5/8/08 NOW: KS

[Mikey Gribble]

Yeah but there's also dewpoints in the low 50's. The key for today's tornadoes IMO is the excellent directional shear. You have easterly surface winds, backing 850mb flow, with due westerly at 500. That is almost 180 degrees of turning in the 0-6km layer. Pretty damn impressive. I would kill for directional shear like that on a high instability/good moisture day. I thought the dewpoints would kill any tornado potential today, but that shows you how much I know. It just goes to show you that the saying, "when it's May, chase", is a good rule to go by.

 

[rdale]

If you want an interesting look at radar - download the data from 19-21Z from Goodland. The storm had a large area of rotation well ahead of the precip, even at low levels, but SW was very high. Then as it "ran into" that, plus the storm to its east, it took on a classic look. That look is fading away. Still no spotternet's on it, but a few (including Mike U) on the one near Scott City and none of them have seen anything other than a hail report.

 

[Scott Lincoln]

The low dewpoints might actually be the reason why the storms are not staying together as tornadic supercells for longer. I think that the low dewpoints are allowing the downdrafts to cool too much, yielding too cool of an RFD to support a continued tornado threat or a strong tornado threat. That might also be why the storms are having trouble cycling, and instead just spinning up some good rotation briefly. I think a similar thing happened to the storms in MO/KS last week (except for far southern KS).

 

[rdale]

Lou Ruh is streaming video from the southern KS cell at severestudios.com, that cell looking better as it comes into DDC territory. That one seems to have a better chance of surviving versus the one to its northwest.

 

[Mikey Gribble]

You can tell from velocity the cold pool on the northern storm definitely got the better of it (the inflow notch was overrun with outflow a while ago).
I just saw pictures of the tornadoes on the news. I will try to find them on the internet and post a link. They are what you would expect. Just skinny ropes, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't extremely sorry that I missed them. Apparently one of them lasted 15-20 minutes, which is kind of surprising.

here is the link to some tornado pics http://www.kwch.com/global/story.asp?s=8291836

 

[BrianBaker]

Interesting that if you loop DDC radar that there may be a small boundary in the DCC area extending to the NW toward the storm near Scott City. As the storm has made a SE turn recently it may interact with this potential boundary. Really starting to have a good reflectivity signature now.

 

[Tony Laubach]

Michael Carlson reporting the storm is definitely cycling and has a wet RFD at the moment. No tornadoes since he jumped on after the landspouts lifted earlier. The NW storm has some wheels and looks to crash into the ongoing cell within the next 30-60 minutes.

 

[Dave Kaplow]

I'd say the southern storm has definitely latched on to that boundary, making a right turn in the process. If it can stay out ahead of the cell behind it it may have quite a bit of life yet. Latest radar showng a nice RFD.

 

[Gerard Jebaily]

Yeah i spoke way to soon didnt I ;D

 

[Tony Laubach]

Nothing confirmed on the ground as of this point, but new tornado warning and path tracks aim the area of interest right over Jetmore. Cell looks like it has en eye right now. Wow, what a shocker in SW Kansas.

 

[Andrew Stoller]

That thing is a monster now! The RFD looks like it's totally wrapped up with almost an eye like feature on base reflectivity.

 

[James Langford]

Also noticed that incredible eye! Lou Ruh is on that storm, and has a feed a severe studios. He's staying just out in front of it, and usually has the camera pointed to the south along with his car.

Update: Lou is showing a nice wall cloud/high funnel on the southern storm.

Update 2: Looks to be about ready to put down a funnel any minute now. Of course, the feed just went dead too.

 

[Andrew Stoller]

It was close. I saw it before it went dead. Was 3/4s to the ground - big cone. 5 degree higher dewpoints and that would have been a wedge!

 

[Dave Kaplow]

Also noticed that incredible eye! Lou Ruh is on that storm, and has a feed a severe studios. He's staying just out in front of it, and usually has the camera pointed to the south along with his car.

Update: Lou is showing a nice wall cloud/high funnel on the southern storm.

I haven't been able to get his feed to work for me for more than a few seconds all day. Right now it's showing "no stream" but right before that there was a brief sequence where the camera panned to the left and showed what looked like either a big funnel or a tornado, or possibly just a wall cloud. It didn't even look all that high based to me but I only got a glimpse for about less than a second so it's kinda hard to tell what I was seeing. Definitely looked intriguing, though.

Edit: OK, I'll go with tornado, that was my first impression. Looked pretty big, too.

 

[Andrew Stoller]

He's back up. Showing two HUGE mesos - looks like a new one is forming to the east of the occluded one.

:edit: wall cloud starting to condense under the new meso. Ever so slight rotation. At least all 7 seconds I saw!

Storm looks to be moving into mid 50 to high 50 degree dewpoint air. That should help.