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

[Jim Bishop]

New meso/almost tornado developed over our head on a small road northeast of Buffalo, OK around 2pm ish. Winds increased from around 15 mph to near 60mph in a matter of seconds! Saw several wall clouds. Got on the supercells in southwest kansas later in the day. Wall clouds...no tornadoes.

 

[Jody Radzik]

It was hot in Coldwater yesterday

Finally, on chase number four I score. Big thanks to Bob Schaefer for being my guardian angel and the voice of higher navigation over the phone:

http://nmupdraft.org

 

[Michael P. Morris]

Short story: My wife and I witnessed at least three, possibly 4 tornadoes yesterday near Haviland, KS and in rural Pratt county. It was our first multiple tornado day and breaks a nearly 2-year drought.

We departed Norman at 1:30 and headed for Woodward, in hopes to catch the tail end of whatever development was already occuring. However, the cirrus deck in place over most of the morning and early afternoon kept the surface from heating sufficiently over the area so when we arrived in Woodward we were somewhat surprised to see nothing of consequence near us at 4:00 p.m. We drove around town for a while attempting to find internet access and saw a large horde of chasers near the Days Inn on the edge of town, including Howie Bluestein with his radar team. However, the Days Inn would not let us connect so we moved back into town to find another access point.

We watched the satellite and radar loops for about 45 minutes until a cell developed to our northwest in Harper County, at which point we decided to get on the road and blasted north on 270/183 towards the developing storm. At first we tried to catch up with the northern cell, but it was quickly moving away from us so we dropped back and picked up the southern cell about 10 miles from the Kansas border. At first it appeared outflow dominant (the first picture below) but rapidly became very organized and the developing wall cloud passed overhead about a mile away from us. As the storm continued north, we followed it as it cycled through a couple of ratty looking wall clouds, until we began to approach Sitka, KS and the wall cloud became much more organized and the storm produced a slender rope funnel with full condensation to the ground at about 7:15 pm. A couple minutes later we witnessed another touchdown, perhaps of the same funnel but we were a little too far away to really tell.

After that tornado lifted, we found ourselves driving slowly along a dirt road just south and east of Greensburg and the storm began to break away from us. Once we were able to get back onto US 54/400 we continued eastward in the hope to again reach a N-S road to catch up with it. As we approached within about 3 miles of the storm, I noticed a dark region inside the rain curtains which appeared to be two tornadoes on the ground at the same time (the contrast enhanced photo below - matches up nicely with what Wesley L. posted above from a more favorable angle). Once we reached Pratt, KS we decided to break off the chase and head for home as daylight was rapidly fading.

 

[Danny Murphy]

This is my first chase report, from my first "real" chase ever.

I wasn't expecting to go on a chase, but while having a family dinner party with some friends, we heard a tornado warning for a tornado sighted just west of Shenandoah, IA. I was actually outside watching that area for development, and was informed about the tornado warning by my family. This area was about 7-8 miles west of my house. I ran over to the west side of my house to get a clear view past some trees and saw a large, beautiful, rotating wall cloud. One of our family guests was ready to chase after it (I had discussed with him earlier before the warning came out about being ready to chase in case something came close), and he fired up his truck while I grabbed the camera from the house.

We watched the wall cloud as we caught up to it while moving parallel with it (heading north) at a distance of about 4-5 miles to our west. At times there was very intense rotation clearly evident. We heard reports of tornado sightings within this circulation and tornado damage reported. We were too far away to see anything on the ground. We followed the circulation all of the way to several miles northwest of Red Oak, IA, where we stopped when we caught up to the circulation itself, which was almost overhead. We watched the circulation for a few minutes before trying to catch it again, but called off the chase due to darkness and running low on gas. We refueled in Red Oak and headed back home. We were disappointed that we had to break off the chase because shortly after doing so we heard confirmed reports of a large tornado on the ground east of the Oakland, IA area.

We learned that the tornado five miles northwest of Shenandoah crossed within about a quarter mile of my friends house who was at my home for our party. His dad was watching the storm and spotted the small 50-100 yard wide funnel move across their pond and property. He reported small building damage and grain bins destroyed. There was also damage reported near the small town of Imogene, IA, about 5 miles north of the other damage reported.

I will post my only decent picture of the wall cloud later.

I had a fun time on my first tornado chase, although I can see how having more information can definitely help while in the field. We did pretty good at keeping up with the storm and choosing roads that eventually got us caught up to the actual circulation. I just wish there would have been more daylight and we had more gas.

I did the same thing a few years ago while chasing a wall cloud near Jesup, Iowa, I gave up on a chase when I ran out of the ability to record the storm and decided to call off the chase because it did not look like it would produce anything else. I found out later that it produced a stovepipe tornado near Winthrop so I learned not to give up too easily, but night chasing is not my cup of tea.

 

[Robert Rohloff]

I was sitting at Vici Oklahoma on Hwy 60 when a large cone shaped tornado crossed the highway. A OHP trooper and VFD unit headed north on a dirt road about 2 MI west of Vici. I attempted to catch up to warn them to stop which was a really bad idea. Just as I caught them I was blown off the road from west to east but was able to recover due to AWD. Wet red clay road really sucked.

They stopped on a paved road back to the east and just as I pulled up next to the trooper we got hit. The lord was watching us....The trooper had a female passenger and I think the firefighter was alone. My car was hit with tin, roofing and siding. I lost a rear windshield and had lots of damage on the right side along with a tire going down.

The trooper had damage to his unit, once we reached Hwy 183 we went south and stopped. It was like reunion day we were all glad we got out of that without injury. Its 1230 PM and I am still shaking....

 

[Tyler_Costantini]

This tornado formed 9 Miles South of Great Bend, KS 4 Miles West of Hwy 281 on Just South of County Road 190... 6:41 PM on 5-5-2007

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

So many of the tornados in our area were rained-wrapped and hard to see.

That about sums up our experience in the NE/SD area. I'd add in fog/low stratus wrapped supercells though

The Short: Got on several tornado warned (and apparently tornadic) supercells in NC Nebraska. Low visibilities and a bad road option later prevented us from seeing any tornadoes or sticking with supercells for a prolonged period of time. Ironically, all the places we drove through earlier got the brunt of the show. Doh!

The Long: The wife, two UND grad students (Zhe Feng and Becky Obrecht), and I left Grand Forks at 6:30am. Now chasing in the 21st century armed with a laptop and the Alltel plan, we blasted south to Sioux Falls. In Sioux Falls (~11:30am), we picked up a recent UND grad (Crystal Paulson) and headed towards Yankton.

Once we got to Yankton, we dropped south and decided what to do... play the WF or blast south to the northern target area of the dryline. Visibility was quite poor near the WF as one would expect, and the radar made our choice for us. A new storm SW of Oneil became tornado warned and looked impressive on radar. We headed west and intercepted this line of supercells near Ainsworth.

Doh. By this time, new convection was firing south of Yankton which would later become the tornadic supercells that produced a number of tornadoes in SD. Unfortunately, our supercells (while tornadic) were in the most awful visibility I have ever seen while chasing. While a low stratus deck dominated the region, I at least expected several miles of visibility near the supercells. Nope. Visibilities decreased near the supercell, and we couldn't make out the FFD/RFD until it was less than a mile away. During our short time window of being able to see anything, the storm didn't produce. It did a few miles south and north, however.

Deciding this was a bad play, we jumped shipped and headed towards another supercell about 45min SSE of us. We intercepted this storm NNE of Broken Bow, NE. This time, visibilities were great and we had an excellent view of the rain-free base in hill country. We followed it on a N/S road for awhile, but were still a good ways west of the storm. We decided to stair step on one of the few pavement roads in the region to get a closer. Unfortunately, this road turned to slicker-than-snot gravel halfway through. By the time we corrected our error, the chase was essentially over... several hours BEFORE dark.

We headed back home stuck in no-mans land hearing reports from our cell and those near Yankton, SD. We did intercept one other isolated, persistent updraft near Spencer, SD. This was more of a semi-decent photo opportunity consolation prize as the sun tucked behind the small tower.

Now we're left with the did we learn part. Obviously, I'd like to take something away from the experience considering we missed a decent tornado show on my personally longest (~1250mi) storm chase AND the show was closer to home. I'm able to draw parallels to another chase: April 7th, 2001 (Throckmorton). Another WF day where we left too early, and got ourselves out of play too far south. One of these days I'll master the WF setup. Preferably sooner-than-later considering this is a more likely setup for tornadoes in this neck of the woods ; )

Aaron

 

[Van DeWald]

I apologize in advance for these pictures, Note, these aren't your extremely picturesque shots that you typically see, but they're the best I can muster given my circumstances. While not 100% positive, the tubes are in there somewhere.

Taken about 8 miles east of Wilson, KS, taken around 830 pm. It's a 6 second timelapse. The reports were that the tornado was rain-wrapped as it moved in/near Wilson.

Taken about 3 miles east southeast of Lorraine, KS, taken around 10 pm. It's a 10 second timelapse. Again, rain-wrapped as it moved near Bushton/Lorraine.

 

[Edward Ballou]

Kudos to Bill for all the catches he had. Nick Hartley and I were on the same cells in SE SD but alas, they were fast little buggers. Though reports were plenty, we saw no tornadoes. We did witness a rotating wall cloud, and a funnel cloud or two.

Full report and pictures at http://www.carpetempestas.com

 

[Fabian Guerra]

My mind is kind of fried from no sleep, over 2000 miles driven in three days and witnessing hell-on-earth Friday so please excuse this abbreviated report.

After the chase of a lifetime the night before, Craig Marie and I intercepted the tornado near Great Bend and filmed it for a few minutes until it dissapated. One of us will post pics/vid later.

Now I go back to work for 2 weeks until I get back out on the plains on the 19th.

 

[Joel Taylor]

Looks like Reed and I were on the same storm as Verne Carlson. You can see our tail-lights in his pics. Here's a link to the video of the wedge as it crosses the road right in front of us.

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

 

[Amos Magliocco]

Chased with Eric Nguyen and Robert Hall and witnessed two tornadoes, the second of which was the Chase, KS "drillbit" tornado. Will work later on extracting video grabs. The tornado earlier was even more brief than Chase and we didn't get imagery. I'll sort through GPS data to locate our viewing position on both tornadoes. Will post those to my website time & wx permitting.

 

[Rob Satkus]

Tom Pastrano and I saw 4 tornadoes with the Roll - Arnett Ok. storm...first appeared to be a large cone southwest of Roll, second a brief tornado north or northeast of Crawford, third a large truncated cone with occasional multiple vorticies south of Arnett and later a close call with the rope out stage of another tornado just east of Arnett after dark. Later, we also saw the large Vici tornado...

Rob

 

[Chris Sokol]

Wow...what a chase. Picked up the southern cell in Oklahoma around Sweetwater and stayed with it untill it was dead (around 1 AM). Witnessed several tornadoes from this storm...it just kept going. Will get some video grabs up in the next few days.

 

[David Dildine]

No more dirt roads. Gotta keep telling myself...

This was one of the 8 million tornadoes southwest of Great Bend.

Nice work to the folks who got shots of the wedge crossing 281. Auto shutter speed at twilight is not the way to go.