5/5/07 REPORTS: KS / NE / OK

[Skip Talbot]

Welp, I think we managed to miss the best show, but we did get a great show nonetheless. Chad Cowan and I intercepted a tornado southwest of Great Bend at about 7pm. It was a large white cone with poor contrast. We followed the storm north realizing it was gusting out, and missed a few to our south. Great chase though with a very ominous wall cloud earlier on. Will update with log and video later.

Full log with pictures and video

Video of wall cloud and tornado southwest of Great Bend, KS

 

[kenny_allen]

SD Tornadoes

The Severe Studios Chase Team caught several funnels and a large tornado on video. One supercell that tracked from Yankton to Howard, SD spawned several funnels and tornadoes. Lots of damage in SE South Dakota tonight, and lots of flooding.

We have video of a large tornado near Spencer, SD on our website. We will be adding damage video later. Full report tomorrow. www.SevereStudios.com

 

[Brian Emfinger]

More Pictures Here: http://www.realclearwx.com/50507.htm
Youtube video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwIeRFLaLH8

Scott Bell, Matt Crowther and myself saw at least 3 maybe 4 tornadoes in S Central KS. 2 of the tornado touchdowns were extremely brief and the other the pictures didnt turn out good (driving, low light, not stopping = bad pictures). A couple of times the storm motions were awesome but it just could do more than brief spinups. More later....

 

[Michael Carlson]

Myself, my dad and a Japanese chase team all witnessed 7 tornadoes today in central Kansas area.

May 5th 2007 Chase Report

 

[Dick McGowan]

Darin Brunin, Derek Shaffer and I were on 3 seperate tornadic supercells. We were on the one west of Pratt (little debris cloud underneath the rotation). We watched that cell up close and personal. We followed that storm along with 1.2 million other chasers, and had that second spinup hit within 30 yards in front of us. We followed that storm watching it produce beautiful funnels but no tornadoes. Storm started to look like trash so we headed towards Radium. NWS in ICT called us (since I assume he saw us on spotter network near the hook) and I told him I thought it looked like it was gusting out......wrong. As soon as I hung up, neat rain curtains started to feed into something wrapped just north of us. A beautiful white stovepipe emerged, and we watched it rope out about 6 minutes later. Chased it to Great Bend, but could never get a good peek. We dropped back south and saw the huge tornado west of St. John's somewhere and were treated to 100 mph RFD, obscuring our view from the tornado 1/4 mile away. We turned around and a small rope touched down in a field about 200 yards away. We headed north and got pretty close to the rope and watched the larger tornado rope out, while the rope meso, started to do the merry go round thing with multiple vortices about a 1/4 mile to our north. Headed back north out of St. John, and witnessed two wedges to our west. We nearly ran out of gas, so we got to Great Bend in time for the sirens to go off. Pretty much tired of chasing, with virtually no sleep, so we called it a night in Russell. What a day. What a weekend.

 

[Mikey Gribble]

Ryan Shirk, my dad, and I chased in central Kansas too. We saw two brief tornadoes. I couldn't see one of them because I was driving. I think there were more on the storm we were on, but everything kept getting rain wrapped. We stayed on a storm that went up out ahead and East of some of the other storms. We got one tornado off of that and then dropped back to our southwest and got another one North of Great Bend. We got one funnel ealier in the day by St. John also. It looks like we definitely missed out on the better quality tornadoes though. I can't blame myself too much on a day like this though. It was really just a crap shoot when you have a cluster of supercells like that. You can't really forecast which one is going to produce a good tornado. All we could do was get on a storm with unimpeded inflow and hope for the best.
I did have my most terrifying moment ever in chasing tonight though. We were driving about 40mph on this dirt road coming up on a 90 degree turn. The road had a lot of gravel in it so even though it was wet we had good traction. It was only 7:30, but under the storm it was basically dark. All of sudden when I hit the brakes to slow down for the turn we just kept right on going. The road had turned to mud without warning. Anyways, we started sliding sideways, but managed to get it straightened out before we hit the curve in the road. All I could see was a drop off ahead of me and I was thinking "this is going to be bad". Luckily there used to be a road that went straight (like 20 years ago), but now it was more like a creek bottom. We went flying off the road/ditch and barreled down that for about 75 yards before coming to a stop. It was terrifying. I swear we got airborne. It was so violent the magnet mount antenna flew off the roof of the car. We had a tough time getting out of there because it was sloppy mud, but eventually we made it back to the road. I still can't believe my car is still working. That was a good reminder of how quickly things can go wrong when you aren't extremely careful.

 

[Caleb Kimbrough]

Wow, pretty crazy day for the TornadoJunkies team. We saw the same tornado that Skip posted up top, but from about 40-50 yards away. We watched the tornado form and drop right in front of us and then head straight for us, we managed to get a little to the east of it but still encountered very strong winds.

Afterwards we followed the cell NE for awhile and saw maybe 3-4 funnels but no more touchdowns really.

I'll post a full report/videos up later.

Here's a couple of photos:

Right as the tornado was dropping in front of us.

Just to our west as it passed us. This picture was taken with a 15mm lens, so it looks a lot farther away than it actually was.

 

[Charles Kuster]

We missed the most significant storms in south and central Kansas today, but did manage to see a tornado near Portis, Kansas. The tornado passed about a mile away from us, and we observed a well defined condensation funnel with a small debris cloud. It was on the ground for several minutes and lifted just northeast of Portis.

This same storm produced damage in Osborne, Kansas which is 8 miles south of Portis. Two eighteen-wheelers where flipped over, and most of the roof of a restaurant was blown off. Debris ended up several hundred yards from the restaurant and some landed at the top of two power poles. Overall, not a bad day!

Edit: I was looking through the storm reports and, unfortunely, 11 people were injured in Osborne. Hopefully it is nothing serious.

 

[Austin Ivey]

Nice to be back in OK. Ran into and chased with Matt Biddle/Chuck Doswell & wife.

We oscilated back and forth between Protection KS area and Buffalo OK starting around 2pm. I think we drove between Buffalo and Ashland three times! There seemed to be a sweet spot where storms were initiating so we were grabbing onto each new one hoping for a good show.

Saw what nearly became a nado just over Protection but it didn't want to put anything down. Headed North from there to Greensburg area on a good cell but due to damage concerns we decided to turn around.

Dropped back south to Buffalo around 8pm and grabbed some nice sunset shots and enjoyed the "entertaining" dialogue on 101.1. Ah, it's nice to be back in a part of the country where "dry line" is such a ubiquitous phrase.

Overall I'd grade today a C...but it was just nice to be out and away from LA nonetheless. My gut was telling me to stay south of Woodward thru the afternoon and let the KS crap go by. Turned out that would have been best as it seemed that the storm of the day crossed I40 around 730pm with a tornado around Texola...anyone else on that one?? Looked like a nice isolated supe on radar.

 

[Bill Doms]

Full chase account is available here:
http://mnwxchaser.com/07may05.html

Crazy day...SE SD roads suck as flooding knocked us out of the chase twice. Just missed the Octa-fecta by getting cut off from the wedge in Hanson/Miner county. The first cell kicked off the day with a debris-ridden elephant trunk in Bon Homme county. The last cell in Yankton county was a dandy showing us a stove pipe, a rope and a cool multi vortex. Will get an actual page done once we get home from FSD tomorrow with some video of the multi-vortex.

Congrats to all who scored this weekend. An all timer for sure!

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Saw three tornadoes today on two different supercells in C Kansas. The first was a circulation under the wall cloud. The second was a small white tornado near Stafford. The third was an awesome cone tornado near Seward, KS. A great chase day to say the least!

Congrats to all who scored!!!

Will post pics and chase log asap.

 

[David Drummond]

Vici Oklahoma Tornado

Myself and Steve Miller intercepted a night tornado just north of Vici. Saw a nice cone illuminated by lighting less than a mile away. We could actually hear it!

A few power flashes confirmed it's track across the highway just ahead of us. A small caravan of cars were rapidly heading south out of the circulation. Their headlights illumintaed the rain curtains wrapping around the outer circulation between us and them. Leading them was a state trooper who stopped where we were at. He had a couple of side windows and windshield smashed along with grass and debris plasterd to one side. His antennas were al bent at the mounting bracket. He and his passenger were pretty freaked out, but ok.

We followed it to east of Wodward where it died off. The end.

 

[Dick McGowan]

Radium, KS stovepipe video. Probably post more videos later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaGZJWo7ovY

 

[Tony Laubach]

Tom, Ed, and I bagged half a dozen tornadoes; three around the Greensburg area and the other three near St. John, including two wedges on the ground at once. I'm not image-happy with this chase as I was in bad situations for shooting on each set of tornadoes. Trying to navigate dirt roads to get around Greensburg on two tornadoes, and the three near St. John came towards dark and I'll have to do some video enhancement to pull those stills if they came out. Was more concerned with getting out of the way than shooting at that point.

Stopped in Great Bend and swam around the streets as the town got hammered with heavy rains. Finally left town for Wakeeney where we reside tonight.

 

[Shane Adams]

Mickey Ptak and I observed three tornadoes near Greensburg/Brenham, KS this evening. We were unable to stay with this storm however, when our road turned north and started to take us into Greensburg......of course we stopped the chase right then. We observed a possible tornado earlier north of Coldwater, KS....funnel halfway down but couldn't see debris cloud.......also appeared to be a white stovepipe before that.....if anyone who was there (but closer) can confirm this as a tornado I'd appreciate it. Tonight we ended up in Seiling, OK. Tomorrow we go for the hat trick trifecta weekend.