5/6/10 REPORTS: CO/KS/NE/TX

[Ryan McGinnis]

Chased today documenting Vortex 2 in western Kansas. Caught the wee supercellish storm north of Oberlin, KS. Didn't look very pretty (you'd need a rocket ship to get to the base of that thing), and was falling apart when V2 got to it. It spat out some small hail, but that was about it.

The Vortex 2 crew used it more as a "practice" storm, sort of like a supercell with training wheels. The probe teams deployed as if there was a wedge bearing down on them and the radars set up to scan. One of the DOWs seemed to have some technical troubles, but then that's why they practice. I'll post pics later when I get them downloaded.

 

[J Holder]

When the Morris county storm got tornado warned I rolled out and went South to get a good look at it since it was on a collision course with Osage City. Once it hit the county line it started to peter out and by the time it hit Osage City you could see stars.

 

[Mike Peregrine]

I made a couple of bad calls attempting to intercept the Morris County storm. Wish I would have noticed the turn and split on radar earlier than I did, as I ended up in the left split picking up the scraps from the primary storm. Held back, as there was no way to keep up and got some lightning pics instead, which didn't turn out as I had hoped ...

Jon is right ... the stars were beautiful behind the storm, and it ended up being sort of a magical night out there on a dirt road in the Flint Hills, lightning dancing all around, pleasant breeze ... beautiful!

 

[Paul Sherman]

Sat in Mcpherson and watched the Supercell that rode the Warm Front literally form over our heads. Tracked this east all the way towards just North of Emporia and witnessed the very very brief Hope Tornado

Some Pics of this amazing Supercell!

Paul S

 

[J. Sims]

My night last night was stressful. This was the first time I had to live through a tornado warning in over 10 years. I live in Council Grove in Morris County. I was on ST Chat at the time the Tornado Warning went out. At first it said it would go northeast of Council Grove it did not it followed Highway 56 which is main street.

I have some pics of some storm popping up about an hour before the big storm hit. Which I can't post till my computer is fixed. And some pics and video of the hail and lightning. I am doing a horrible job summing this up.

 

[Tony Laubach]

I think I nabbed the only daytime storms of the day along the KS/NE border around Herndon. The first severe-warned storm crossed the highway to my north beating me by a few minutes. I abandoned it and waited for the second storm that spat out a few 1-inchers, but nothing much else of note. Was bcak home in Denver before midnight and was greeted by snow at my apartment when I arrived.

 

[Daniel Christianson]

Well took a chance, i got off work hauled south on Hwy 50 south of Louisville NE and hit construction and farm machinery along the way. Ended up at the Mc Donalds in Fairbury NE and got a flat. I changed it and figured since a watch was issued for parts of KS and NE till 2am and i was already down there i planned to stay. Took Hwy 136 to Deshler NE, and let the what used to be a supercell roll in. The most impressive was the lightning, however the drive home was just rain, and rain and great tunes on the radio i could sing to to stay awake lol. Will post some vid caps sooner or later. All and all take what you get right....

 

[Jim Saueressig]

My story was like the others, some clouds that just couldn't get the job done then lots of lightning.

I wasn't expecting a lot so I headed to Osage City to see what would happen figuring there would be some after dark lightning if nothing else.

This was a layer of clouds South of where the action ended up being, Nice rays:



The cell everyone was following out of Emporia West of Osage City at sunset:



The radar from 10:53 on the cell that had produced the tornado that was wandering East on Hwy 56.



Which I decided to shoot from the Osage / Lyon County line from just about a mile from the South edge of the cell facing the hook structure for a capture as it moved East towards me. This first picture was about a minute off of that radar capture (these are shot at 10mm so they are much closer and larger than it appears:




A little closer, the lightning was quite intense as others mentioned:



It had a nice base and structure but it was pretty high, lightning had already been overhead for a while now:



I headed back to the East as the this moved overhead. It was dropping mostly nickle to a few quarter sized hail at this point before it got to Osage City, same hail story at Lyndon as I was headed back South.

I would have liked to capture this in the day but I can't complain as it is better than anything else I have captured this season so far.

 

[Vicky Redwood]

My target from a couple of days out was Salina/Junction City area and drove there from Papillion, NE. Got in position nice and early knowing it was going to be a late show if any - whilst sat in Junction City I could see some cells starting to my south and got lured away by higher dew points. After an off-road detour due to a not so clever shortcut I came out in Emporia to see this storm not really doing much and seeing on GR3 a cell had popped south of Salina. Looking west as I drove north I could see the storm backlit by the setting sun and it was gorgeous. You could see the silhouette of the cloud with a huge tower/updraft at the rear with stars overhead, I wish I'd stopped to photograph it now. Very annoyed with myself at this point so after deciding the Emporia one wasn't going to do anything I drove back to the other storm in a more direct route that didn't involve gravel or cows!

I was speaking with Tyler C about meeting up but he was a bit ahead of me. He informed me they were talking about very large hail on this storm which was understandable looking at the core on radar. I was going west along I-70 and the lightning was pretty intense, I stopped at Alma to plan next steps, and was thinking about going south on 99 at Alma but with my timing I probably would have met with the hail, as I was sat comtemplating the hook developed and it went tornado warned so I decided to stay put and watch the storm come to me.

Chasing on my own this time was really good, I just wish I'd stuck it out with my original target area then I would have been in a better position on the storm to get some good pictures as I bet if it had been during the afternoon it would have been beautiful. Lesson learnt!

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Apparently can't edit my previous post, so I'm posting this down here. Mods have mercy on my soul! (And feel free to delete the first post in this thread, if you like. Really wish I could edit it, dunno why the edit button isn't showing up, unless the button is time-limited).

Chased today documenting Vortex 2 in western Kansas. Caught the wee supercellish storm north of Oberlin, KS. Didn't look very pretty (you'd need a rocket ship to get to the base of that thing), and was falling apart when V2 got to it. It spat out some small hail, but that was about it.

The Vortex 2 crew used it more as a "practice" storm, sort of like a supercell with training wheels. The probe teams deployed as if there was a wedge bearing down on them and the radars set up to scan. One of the DOWs seemed to have some technical troubles, but then that's why they practice.


Sean Casey reunites with the Vortex 2 team


Tim Marshall and another V2 member (need to get his name) lay down a practice probe during the high-based Oberlin storm.




DOW 6 and DOW 7 are now sporting dual polarization radar dishes.


On the way back home, ran into this hail covering the ground near the Nebraska / Kansas border. These storms were prolific hailers.

 

[Dennis Oswald]

Intercepted the Salina,KS storm.
Blog is usually in German. Here is the translated link: http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http://www.dennisoswald.de/blog/?p=80

 

[Chad Cowan]

Watched the tiny LP supercell form near Lyndon then followed it towards Topeka in hopes of getting some lightning/stars combinations. Not so much. THIS is a two minute exposure of that storm looking north... note the laminar base on the left with the updraft sheared wayyyy over. I guess that's what you get with 60kts of bulk shear and marginal elevated instability. It did produce some lightning (a decent bolt every 3-4 minutes; managed to miss all of them) which is somewhat surprising given how sheared over the tower was. I can't imagine there would be much charge separation with the precip falling almost perpendicular to the updraft flow.

Saw the monster to the southwest and eventually made my way south of it, west of Ottawa. The structure as I was driving towards it was incredible, but got elevated behind its gust front as I got close. Still had some great cloud-to-cloud but I was a little too late for the structure.

I have a few other pictures on my website: http://www.chasethestorms.com

The "updraft" on the right in this picture, or what remains of it, was the first blip on radar, north of Emporia: