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

[Kevin Crawmer]

I will keep it short since I am beat and have to get up for work in 3 hours. I met up with Jesse Risely, Brandon Sullivan, and Mike Brady in Hiawatha, KS. We watched those cells for quite a while and followed into MO. We got in the same hail as most everyone else. I think it is more a reflection of the smallness of my brain than the largeness of my cajones, but I ran out and grabbed a few stones. These weren't the smallest that we saw either...just the ones I could grab. I'm 6'2" and that span from pinkie tip to thumb tip is 8". I would say these were slightly bigger than baseballs. What I thought was cool was that there were all shapes too. There were a few huge, perfectly round stones out there. Very cool.

 

[Tyler Burg]

I wasn't even chasing today, I was driving back from my grandfathers funeral in Northern Minnesota when I ran into the dallas center, IA storm. I didn't have a great view of where the "tornado report" was, but I think on the left side of the image is a possible tornado, I was 8 miles south of dallas center, just off i80 looking NNE at 6:28pm and the report was at 6:23 3 miles south of Dallas center.

2323 3 S DALLAS CENTER DALLAS IA 4164 9398 REPORTED AS RAIN WRAPPED BY A SPOTTER (DMX)

So based off that report it looks like that was what was reported as the tornado, if it is or not is a different story. If it's not, still I nice wall cloud out there in front. Best storm I've seen all year and I wasn't chasing

Then later back in Omaha I finally got some nice cg lightning ops. Probably put together a report of all the lightning shots and a few more of the possible tornado.

 

[Eric Carlson]

What a strange day, I woke up to see a tornado outside my bedroom window!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9hDWhPKcr_w/SiwznWqoBXI/AAAAAAAAALA/sDSzXs5KBXc/s1600/vlcsnap-93655.png

Without any maps or radar I jumped in the car and began to chase it. I was able to get just north of it as it roped out.

I then shot east on I-70 after hearing reports of a massive tornado just south. As I was driving the cell to the north developed a funnel and touched down. I caught some very shaky video as it crossed the highway.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9hDWhPKcr_w/Siw0SvwE7jI/AAAAAAAAALI/0pKC9zSfjBk/s1600-h/vlcsnap-96097.png

Pretty crazy! Also fun to note that this was my first true solo chase. Thanks to my brother and dad for giving me info and making it possible!

Video and other stuff on our blog: http://stormchaserco.blogspot.com/2009/06/tornadoes-in-colorado.html

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Nearing the supercell near Oregon MO.

Under it maybe in Oregon MO.

Big hail falling during both.

 

[Doug Mitchell]

Basically on the same 2 storms that everyone and their mother was on today in NE/KS/MO. Jordan Wrecke, Michael Olecki and I got a late jump out of Lawrence today, meandering north towards the NE/KS border. Saw the storm in Pawnee County, NE hook on radar but initially decided to play the storm to the SE in Brown County, Kansas. Storm got its act together slowly and produced a weakly rotating wall cloud.

Ran across the NE/KS border about a dozen times while yelling what state I was in just to piss off everyone then the wall cloud decided to go poop. Made the decision to go after the existing tornado warned cell about 30 miles west. Right as we got to it, ran into some chaser convergence on Highway 75 right as the thing decided to turn into linear crap. Of course, the cell we just left went bonkers so we had to play a game of catchup, ending up in the non-stop chain of chasers flying east out of Falls City over the narrowest bridge in the history of mankind into Missouri where things got interesting. Given that I was tired of being behind a line of slow moving cars and I was doing all my chasing through my iPhone which has crap for data in Nebraska, decided to trust that Andrew Pritchard knew what he was doing by heading SE out of Forest City instead of heading east towards Oregon where many chasers were greeted by baseball sized hail. Our view of the meso was blocked by every single hill and tree in the state of Missouri as we drove down Bob's Road NW of Saint Josephs. Eventually made it out of the bluffs and eventually caught up with the storm just east of Savannah and got onto Highway 6 which had everybody within a 100 mile radius that had a drivers license and a heartbeat on it. While playing leap frog on Highway 6 with what I think was probably close to 1,000 chasing vehicles all racing down a 1-lane highway, we received 2 reports of tornadoes, one near Amity and one near Weatherby. Unless someone produces some sort of media of these tornadoes, I'm going to be very skeptical. The storm at this time, despite exhibiting pretty strong rotation, was fairly high based. I have a very hard time believing that tornadoes occurred but that's just based on my observations. The sun set and we faced the decision to continue east with the storm despite reports the thing was dropping grapefruit sized hail just to our north! :O We stopped off on the side of the highway just west of Gallatin, MO and got a decent little barrage of hail. I ran out of the car and grabbed a few stones which looked to be just slightly bigger than golf ball sized. After that, we called it a day and headed back home.

 

[Scott Weberpal]

same old song and dance

Ended up on both of the Missouri River supercells today - like everyone else. Not much to add other than I was one of the lucky ones that ended up in baseball hail but came out of it without any cracks in my windshield. At sunset I ended up getting a photo of a CG 1/8 mile away from me, and you can see the stepped leaders coming off of trees. I shot it with a 15mm, so the picture really doesn't do it justice as to how close it actually was! Unfortunately it looks like there's a little ghosting to the left of the bolt, but I'm sure I can clean that up in PS.

Actual image how it was shot

Cropped to show the stepped leaders

Northern supercell becoming an LP as it slowly shriveled to nothingness

 

[Daniel Christianson]

Yep. as some stated EVERYONE AND THERE MOTHER was out there in Far SE NE and into MO, im guessing over 100 or more chasers/spotters and small town locals. Played with the storm that died west of Falls City NE, then fueled up and shot over into MO, made a wrong road choice and thus ended to far north. Tried to catch up but from the view we had we knew daylight was running out. Then called it quits. Pics later. Mikey Gribble, im guessing they had that more well constructed glass, with special material built into the windshield called shatterless ? lol... i feel you man... get that fixed ;-)

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

My dad, my sister, and I intercepted the Pawnee City, NE supercell as well as the N Missouri supercell, both had pretty good structure and lots of motion everywhere but couldn't focus the rotation at all. Like most the highlight was seeing that MONSTER hail in Oregon but I didn't even think about taking pics or video because we thought the storm was going to tornado, however we did get into some 1"-2" hail while repositioning and was hoping for the massive hail we saw in Oregon but nope. We did see a large cone funnel looking SW into the notch of the supercell it was lit up beautiful orange before quickly dissipating after about a minute north of Maysville, MO.

Pics here
http://michaelokeeffe.blogspot.com/2009/06/6709-se-nenw-mo-supercells.html

 

[Patrick Martin]

Sunday was a more frustrating than successful considering there were 5 tornado touchdowns in the Denver metro area, none of which I saw. I had been home doing yardwork when I happened to check the 1630 outlook (I'd not been online in 36 hours) and noticed the slight risk, 5% tor probs, and severe box forthcoming. I immediately showered up and got the car ready. Hit the road and fueled up at Costco at hwy 7 and I-25 in Thornton at 12:45pm. I got suckered northeast heading toward what appeared to be an isolated cell forming near I-76. It died just as the Thornton tornado formed at 1:15pm near 144th and I-25 and touched down 5 miles NW of my house and just on the west side of I-25 from my fuel stop. All my neighbors saw it, and there is some great video and pics on the local news, but I totally missed it as I was then returning southbound on I-25 near Dacono. Made my way south and east ultimately seeing a distant funnel cloud over Aurora while near Pena Blvd and Tower Rd. and intercepted a funnel cloud south of Bennett on the north side of the intersection of county road 137 and 30 (looking south).

Total mileage for the day was 220 when 12 would have done the job just fine.

 

[Charles Kuster]

We also chased the same supercell in southeast Nebraska near Pawnee City. It had some good structure, but as everyone else said could never get its act together. I was immediately not happy when I noticed the wind was out of the ENE at Pawnee City, but we stayed with the storm until it fell apart north of Falls City, NE.

At that time, we decided not to cross the Missouri River and moved west towards Seneca, Kansas. More storms fired after dark including one that became tornado warned southeast of town. We moved to Fairview, Kansas, but were unable to see anything interesting. We did experience some 1" hail near Fairview and then strong winds (~55mph) and 3/4" hail in Seneca as another severe thunderstorm moved through the area.

The Colorado tornadoes were somewhat annoying. I have already had people from back home asking why I was not in Denver. All I can say is strange things happen in Colorado! Congrats to all who saw those tornadoes!

 

[Darren Addy]

This thread should have MO added to the subject line, please.

Had a fun day chasing with Ryan McGinnis (bigstormpicture.com) as he accompanied the Vortex 2 team. We were on the tornado-warned storm from when it was south of Ruvo, NE into Missouri and Vortex 2 broke off operations with the approaching dark near Amity, MO where a small couplet did minor damage.

I never saw a funnel at any time, but there was a pronounced wall cloud present and this was a twisty twisty storm. A few samples from the days shots:

V2 bugged out from just west of Forest City just in front of the precip. The following two shots were taken at about the same time that this storm was dropping softballs on Oregon, MO.

 

[J. Sims]

All the storms that popped up around here started just as the sun started going down. Nothing happened here i don't have pics because all the good stuff came through after dark. It must have hailed somewhere nearby I saw a car in the parking lot of the local grocery store with huge hail dents, I saw this car the other day it looked fine then.

 

[cstrunk]

I decided early in the day to stay in Ames until storms fired, then I would most likely drop south on I-35 to intercept, if anything looked interesting. That would have worked about perfectly, except I was hesitant on pulling the trigger on chasing the I-80/Des Moines supercell. I watched it approach and the second I heard the tornado warning, I jumped in the truck with a friend and planned an intercept somewhere in the west/northwest Des Moines area. We made it to I-80 from I-35 and headed west a few miles. We pulled off of the interstate and watched the storm rapidly sweep towards us. I grabbed a couple of pictures as the awesome "hook" of the storm came near. I was really kicking myself for not leaving sooner to get in better position. Had to let the storm overtake us as we searched for an exit to turn around on. We eventually got to one and turned around and blasted east back through it. The storm was still tornado warned with reports of a tornado north of Grimes, so we headed east towards Bondurant to reposition. We hopped on highway 65, which headed northeast. We were able to "parallel" the storm for a while. There were a few spotters/chasers parked along the highway. We pulled over and I took a few more pictures, which do not do it justice. The storm looked pretty powerful. We followed it east for a while before giving up and heading back to Ames. Never ran into any hail or very much wind, but the storm had some pretty good structure. I'll try to post a couple pics later.

Goal before my next chase: BUY A TRIPOD!

 

[Josh Murfield]

We got a late start out of Lincoln, we caught up with the northernmost of the two SE Nebraska storms as it pulled through southern Gage county. We were on it just east of Beatrice as it went SVR warned- from our vantage point this storm had impressive structure, a clear rain-free base, and a long beaver tail stretching out to the east. We are fairly low-tech at this point since we are still noobs, my "anytime" access to radar consists of MyCast weather radar on our cell phone. From what I could see on this low-res radar it appeared this storm had a nice looking hook echo just a few minutes before the TOR warning was issued- we got overly confident at this point.

We stopped just west of Pawnee City and watched the wall cloud try to get its act together- there was a lot of motion, low scud going every which direction, but there didn't appear to be any rotation. We followed the storm east towards Falls City as it fell apart- and we opted not to head across the river to catch the southern storm as it went TOR warned. I was leary of NW Missouri as far as terrain goes, and I was regretting my choice to call off the chase when local radio was reporting an apparent confirmed tornado, but after reading the reports here and elsewhere of chasers getting bombed with softball sized hail I feel better about the choice. We were using the wife's car, she would have killed me if we lost a window or two in a chase!

Here's the wall cloud over Pawnee City, as we saw it from just a couple miles straight west.

 

[Jim Bailey]

That is an awesome shot, Scott!