it tried to make a tornado, but failed to do so. Or even create an organized funnel.
I stood there, dumb and enchanted, still wanting to have it form, to shape-shift, to mature into a real funnel, dipping, teasing, then DROPPING onto the ground three hundred feet ahead as it moved away to churn its destruction and mayhem.
Just let me film you, wench!
Then it organized.
Alas, she teased and shimmied, but she would not touch down. The funnel became clearer. Even a brief dust whirl below (which pretty much made her an Official Tornado) wasn’t enough. And I was no more than five hundred feet away!
The wall cloud sucked her up and turned to me, sticking out its tongue.
“Next time, suckah.”
The rest of the chase was a dream at best. This was the best moment.
I raced north to Cullison, where I tacked east back to Pratt. The storm was moving slowly north of town, where I joined a manic caravan intent on this cell. We all joined together in a snake-like line of chasers on 281.
A chaser in a green mini-van with a SKYWARN sticker on the rear windshield was impatient; passing in the shoulder then zipping through spaces in the cars to pass in the oncoming lane without looking, he set a bad example for us all. I should know; I’ve done stupid things in the heat of the moment, but not THIS stupid. It cooled my head.
I joined the train of chasers up to Stafford, caught a few funnels and a couple of brief touchdowns that proved what a lousy videographer I am, and after a brief conversation with a Stafford County Deputy near the town of CHASE (I had cruised a stop sign and he was right, and gave me a friendly and gratefully appreciated warning), I headed west to Claflin and Holyrood, where I chased until the darkness became too much for me.
Apparently some of you did better with it.
Not wanting to spend the night in the Danger Zone, I headed to McPherson, where I ate steak and flirted with very pretty girls. I chased the next day into OK, caught a very impressive storm at Camp Houston, but had to get back to Little Rock in time for work, and gave it up at 4 p.m. I ran upon the Doppler on Wheels just west of Alva and caught a glimpse of the team’s core-punching car, decked out with aerodynamically fastened sheet metal armor and plexiglass windshield covers.
It was the roiling, boiling, always-forming wall cloud directly over my head south of Cullison that was the best part of the trip. I chased it for more than an hour and saw more structure and development than I would have had I been stationary with a view of the twister. Some funnels and the rest of you made it even more worthwhile. Easy thing to say, when you have nearly nothing on the ground.
Tornadoes are nice (turns out I caught several more on film…funny how I didn’t see them at the time) but adventure is where you find it. 1900 miles to catch a wall cloud? You bet.
But what a cloud.
I’m not much of a chaser: I’m a writer that likes to chase.
Skip Talbot
EF5
Looks like we may have been able to get photographic evidence of the rope we bagged north of Lebanon, KS afterall. My chase partner Chad painstakingly dug through all of his stills and video was able to find this:
And enhanced:
The lighting behind that funnel was piss poor and we could not get a decent shot of it. We were able to get much better shots of the wall cloud earlier on:
On the right there that's not the chaser named Zuul that Hollingshead bumped into in South Dakota, but a statue of a bison that made for some excellent foreground scenery.
And enhanced:
The lighting behind that funnel was piss poor and we could not get a decent shot of it. We were able to get much better shots of the wall cloud earlier on:
On the right there that's not the chaser named Zuul that Hollingshead bumped into in South Dakota, but a statue of a bison that made for some excellent foreground scenery.
Jimmy Deguara
EF3
After two attempts at obtaining video stills, I have been able to further solve the confusing events of the evening, what was observed, and importantly, uncover a few probable sightings of the tornado based on video. The conditions were very difficult for chasing given we were late to the event and given the tornado (based on other chaser accounts) the tornado became rain-wrapped for a while only to emerge as it crossed and created more damage on route 283 north west of Greensburg. The video evidence of the probable tornado is consistent with this latter stage.
Also included are various images of the damage along the road, the storm structure and some of the lightning.
All video stills available here:
http://australiasevereweather.com/video/stills/2007/20070504.html
Regards,
Jimmy Deguara
Also included are various images of the damage along the road, the storm structure and some of the lightning.
All video stills available here:
http://australiasevereweather.com/video/stills/2007/20070504.html
Regards,
Jimmy Deguara
