6/07/2009 REPORTS: CO/KS/NE/IA

[Mikey Gribble]

We chased the storm that was tornado warned in far northwest missouri. It was moving east north east so I got off the southeast side of the mesocyclone on some dirt roads to get a good view of the base. I swear to god it's perfectly timed. I didn't even figure out what happened until after it was all over. The storm didn't just right turn, it made a 90 degree turn an all of a sudden with no warning at all baseball and some softball hail started thumping. The baseball size was every where. The soft ball size were a litttle more discrete. So we try running south to get out of it. Well I didn't know the storm had turned south and I wasn't watching radar because I was navigating on my mapping software page, so the hail stays the same and actually starts to get worse. We were stuck in baseball hail for at solid 10-15 minutes befoer we finally pulled in a ladies front yard and hid under a huge tree (she was in the garage and told us we could). My windsheild is beyond smashed. Eric is driving and I'm riding shotgun. I have a baseball that caved in my windshield on my side of the car and he has one towards the bottome of the windshield on his side, so we are going to try to make the drive back to Wichita. The car obviously has some serious battle wounds, not to mention the shattered glass obstructing the keys as I try to type this. I've seen baseball hail a few times and I always took pride in my ability to avoid it, but that streak is over. All the baseball hail I'd seen was sparse. this was plentiful baseball hail just falling everywhere. It was insane. I always though hail guards were over kill, but you'll see one on my car next year. I'm just lucky I didn't have any customers with me. The would have scared the hell out of them. I'll post pictures of the damage tomorrow.

Right as we were trying to get away from the storm a nice rfd notch punched through, but it never llooked like it was going to get the job done. Then I caught another view of the backside of the RFD after the storm cleared us and no tornado, so I don't think it produced. It was low to the ground. I can tell you that it certainly did have some first class hail in it though. I'll post some video of it on my website tomorrow too.

 

[Eric Treece]

We opted for one of the lower risk target areas and it paid off pretty well. Actually, the tornado that hit Southlands Mall was within 1/2 a mile of my house! If I would have known that I would have gone to Jim and Nicks for some BBQ and waited it out right there, but as it was we were headed originally toward Stockton, KS area when the 1630 Outlook had an increase tornado threat in CO. There had been some nice towers going up in Adams County and I looked at a few more details and then opted out of the KS target and headed toward Last Chance. While in Last Chance Tami and I met up with Joe Spencer and Eric Hurst. They kept getting phone calls from a number of their friends with reports of funnels and tornados in the Denver Metro. We pondered our options and decided to chase what was available and coming to us. We intercepted near Deer Trail and the resulting photographs are what we caught. All in all a fun back yard chase!

Tornado near Kiowa-Bennett Road south of Bennett CO as seen from Deer Trail.

Tornado roping out.

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

Somewhat disappointing given I had high expectations today (filming Tornadoes). Chased both the W and the E storm, the first one never really looked real great, always kind of cold looking. The highlight was the HUGE (softball and maybe a few larger) stones SW of Rulo near Oregon. The East storm tried to get it done with strong RFD's near Maysville, but just couldn't ever get it done. Weak SFC inflow appeared to me to be todays limiting factor, those updrafts certainly had the strength and deep layer shear; pictures later as I'm still on the road considering intercepting this storm to my SW....

 

[Jim Saueressig]

I had no real expectations since I was unable to go out real far today but the storm shelf rolling in at sunset gave me a few nice structure shots. Other than wind around 60MPH it was a non event.

 

[Mikey Gribble]

Somewhat disappointing given I had high expectations today (filming Tornadoes). Chased both the W and the E storm, the first one never really looked real great, always kind of cold looking. The highlight was the HUGE (softball and maybe a few larger) stones SW of Rulo near Oregon. The East storm tried to get it done with strong RFD's near Maysville, but just couldn't ever get it done. Weak SFC inflow appeared to me to be todays limiting factor, those updrafts certainly had the strength and deep layer shear; pictures later as I'm still on the road considering intercepting this storm to my SW....

The "HUGE hail highlight" was what beat the hell out of my car over by Oregon and northwest of there a little way. I called in the report and it looks like they recorded it. I only said it was basball, but there was some quite a bit bigger than that in there. I wanted to get out and grab one so bad, but it was coming down hard. It wasn't just the here a stone there a stone hail. This was the real deal. I've never been in anything like that. I sucked. At the same time it was pretty cool to see the damage those storms can do. That hail was gigantic and almost covering the ground in places. Good day except the the beating I took. I called in my report of baseballs two miles north of oregon if I remember right.

 

[Jason McKittrick]

Pretty much same story as Dustin. Saw some great structure/ wall clouds, some rotation but never saw any serious attempt to drop a funnel. Highlight has to be the drive through Oregon only minutes after a catastrophic hall storm. Many, many golf ball to tennis ball sized stones on the ground a few here and there that were perhaps 3.5 to 4" in diameter. That is the most hail of that size I have ever seen on the ground.

Just started thinking there's probably no one at home to read these posts tonight considering all the chasers we saw on today's storms. At one point local police even closed the main intersection in Maysville to let the circus pass. And for everyone who made today's trip from the Denver area you have my condolences, that was a waste of gas.

The above image was taken of the west storm about 15 miles SW of Pawnee City, Ne.

This was the wall cloud About 5 Miles E of Maysville, Mo. on the eastern storm, some rotation was visible with this wall cloud.

 

[Brian Stertz]

Just back from a fun but NO tornado chase day. Got into some seriously gargantuan hail in the Forest City MO area (Holt Co.). Hail was well over 3" in diameter with the occasional softball hailstone zipping down around us. Only two confirmed car impacts both sounded to be baseball hailstones. Watched cycle after cycle of spin up and gust out....all the way to I-35. Tried to find the grapefruit hailbombs near Gallatin MO after the hailcore skirted by....but that hail search was unsuccessful. Took off back to KC and now learned that a tornado did some damage south of Gallatin. Must have been the boundary that the first supercell laid down. That and maybe the LLJ kicked in. Hmmmm. All in all a good chase but still more or less on the tornado schneid for 2009. Hopefully this can change before summer death ridge sets in for good.

 

[Matthew Crowther]

Saw the same supercells as everyone else in NE and KS, but did get a few nice images.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Man, the storm over Oregon MO had some amazing structure on the backside as it was smashing the Earth below with monster stones. Pissed I didn't stop and shoot more stills, only got some while driving. Reminded me a bit of the Attica storm pictures 2004 after it was east of there, just a smooth saucer. Thankfully the stones were pretty sporadic as I was going through. Sort of. You could see the monsters ripping down. Outlaw chasers were ahead of me with their little truck with the camper shell. Even back in my car I could hear two different times huge stones nailing that thing. That is the other annoying thing, that I never stopped and picked any up. I've never seen hail that big. Sort of stupid to not stop and grab some then, since finding tornadoes is apparently easier than 3-4 inch hail. Looks like some chasers aren't too lucky losing their back windows. I don't know how I never got a crack. Kept seeing them streaking down thinking this is going to suck when one finally gets the car.

 

[Simon Brewer]

Juston Drake and I measured a 5.25 inch diameter hail stone in Oregon,MO. We grabbed and measured the largest stone closest to the car, because they were still falling! It looked like some other stones in the vicinity were possibly larger! This hail stone is largest I've personally measured, so that makes me pretty happy!

Wish we would have hung out in Oregon and tried to find some larger hail stones, but we were under the impression the supercell might eventually produce a tornado.

Simon

 

[Mikey Gribble]

How am I the only one of everybody on here that got the hell beat out of my car if you guys were all in Oregon too?Seriously. Simon where were you hiding? I posted my windshield pictures. Here is the link http://www.loadedgunchasing.com/

I will post video and more pictures of the damage to the outside. It is nice to hear somebody confirm that there was baseball and softall hail in there because I called it in and I figured I'd post it on here and somebody would call bs. That hail was huge and obviously several people know exactly what I'm talking about. It sounds like I'm the only one that couldn't find a tree to hide under.

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

Bagged a brief needle/rope tornado (which DMX stated was a landspout and subsequently didn't TOR the storm) 3 miles southwest of Anita, IA near Adair in Cass County. It made a neat twist in the air and descended to around halfway to the ground before becoming pencil-thin and slightly translucent, which may point to a landspout after all as well as an unnoticed foot sticking firmly in my mouth. As to not bring pontification to the table during the description of a chase done in honor of a fallen friend, I'll just briefly mention that the state of Iowa's decision to suddenly close the Waukee exit northbound from I-80 with an unannounced total blockade, ten miles up a road and right before any means of a detour, could have put me in grave danger had the timing of this supercell been different. Iowa does not deserve my dollars for taxation, and their construction guidelines ought to be changed by our shameful state government.

Either way, it was a tornado, my first on a solo chase - one that should not have been solo. This one's dedicated to you, Fabs.

 

[Jeremy Ludin]

Joel Wright and I were on the same cell as pretty much every one else here was following. Instead of springing for the cell to the north, we opted to hang with the one just to its southeast after seeing a small couplet. Glad we did. It would obviously eventually turn into a classic flying eagle with broad rotation. We positioned east of it just as it took the hard right turn. We proceeded to shoot east until we hit the MO river, where obviously we were land locked and had no other option but to watch it drift off to the east. This is where we encountered baseball to softball size hail just as it really started to crank. Amazingly we avoided getting "dinged" by the hail, but we did get some great video of 6' splashes into the river and got a stone as least softball size crashing onto the ground. Seeing as how we had no other option and the nearest bridge to cross back into MO was 25 miles away to the south, we decided to do it. We eventually caught back up to it but never saw anything too spectacular, other than a very large meso spinning like a top. Why it never produced, we don't know. As far as chaser convergence goes...don't think I'll ever see anything like that again. It was nice, however, to put quite a few faces to the names here on ST. Met a handful of fellow ST chasers while out today.

We ended up getting a room at the Best Western in Cameron, where a new tornado warning basically passed right over top of us. Some strange, crazy winds quickly shifted directions, but obviously didn't experience anything too special. Apparently there as a confirmed large tornado just to our north, but we couldn't make anything out between the constant lightning flashes.

Even though we didn't get a tornado, it was still a decent chase. Congrats to all who bagged today!

I will hopefully have a full account with more pictures and the hail video up shortly on my website.

 

[Adam Lucio]

Mike is not kidding about how amazing that storm looked on the back side. It looked like an atomic explosion as we were heading up from behind it on I-29. We tried to get into some of the gorilla hail but never could quite find where it was lurking. We came in from behind the hook and into the vault and had a really nice view of it for awhile before it got dark and we then again decided to go hail hunting. The rotation areas looked grungy and weak at the time and I was not too concerned about a tornado, we got into the core with but hail was golfball at largest. We kept heading Northeast and was out of position by the time the next cluster of storms went tornado warned. DOH!

All in all it was a great chase, more awesome structure shots. Check out this thing from behind as we were driving south on I-29. WOW!!

Full log with lots more pictures including the vault will be up in a couple of days. I have much to go over as Ive been out here for 3 days and have 1 more tomorrow.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Juston Drake and I measured a 5.25 inch diameter hail stone in Oregon,MO. We grabbed and measured the largest stone closest to the car, because they were still falling! It looked like some other stones in the vicinity were possibly larger! This hail stone is largest I've personally measured, so that makes me pretty happy!

Wish we would have hung out in Oregon and tried to find some larger hail stones, but we were under the impression the supercell might eventually produce a tornado.

Simon

I probably have you on video grabbing those then. I just don't think there were many others getting out to pick up hail at the time lol. I was like, what the hell are they doing! Whoever they were they were over 10 feet from the car grabbing them as I was driving through. Thanks for grabbing and measuring some, as I was really wondering how big some were. It really did look like it was in the process of producing at the time, back at the end of the coil.