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

[Melanie Metz]

Peggy and I had a great time chasing! We started in Marysville, KS catching up with some chasers we haven't seen for a while and meeting some new faces! It was so much fun. Great to chat with all of you out there!

When the MD went up we waited a bit and had some lunch at Subway, anticipating a great chase ahead! And sure enough it was. We ended up chasing both beautiful supercells only to end up with all other chasers in the area as the sun went down. We stayed with the first cell until the SE cell took over and we had to cross the river (along with 100's of others). Then we ended up on the one East option that went with the track of the storm. We stayed immediately ESE of the cell. We did see a couple wall clouds and possible funnels but didn't witness the brief "rain-wrapped" touchdown reported. It was interesting how there was a well developed wall cloud... and then a funnel in the rain we captured near the time the touchdown was reported.

It was a perfect chase... minus the tornado. We had a blast! Wonderful first chase of 2009! Here are a few photos. More to come on our website.

Melanie

 

[Matt Gingery]

The day really took off early as Brian Hurst and I chased with Bart Comstock into Nebraska starting in Kansas. We hung out in Hiawatha, Kansas when the first cell popped near Pawnee City, NE. We were off and running and set up perfectly on a cell that did everything but touchdown. We gave up on that cell and a new larger more dominant cell developed near Fall City, NE. and that was the cell we ended the day with. Running into V2 and a host of those who lost windshields in this one. Hail to the size of baseballs was pretty common. We managed to avoid most of the large hail, but Brian Hurst and I did get hung up in some hail over 1" in diameter as we crossed the river. Of course we ran into alot of chaser traffic and gawkers following the T.I.V's. If you were stuck on HWY 6 in Davies County you know what I am elaborating to. I have attached some videos of our experience with some very impressive updrafts and precip. At one point we were barely ahead of a sheriff reported rain wrapped nader in Davies County. It was a well executed chase and we were in alot of hairy situations. I think one of the V2 guys got on the HAM saying " So, this would be considered being in the Bears Cage". And we were.


Videos:

Core Punch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmYSPBf-ucA

Updraft Fall City Cell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvOb1RCVdgI

T.I.V.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a35xEduDfGI

 

[Bill Doms]

Finally have my images done and a short video of the day. Everything is from the south cell from west of Hiawatha, KS to east of Altamont, MO.

WEB PAGE HERE

The video capture below is looking southeast towards Amity, MO from Glenwood Drive at the time of the reported "rain wrapped tornado". Sure looks like nothing more than a RFD plume to me. The video of this feature can be seen at the 1:54 mark on the website.

 

[Jeremy Ludin]

Finally finished up my chase report from last Sunday HERE.

 

[Kurt Hulst]

My full report for this day is complete you can find it on my blog at midwestchasers.com


Here are a few images from the day.

Near Seneca, KS.

This is a video grab of an occluded funnel near Oregon.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

We collected data on the intensifying, non-tornadic (at least at the time of scanning) supercell scanned the west . The supercell took a right turn that eventually brought the mesocyclone over the deployment location. Eward advancing precip at south end of hook echo noted ~1-2 km to our south. We waited as long as possible in an attempt to catch tornadogenesis, but that never came. We experienced hail of approximately baseball size in Forest City, and hail larger than baseballs in Oregon. I vividly remember at least two hailstones on the lawns of two houses in Oregon that are certainly the largest hailstones I have ever seen; I would not be surprised if these stones were larger than 4.25" in diameter. Simon (per a report on here!) measured a 5.25" diameter hailstone in Oregon, and there are several accounts by other chasers in and around Oregon of hail well beyond baseball size. Unfortunately, being on the very north side of the meso, I was not concentrating much on collecting hail, as we were trying to make a hasty exit from under the storm. The only thing I can say with relative certainty is that the stones were at least as large as 3.5" in diameter, though I expect that a few stones were as large as, or exceeded, 6" in diameter. We did take some scans as were driving under the north side of the meso, with the hook echo to our immediate south. This should be a very good polarimetric case of a largely non-tornadic, significant supercell that produced gargantuan hail.

We moved eastward to get back out ahead of the supercell to deploy again. We didn't find a terribly good deployment spot, with a tall gas station sign to our N, and a set of trees to our W. However, it was the best we could find in the area. Apparently, at least one or two tornadoes were reported to our WNW, though the first (near Amity) likely occurred before we began data collection. We noted several low-level, rain-wrapped meso occlussions with the storm was it moved to our NW through NE (e.g. Image 3), and it should have been in a dual-Doppler lobe with at least one other Xband radar. Extremely large hail (4.0") was reported to our NE during our deployment, and there were several other reports of >2" hail throughout the deployment time. New convection developed after we undeployed, and a large tornado was reported to have caused damage ~10 km S through E of our deployment location approximately 45 minutes after we left the location (approximately 90 minutes after we ended data collection). We repositioned the truck slightly to the east (~100-150 feet) so we could scan to the ENE - NE without significant beam blockage issues.


Intensifying supercell to our west when we were deployed on the southwest side of Forest City, MO:

The structure of the north side of the mesocyclone reminded me a lot of the 5/12/04 Attica tornadic supercell. Extraordinarily large hail was falling near this time. I maintain that some stones were larger than 5" in diameter, but we were too hurried to get out of the hail to stop and measure:

 

[Mikey Gribble]

I finally got a short video clip up of the monster hail near Oregon, Missouri that we accidentally got stuck in. The car really faired pretty well given what we went through. The roof on the Xterra is some pretty solid stuff. It has to be like 12ga steel, but it has dents that flattened out the ridges up there. It was awesome to see hail as big as softballs, but I never want to be in a situation like that again unless it's in a vehicle built for it.

There also isn't much video because once the baseballs started falling I layed the camera down in my lap and concentrated on the map and trying to navigate our way out of that mess (Eric was driving). I did get a couple shots though. The only one that really shows how big the hail actually is is when I turn around in the road. Watch the hail laying in the green grass on the side of the road as we start to accelerate again. You can clearly see a cluster of baseball hail at that point. In hindsight I wish I would have been filming the event, but I was a little more concerned with saving my car at the time. Here is a link to the video clip and then there is also a link next to the video that has a few more pictures I took of the car the next day.
Here is the link. Just scroll down a tad and you'll see the video http://www.loadedgunchasing.com/

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

http://www.extremeinstability.com/09-6-7.htm

Finally got around to doing the account.

 

[Brian Stertz]

Like Mike H. ...I am tardy with posting my chase account from June 7th. This is one I consider my best chase to date for 2009. Not that I saw any tornadoes, but it's not too often that one survives a trip through "hail wonderland" and does not get beaned with a 5" + hailbomb. I am still mystified that we did not get whalloped. Have a good number of pics on this chase account so enjoy. I tried to capture kind of a chase progression in this complete chase account for June 7th...a chase where I was joined by Rich & Ryan Thies. Also briefly saw my good friends Jeff and Kathryn Piotrowski and Scott Currens....and also met up with Matt Gingery before the action got going up in SE Nebraska. The chase pretty much concluded at dark on I-35.

http://vortex-times.com/67chase1.htm