5/6/07 REPORTS: OK, TX, KS

[Brian Emfinger]

Scott Bell, Matt Crowther and myself woke up in Alva to tornado warnings to our south. We decided to head down towards the Elk City area. On the way down there we nearly got caught in some large hail SE of Alva but we managed to escape. I did get a nice lightning shot in daytime by the gust front

After getting to Elk City we continued on Sayre and checked on some storms developing just west of there. We saw a couple of weak wall clouds from two seperate cells but we decided to get back down to the original target and then head southwest from there towards a better cell near Hollis, Ok.

For the next several hours we saw several more weak wall clouds from several different storms but nothing looked good for long but I did get more daytime lightning!

Also saw some dust rising up near Mangum from 540pm...not a tornado..not sure what it was really.

I decided at this point to go ahead and head home so Garrett Lewis (whom we met up with as planned, before dropping to towards Hollis) and myself broke off and headed home. On the way home we got a wall cloud west of Hobart, OK....it had the most promise of the day but it didnt last long

While going through OKC we saw the tornado warnings to our southeast and made it to them just as the circulation crossed the interstate in front of us. It had a nice lowering and a possible needle funnel.

We followed the wall cloud north to Prague and looking east from there we saw a very large wall cloud with a very nice tail cloud. The storm then weakened pretty quickly.

 

[scott r currens]

5/6/07 REPORTS KS/TX/OK

At 4:25pm I intercepted an HP supercell on the OK/KS border SSW of Medicine Lodge, KS. The storm interacted with an old outflow boundary producing one large tornado and two additional tornadoes that I believe were satellites. The large tornado was rain-wrapped and only visible for ~1 minute. After filming the tornadoes, the core caught me and I was stuck in the mud for 20+ minutes. I wont complain because that dirt road was likely the only place from which I could have seen the large tornado.

http://www.violentplains.com/video/5-6-07ScottCurrensB.mpg

Congrats to all that were able to get out this weekend. It was definitely a weekend that none of us will forget anytime soon. Unfortunately this weekends events also brought with them injuries, death, and destruction. I think this is a good time to remind everyone about the "Storms of 2007" that will be organized by Vern Carlson this year. The way this year is going, they may need to make it a 5-DVD box set.

Here's the link:
http://www.stormsof2007.org/

Scott C

 

[David Dildine]

5/6/07 Reports: TX, OK, KS

Mesocyclone in Wood Co., OK crossing the OK/KS border into Barber Co., KS. Shots from 5 mi. W of Hardtner, facing WSW.

 

[Tim Marshall]

MAY 6, 2007 – Target was Clinton, OK. Began the day in Wichita, KS. Dropped southwest and intercepted the rain wrapped mesocyclone that went right over Woodward, OK. Continued dropping south sampling storm after storm. Ended the day watching an outflow dominant storm with elevated mesocyclones west of Granite. TM

 

[Brian Stertz]

Started out in Great Bend KS...dropped south down US-281...great catch BTW Scott in Barber County KS. Excellent positioning !!

Pretty much ditto on what Tim M. said about the sad evolution of the struggling quasi-linear supercells out west and southwest of Mangum (Greer Co.) Had nice dinner in OKC with our chase crew, Terry Schenk, Greg Guise, and David Hoadley. All in all chalk this day up as a solid bust !!

 

[Paul Sherman]

We bagged ourselves the tornado South West of Medicine Lodge from some Kansas mud roads. I don't think we were too far from you, Scott. We were sliding our way out of the path of the hail core in atrocious conditions when we spotted it emerging from the rain behind us. We didn't stop to film as we were pretty worried about getting stuck in the middle of nowhere for the rest of the day, but grabbed a screen grab from video taken by waving the camera wildly backwards out of the van window

 

[Dan Robinson]

Targeted Elk City Sunday, and spent the afternoon watching shelf clouds and nice distant lighting in western Oklahoma south of I-40.

The best show of the day was watching all the wind turbines at Weatherford turn 180 degrees as west-northwesterly outflow from the storms arrived. After that, I spent all night in OKC waiting for the tower lightning show to start. Got two upward strikes and a few non-connecting leaders.

I posted a timelapse clip and a few video grabs here:

http://stormhighway.com/blog/may707a.shtml

 

[John Farley]

For the second time this season, I was able to get great video of a rotating wall cloud that formed almost directly over my location - this time southwest of Woodward, OK. I then followed the meso as it passed just southeast of Woodward, producing a couple short-lived funnels. It is fortunate that no tornado occurred, as it went right over a populated area on the southeast edge of town. As it went over this area, I got video of a white lowering that appeared to be right under the wall cloud and looked like it extended to or near the ground. At the time I thought it could have been a tornado, but it was not - it was either a funnel cloud that did not reach the ground, or a hail shaft that lined up directly with the wall cloud.

I was on this storm from before it was SVR warned; I was headed south from Woodward a little after 1 p.m. and noticed a nice storm to the southwest, so headed west from Sharon. I was a few miles west of there when the rotation began almost overhead, just as the first of the five TOR warnings was issued.

After the storm passed Woodward, it evolved into an HP supercell embedded in a squall line, as it moved up toward Alabaster Caverns State Park. At that point I knew I could not regain position, so headed south hoping for discrete cells, but just got a continuation of the squall line down well beyond Elk City and Sayre. Got into some penny hail, at least, maybe a few larger, near Sayre around 6 p.m.

Here is a picture of the wall cloud and a funnel just south of Woodward:

I will post a full report including a couple video clips as time permits, and will update with the link when it is ready. This day provided some redemption after my tornadoless day Saturday when I managed to chase in the one part of the plains that stayed tornado-free.

 

[Rocky Rascovich]

My third and final day with RJ Evans and Bobby Prentice along with Mike Ratliff in tow.. Upon awakening in Alva around 0830 to a very dark, fearsome sky, I knew this day already had its negatives. Ironically, a TOR was issued not far southwest of town, nothing became of it, we had only briefly torrential rain and perhaps 30mph winds.

We started south and got some flash flooding video east of Mutual, we were commenting on how only a fool would try to cross this road we were on that was sliced by a torrent of debris strewn water, it was a couple to maybe three feet feet deep. Off in the distance, along comes an old pickup with a weathered looking fellow that had seen his days... we thought, no way is he going to try to cross this torrent, but he did, water lapping up on his front bumper, with both Mike, RJ and Bobby videotaping, hoping this would'nt be a real life lesson in the hazards of crossing washed out roads. Well, he made it and briefly stopped, having a puzzled look on his face..wondering what all the fuss was about... "I've crossed that with it lots worse then that!" he retorted as we politely tried to tell him that what he did wasn't the wisest of things to do. We came across another section of road that was washed out altogether, moments later as we were backing up, there was that old man again, chuckling at us... we did'nt even stay to see if he crossed that or not, I would have been shocked if he did.

Later on, the handwriting was on the models that this would be a much different day then the last two, shear was more of an issue with meridional flow virtually up to the 500mb. level, atmosphere was basically uncapped. The best thing we could hope for was as the OFB from the cells that went from Woodward up to Medicine Lodge would sag south, creating an area of enhanced low level shear.. we were encouraged that skies cleared some and surface flow increased from the SE.

We made our way to the Mangum/Reed area to intercept a cell that was moving NNE out of Childress. There was occasionally an elevated meso with this but overall structure to this wasn't very encouraging. We gradually made our way back east as we officially blew off the chase in search for a good sit down dinner... we came across numerous chasers like Roger and Elke Edwards, Greg Stumpf and Kevin Scharfenburg and of course no chase is complete with out seeing the legendary Shane Adams out and about, also enjoyed seeing Rich and Daphne Thompson and kids.. along with several others. We concluded the night at T Bones in Weatherford, a good place to add to the restaurant thread.. where I enjoyed great food and a couple of glasses of fine wine... what a way to end a chase!!

For years, I have been wanting to chase with Bobby Prentice and RJ Evans and that was finally realized, it was a great time, and very educational... watching the mesonet RJ had was fascinating, especially as the outflow boundary oscillated back and forth west of Mangum as those cells slowly made their way north and east. I've been chasing almost 25 years and I can always learn more... Bobby and RJ are true professionals and a great example of what responsible chasing is all about. Of course to add to the educational experience was RJ's rather *warped* sense of humour... it definitely added a twisted tinge to the experience... I hope you can soon meet Mike Ratliff, he is one heck of a nice guy whose beeen chasing for only a few years now, he has demonstrated a real hunger to know more about severe weather chasing and the responsibilities that go along with it.. I'm sure you'll hear more good things from and about this guy in the years to come. I look forward in chasing with these guys again real soon!

BTW: Its looking more like the May 19th date may be a go for our chaser picnic here at the farm.. look for updates soon.

 

[Sam Barricklow]

Western Oklahoma Chase

see:

http://www.k5kj.net/20070506.htm

 

[Jeremy Ludin]

Joel Wright and I gathered data in Alva and decided to go for the southern storm that was sort of notching and was a little discrete. The storms seemed to line out directly overhead as we booked south. We just couldn't make it into the warm air. So we saw nothing but another nice shelf. Later on that night we encountered a nice hail storm and shot some lightning back to the east. 5-06-07

I should also mention that earlier in the day we drove south on 183 just west of Greensburg. The damage we saw was just unbelievable. I shot video as we were moving, but I almost felt bad for doing so. I really feel for the people who lost everything.

 

[John Farley]

My report is now online at:

www.johnefarley.com/chase50607.htm

 

[Joel Wright]

As Jeremy Ludin said, started out in Kansas and headed south into OK in an attempt to get into the warmer air. Things were looking up as we entered northwest OK north of Woodward. It looked as if the cells in west-central and southwest OK could be good. Unfortunately they quickly became cold looking and very undercut every time we'd approach one. We followed the cell on the southern end of the line for awhile, hoping it would do something. After it was clear it wasn't going to do anything we called it a day.

We did get some pretty nice shots of the sun setting through a developing storm to the west. After getting hailed on in far western OK near Erick, we shot some lightning in the TX panhandle of the storms we just drove through.