5/8/9 REPORTS: KS/OK/MO/AR/TX/IA/IL/TN

[Jennifer Combs]

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[John Diel]

Called out around 4:00 a.m. (local) and made my way to Braman, OK. I was trying to make it South Haven, Ks, to get ahead of the storm front BEFORE it got to Kay County, but was thwarted by a needed coffee stop.

Experienced little to mention. Peak wind Gust at I-35 & US 177 was about 35 mph with moderate rainfall being the heaviest. Stayed out ahead of the sotrm to Ponca City, OK and never saw anything beyond what was reported. All the really severe weather was in Kansas and NE OK then on into Missouri and Arkansas. No first hand reports for that from me!

John Diel

 

[Jason A.C. Brock]

Might want to add Texas to this thread.

Ended up on the Montague County Tx storm after sitting in Marietta Ok. Thx to KAUZ TV-6 Wichita Falls for using our live stream today. Not a real visually impressive storm but it got its act together at dark. Some decent wall clouds at times but storm was very hazy and at times high based. Im not sure I have seen such an impressive radar signature with a storm that visually looked like a high based August thundershower until it got past Ringold. Storm did have an amazing crokscrewing updraft as the 1st tornado warning was issued at dark.

 

[Derek Weston]

Might want to add Iowa.

Intercepted a cell just a bit north of Iowa City, Iowa. Storm wasn't even warned when I left on this short 10 mile chase. . .

Got clipped by the core, up to marble sized hail, nothing to write home about. Nice lightning, thunder... fun little storm. However, as the SW end of the storm came into view, a high rain free base with some scuddish action became noticeable... nothing impressive, but worth watching. Base ends up lowering a bit...fattish/disorganized wall cloud becomes visible... and a nice lowering ensues. Funnel? Maybe... was hard to pickout clear rotation. Certainly becoming surface based. Ends up getting caught from behind by other storms, rains out...

Fun little chase for what I expected to be nothing. Will try to get pictures if I can get them off my phone here.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

Never mind, just forget I said anything.

Huh????? .

 

[Laura Duchesne]

We left Norman after visiting the Vortex 2 crew (thanks to Tim Marshall for letting us have a look at the vehicles and take pics) and headed south on I35 to target north central TX, since instability was just insane there. A supercell developed along a boundary SW of Waco, so we headed down to chase what would become the biggest dominant storm of the day. We got great shots of sunset lit mammatus under the massive anvil. This storm was getting really big, reaching 70,000 feet tall according to the Baron! Unfortunately we missed the Brown county tornado... driving in central TX is a pain in the rear, especially near the Fort Worth area... but we stuck with the storm until around midnight. We attempted at some lightning photos and saw a rotating feature (small skinny wall cloud maybe?) in the dark. We wanted to get into some hail but that attempt failed since it was starting to weaken and the road options were not the greatest.

 

[Aaron Gerhardt]

Went around Iowa today, was my day off so decided what the heck.

Decided to go west at about 1:45pm to catch the storms a little early..some gained a little structure as the cold front came over the IA/NE border, but nothing too interesting.

An embedded cell just west of Marshalltown, IA sported a lowering but nothing much in rotation. Rain wrapped in seconds and the whole line turned into more junk.

Went back towards Cedar Rapids and decided to go south of Iowa City catch the tail end Charlies, had a potentially good cell that formed west of Washington, IA and started to notch a bit...but there wasn't enough push in it to bring anything down...just had broad rotation and outflowed pea to marble sized hail all over me for a couple minutes. It had a good lightning show on tape before I got caught in it.

lightning flash caught in this one as it was barreling towards me

This second storm later garnered a tornado warning at the IA/IL border, but this stuff was fast moving...whatever it formed had to of been up and down quick. Was interesting for being local though.

 

[N. Shaw]

I wasn't planning to chase yesterday, but headed out when the storms fired along I-20 west of Fort Worth. That's too close to home not to go. I ended up on the storm that produced the Brown County tornado.

I had been on the first storm that fired (north of I-20). As that storm started to weaken, it became clear that the southern storm was becoming dominant, so I headed south for an intercept. As the storm started building to the southwest, I was out of position to see anything useful. I didn't want to core-punch because of the hail, so I went around the storm.

By the time I got to where I could see the base I had missed the reported tornado. I had a hard time catching up to the storm due to the road network, and the visibility was also not good. I did see a couple of small funnels around 8:45 p.m., but that was about it. Even though the storm was massive, it was not nearly as picturesque as the Breckenridge storm earlier in the week. Still a fun chase though.

 

[Sam Barricklow]

Poor Visibility

If you're wondering why it was so hazy yesterday, take a look at the following fire and smoke map:

http://www.firedetect.noaa.gov/viewer.htm

The farmers across Mexico and Central America are burning their fields.

Al Moller and I chased a storm that formed just west of I-35 and the Arbuckles. Storm motion was rather chaotic from there south to I-20, with storms splitting, merging and otherwise changing direction. We saw a few mid-level funnels, and a messy, ragged, rain wrapped wall cloud northwest of Ardmore. Heard reports of large hail, but avoided the hail due to a combination of ThreatNet and listening to public service reports from the local police and fire units, which I call "hail detector probes".

I had hoped for a good lightning show, but much of the lightning was in-cloud. When mesocyclones would spin up, zits and in-cloud lightning peaked soon thereafter. It might have been a good day to have been a few miles west of the updraft. Being located east or southeast of the updrafts yesterday was absolutely ineffective for lightning, especially when combined with the Mexican smoke.

The storms did produce extensive in-flow bands / spokes at times.

We also visited the VORTEX 2 media day event, where I got a few photos of the DOWs, and Miss Oklahoma who agreed to pose with several participants. I'll post a few images later today and will add a link from the following page:

http://www.k5kj.net/noframe.htm#Events

 

[Brian Emfinger]

I was hoping a storm would form in vicinity of outflow boundary in E/SE OK but it clouded up pretty good as the day wore on and of course the cap was too strong... I wasnt too optimistic but I didnt want to go to Texas. After giving up that hope compleltely I ended up heading west to check out the storms firing on the front NW of McAlester. They never could do anything and I started towards the storms in S Central OK as soon as I saw them taking off. I got about halfway there when I decided that the storm motions and environment (moving into Texas and non-isolated storms) didnt warrant me ending up that far away. I also figured storms would begin to increase further NE along the front in ECental Oklahoma. I had just turned around when the storms began to slowly build. I headed up to I-40 and intercepted the severe storm at Henryetta. I chased that storm for a while then I raced east to intercept the storms moving down from Muskogee. I got to the tornado warned storm near Spiro but there wasnt a lot to see as it was wrapped up and it was gusting out.

http://www.realclearwx.com/images/2009/05080902.jpg < Henryetta Storm

http://www.realclearwx.com/images/2009/05080905.jpg < Looking N at Tornado Warned Storm

http://www.realclearwx.com/images/2009/05080906.jpg < Lightning

 

[Chris Kridler]

My experience was similar to others. I ended up in Bowie, Texas, looking north at the gorgeous Red River cell that was tornado-warned after dark. It offered gorgeous sunset photo opportunities. Here's the link to report and photos:
http://skydiary.com/gallery/chase2009/050809/

 

[Ryan Wichman]

Chased SE Iowa yesterday with J. Risley. I have to admit that I was not THAT excited about yesterday's setup. Moisture was lacking and there was nearly unidirectional shear through the atmosphere made me very weary of driving so far for a shelf cloud.

Arrived north of Ottumwa, IA near 5pm to find low topped cells with decent looking structure (much better then I thought we would see based on radar returns). Storm went outflow dominated fast. Jesse noticed on radar a cell to the south which looked like it might merge in about an hour, so we kept chasing to see what would happen. Sure enough when the southern storm moved to the back edge of our storm the updraft was rejuvenated and our storm produced a nice wall cloud with a strong inflow tail.

Of course at this point the storm had reached the Mississippi River and we had to jump south to cross at Burlington and then race back north to catch back up with the storm. A 45 mile detour. Needless to say the instant we had to take the detour the storm produced reports of a tornado on the ground just east of the river. By the time we caught back up with the storm in Monmouth, IL we had lost nearly all light but could still tell the storm had a nice wall cloud with some CG strikes. Shortly after we caught back up with the storm it petered out, which was expected after the loss of diurnal heating.


A few notes of interest about this storm.....

The quasi-merger with the storm to the south appeared visually to help the storm gain back stronger rotation at the lower levels. I do not think this act alone worked to produce the tornado/funnels which eventually came out of the storm. Rather there was some sort of interaction with the river. DPs just to the east of the river (with strong westerly winds) were running in the lower 60's, while DPs just to the west were in the low to mid 50's. The storm appeared to really gain strength and rotation as it passed the river, the storm also had reported 1" hail to the east of the river, where as no larger than pea size hail was reported to the west. When the storm moved away from the river, it never seemed to have the same strength/rotation with it.

Overall GREAT Chase for no naders

 

[Nathan Edwards]

I chased the Montague and Nocona storms last night in NC Texas. The First storm had a great updraft at sunset, but never really seemed to get it's act together as far as wall clouds went. The second storm I jumped on after night north of Nocona. I positioned myself SSE of the storm on 103. It had a very low base to my north east, but and western side, it started to wrap up a new circulation which quickly produced a wall loud and prossible cone funnel. I couldn't see rotation in it due it only being illuminated by lightning, but it was persistant for 3 or 4 minutes before the RFD wrapped around it.

I pulled over to report this development, but unfortunately, picked a terrible place to stop and got stuck in mud. As the storm took a sharp right turn, I got some very strong winds from the north as the storm passed just east of me. I'd like to thank the Kris Hair for arranging recovery for me from this mud even though it eventually wasn't required, and the 2 spotters who did pull over and gave me a push out of the mud, probably getting a covering in the process. I didn't take any names, but you guys rock! I realise that whilst it is important to get these reports in ASAP, it's probably not worth putting yourself into a dangerous situation to do so.

 

[Simon Brewer]

Jim Bishop, Anna Morrell, and I documented a high-based supercell northwest of Strawn, TX or near Caddo, TX west of Mineral Wells, TX. We targeted a NE-SW oriented surface trough along and south of the Red River. Cells fired in the late afternoon and we intercepted a monster updraft (60,000+ foot echo tops on radar) west of Mineral Wells, TX. We positioned southeast of the updraft, because updrafts of that magnitude commonly produce rediculously-large hail. A rope funnel developed under a high base northwest of Strawn, TX, but from our location there were no visible signs of a surface circulation. Eventually, the storm had issues with the CAP and a large developing cluster of cells to its south.

We dropped southwest on a monster supercell near Rising Star, TX. We decided to avoid plowing through the core on 183 north of Brownwood, TX, so we searched for hail (documented 2 inch diameter hail north of Brownwood,, which had signs of significant melting). We took many photos of the updraft and anvil as the sunset to our west.

Simon

 

[Jane Herbert]

We (Clyve Herbert & Jane ONeill), Australian stormchasers (Australian Severe Weather Assn) drove SW from Muenster heading for a weak convective line and hoping the cap would soon break. Got as far SW as Post Oak to see some really fantastic updrafts..surprisingly, the main storm at Post Oak appeared to split with the right mover weakening and the apparent left mover eventually evolving into the Nocona supercell. At Post Oak, we encountered 1/2" hail and a very weak funnel on the right split cell, which dissapated rapidly.

We then drove NE to a position near Nocona and viewed a relatively large wallcloud in very poor lighting conditions.

Full report can be found here..

http://www.stormchasers.au.com/usa080509.htm