6/11/08 REPORTS: IA/NE/KS

[Damon Scott Hynes]

Left Omaha and drove between Missouri Valley, IA and Blair, NE before heading north to between Mondamin and Little Sioux. I knew the storm west of Little Sioux looked tough but I lost any contrast and since I didn't want to get cored I bugged out to the south.

Tried the same thing at Loveland, IA, ran into Mike H., and bugged out again. Tough night to chase, I was E/SE/S of two mesos and didn't see a thing, just as they'd wrap up the rain would come in.

Then headed toward home, while the storms that came from Lincoln/Greenwood/Ashland/Cedar Creek headed toward my house in Springfield. If there were any tornadoes between Plattsmouth and Offutt AFB, they were on the leading edge of the squall line, I saw some small convergences and funnels before the deluge.

The deal at the scout camp just ruined my whole night.

 

[Tim Marshall]

SHORT: Gene Rhoden and I had a wild day in northern KS tracking supercells. We had a tornado pass just south of us in Salina, KS.

LONG: Target was Beloit, KS. Gene and I left our hotel in Salina, KS this morning and headed north into Nebraska. We stopped and ate lunch at the SUBWAY in Hebron, NE where we met Jon Davies and others. Gene and I continued to watch the radar all afternoon. We saw lots of closely packed storms fire in eastern NE and race off to the northeast into Iowa, so we decided to head back south into Kansas. We intercepted the lead storm (Storm #1) which tracked from south of Beloit to north of Minneapolis to north of Miltonvale. This was a classic supercell with large ragged wall cloud that rotated, but could never tighten up, Gene noted the cloud base was a bit high. Storm #1 did have nice striations on the east side of the updraft but the storm began to die northeast of Miltonvale, so we dropped southwest to the tail-end charlie cell heading northeast out of the Great Bend, KS area. We avoided the Ellsworth, KS storm (Storm #2) in order to meet up with the Great Bend, KS storm (Storm #3) southwest of Assaria, KS. This was an HP storm by the time we arrived on it with beautiful striations on the east side of the updraft and overturning convection above. The storm weakened as it approached Salina, KS. Meanwhile, another supercell approached Salina (Storm #4). It was dark by this time. However, we could see a well-defined hook on radar so we stayed just north of the hook and sought refuge from possible hail under a canopy at the Sam's Club on the south side of town. We first encountered gusty winds from the northeast that switched suddenly to the southwest followed by sporadic hail up to quarter size. The wall cloud passed just to our south. Suddenly we encountered atomized rain followed by strong winds from the south. Then the electric power went out and sporadic power flashes occurred to our south. A quick survey revealed that an apparent tornado had passed just to our south knocking down power poles and reportedly damaging a nursing home. This storm continued east-northeast toward Manhattan, KS. We kept hearing reports of damage along this path. TM

 

[Gene Moore]

Adding to Tim's report, Oliver (Klipsi) and I watched the tornado move through Manhatten KS from #177. When I first saw the tornado I could see it in the darkness without lightning. It grew to a wedge appearance then the front side became obscured, but the back was visible as a sharp 45 degree angle. There were numerous green power flashes. Tried to get some video captures but not sure if I was successful, Oliver got some shots in the lightning and one where it narrowed to a wide trunk. It continued on to the north and I lost sight of it about 10 NE of town. At one time it lifted and appeared as a very wide bulbous lowering, so the damage path may not be continuous across town.

gm

 

[Josh Murfield]

Due to work, we got a late start once again from Lincoln. Just headed out shortly before the Wahoo tornado- decided not to go after it as there were somewhat discreet cells starting to build up to the southwest. Sat just a few miles west of Highway 77 just south of Lincoln as the first cell around the Crete area got its act together and went TOR warned. We were perfectly located with a high contract wall cloud that persisted for at least 15 minutes that we could see- sometimes looking really healthy and then falling apart, only to come back together strongly a few minutes later. Saw a few weak funnels try to form but they didn't last. This cell was a beast at this point, though I guess I'm glad it didn't actually produce because at this point it was hitting Lincoln head on.
We opted not to try to follow this storm as it moved east of Lincoln, which was a huge mistake as it of course did produce a tornado farther east in Greenwood. We stayed south of Lincoln bouncing between a couple of other TOR warned cells as they moved into southern Lancaster county- saw plenty of rotation in these, brief wall clouds but no tornadoes. Not a bad night for not even leaving the county, I guess.

 

[edward oneal]

6/11/08 Kansas

Chased today from Rush Center to Great Bend KS saw wall clouds a spin up under strong rotation in the cloud base just west of Great Bend. Was also cut off from seeing what was reported as a tornado from wet RFD two times. Great chase anyway,here are my pictures.

 

[Daniel Christianson]

Chased the stuff in Douglas, Washington, Sarpy, Cass, Dodge and Saunders Co NE. Headed north out of Bennington on 156th St then took Dutch Hall Rd east and hit a north option. Low hanging clouds in view and alot of scud, i couldnt believe when the tornado warnings were going, that there were all kinds of reports of tornadoes. KFAB, report of this and that.. ok uncomfirmed... just had a report of a tornado 168th and Fort St, 6 m N of Elkhorn NE.. They just kept coming and coming.. anywas ill make it short, played with the stuff then headed on I-680 and headed west stopped on the Gretna Exit to take some pics then just tried to not get gobbled up. Everything got messy south of Louisville NE. Fun day but wish i would of seen a tornado. My prayers go out to the vicitims and family of the camp in Little Sioux. ( MODS ) i did a width of 600, i hope the size is correct if not please LET me know and ill try resizing again.

First storm i saw get going while i was out delivering a cart. looking west from 156th and Blondo.

Panoram Shots, looking NW from Washington/Douglas County NE line

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

The boyscout deal really sucks. Storms had a terrible time producing tornadoes, but then that one manages just fine when there are a bunch of kids in the path. I was at that camp/area just last year while tracking down photo ops on the GPS, since there are a couple lakes right there(man made I think). I seem to recall some sturdy buildings around, but maybe they were in those and those are gone now, I don't know. I just hope they(those in charge) took things seriously, for their sake. I mean you have a tornado watch and storms around well before that happened and I think 12 minutes warning. Sounds like they were out on a hike when it hit. This at what, 2 and a half hours after a tornado watch is issued for the area? Storms had fired nearby well before they hit there. Sad deal.

Anyway, I started off by going south to Plattsmouth. Sat there for over an hour, then wound up flying back north. Filled up in Mo Valley, saw the back shearing to the nw and flew up to Onawa. That storm really sucked, regardless of what was being reported by tv at the time. It was really linear when I let it go. There was another one just sw of it(this one hit the camp), then a third main cell that went through Wahoo. I wanted that southern one the most, so I dropped back south down I29. Half way down I stop at the Little Sioux exit to look at the middle storm, since it caught my eye with a big big lowering on the north side of the updraft. It looked like it was wanting to put down a large tornado. That then weakened, and things just looked REALLY linear.

I then dropped south to catch the next one, as it all began looking like a big line. I wish I had sat there at the Little Sioux exit and watched how that unfolded. I wound up just sw of Missouri Valley, not wanting to drive back into NE and mess around east of the hills on highway 75. What I watched here was pretty cool. You had the sw-ne line, then you had this very round rfd curl under a big updraft at the south end of the line. As it approached it slowly tried to pull the line to its ne back sw or west and try to wrap up a tornado. I didn't think it would be able to, but surprisingly, it did(pulled back really well, didn't produce a tornado there). A nub funnel formed, then that weakened, then another one formed with a nice rfd curl north of it. Damon pulled up about this time. I can't believe you walked over to my car there! There were some very close CGs hitting, not to mention the huge funnel maybe 1 mile or less west. Rain wrapped around that thing, blasting our position with strong west winds.

I never saw it touch down, but it was close. I then jumped back on I29, then east on 80. It was nearly impossible to find the ramp to get on 80 east thanks to the driving rain. Looked like a light pole got hit by a CG right by Damon and I as we were on I29. That one was pretty cool. I punched east, thinking the slow moving storm would be easy to get ahead of again. Not sure I've driven in worse wind driven rain. Evidently this storm, and that rfd cutting in, was really wrapping up now. I start to near the back side of the gust front with the thing, and I'd estimate 70-80 mph winds flat out racing north into something. I noticed some tree branches breaking in those winds south of I80 as well as some low to the ground walls of dirt screaming north. I never again got a view down the notch of that. I see there were 3 reports of tornadoes with that as it went ne north of I80.

Big broad funnel sw of Missouri Valley...
http://www.extremeinstability.com/stormpics/2008/08-6-11-4638.jpg
http://www.extremeinstability.com/stormpics/2008/08-6-11-4641.jpg

Thought it had a very good chance at touching down as it moved just north of us. Would not have seen much had it done so, with the wall of rain that slammed the location.

May post some video or video stills later.

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Brian Stertz and I observed a large truncated cone tornado northwest of Holton, Kansas this evening. We targeted northeast Kansas/southeast Nebraska after work, arriving first on the tail end storm riding the state line south of Fairbury. We intercepted this storm near Steele City, where it really had its act together. Obviously highly sheared, quite an updraft, and very vivid lightning. It had dual mesos with a brief funnel that lasted under five minutes. We moved east of this storm, where it began exhibiting very confusing structure and eventually losing its punch, apparently crossing the boundary. We dropped back south to Marysville, Kansas when we first got the reports coming up from Manhattan of a large damaging tornado moving through town. We decided to take another swing, and moved south of Seneca and then east to Holton.

I turned and started heading west too soon near Circleville/Soldier. Now I'm glad we didn't stick around there, because the tornado apparently came straight across this area. What convinced us to backtrack and head back to Holton was interesting, though ... as we approached the edge of the core, a lightning bolt with the most amazing energy ever struck the next power pole to our south just as I had turned the car and was facing it head on. I had my window down and you could FEEL the soundwaves go straight through you. Sparks showered down the side of the pole. We agreed that we needed to go back to Holton and get out of the way of the core. Looking back now I'm just really glad this happened. Brian even said "I think this storm is telling us that we need to move." No doubt!

Wish I could describe the feeling here. First the lights in the entire town go completely out. As in - no flickering - just dead. We sat under a canopy at a gas station for a bit and rolled down the windows as the air became quite still and everything got quiet. Both of us were like "something is coming." There was just no mistaking that feeling. The base came into view behind the station, so I pulled the car around, which is when we could see the tornado. It had tendrils around the top of the cone and was quite close to town. We were convinced it was coming straight through the middle of town. Haven't heard yet if there was damage there, but I would think it is quite possible, particularly up on the north side. As we sat, the wind shifted direction as the circulation passed to our north, followed by wrapping rain. We followed east, where we saw the circulation making another attempt at reorganizing around fifteen minutes later. It was frustrating being in and out of cell signal. Finally did get a call in to channel 4 to make our only report, which was the only time we could get a line out there. You have no idea how spooky it is to sit in a town with no power with the most amazing lightning display of the year dancing around you and a tornado just to your west. Wow.

My brother called me shortly after the boy scout camp incident, which immediately made me feel sad enough to almost pack it in. Unbelievable. Those poor people!

This ended up being quite a night, very eventful ... and one that I won't forget soon. Lots of emotion connected with the storms tonight. I just really wasn't expecting anything nearly that strong to be honest, but these storms meant business and they were monsters. Thanks to Brian for expert navigation and storm-reading skills. We had no data tonight and chased solely by sight and brief reports here and there from the Wx radio. Felt pretty good -

Edit - I screwed up the times on the report. Should have been 12:15 pm for the tornado. It all ran together after that long ride home and I was totally out of it as I wrote the report at 3:00 am.

Edit 2 - Here is a quick screen cap of the tornado NW of Holton, as it was coming out of the Soldier area. Best that could be done under an HP supercell after midnight, I guess -

 

[Dick McGowan]

After missing that Beloit structure on 5/29, I'm glad I didn't miss the structure south of Brookville, KS! We could see it 50 miles away. Jordan Wrecke and I didn't even pay attention to the rotation which is slightly to the right of this picture. After we watched a supercell near Concordia forever, it started to weaken and most likely was being seeded by a pair of supercells to the south and didn't look impressive after awhile. So we left it for the tail end supercell that was producing near Great Bend.

We intercepted south of Brookville, barely beating the core to our west. This is from Kanapolis State Park, KS on highway 141 looking southwest.

We could never get east of it quick enough, and wow, if we could have just briefly stopped, but the storm motion was east at 50 mph and we tried to stay ahead of it. We took photos of a lowering directly over Salina (not the one with the tornado being reported) and waited for the next one. I took many long exposures as the 2nd tornadic supercell was going over Salina, and we could see several power flashes. Tried to get east and caught it as it was entering Junction city, but couldn't see much. We then headed towards the 313 exit, and flew north where several power flashes were observed, before parking on the south side of Manhattan. Power flashes were blinding us, and the tornado was very rain-wrapped. We then went into Manhattan, where the roads were covered in water nearly everywhere we went, and saw some of the damage, but the traffic was annoying, and we didn't want to burden the emergency officials more than what they were already dealing with. Just now hearing about the fatalities yesterday from the Plains, and our hearts go out to the victims and their families.

More later...

 

[Shane Young]

Started in Concordia with the cells going up further SW than we anticipated... but after a few choices that we didn't stick to, just ended up on the northern one near town, just as Dick and Tim (his Storm #1). The storm did organize quite signficantly after passing the 81/24 intersection, with a real tight elongated meso coming together for just a few minutes with a brief funnel.
And just like that it was done.

By the time we made the choice south, the next storm (Storm #2) had cycled down from the tornado reports, and we too intercepted the Great Bend storm (Storm #3), just making it in time across the Kanapolis levee. We did the same follow back to Salina.

Was about to call it a night in Salina, but a couple well timed calls alerted us to the next quickly moving storm (Storm #4), and kept us going past dark (usually I'm done at that point).
As the storm came into Salina, we dodged E on KS-4 a bit further south, worried about getting a bit too much hail in the RFD.

We finally stopped in Gypsum, Ks and took what I thought were lightning photographs. We carried on down 4, trying to stay with Storm 4 and ahead of the one final cell back to the far west that was racing us down near Hope and Elmo, eventually ending up all the way in Topeka. While travelling, we were able to visibly see the Chapman tornado grow into a pretty large stovepipe. We lost it about 5 minutes later and didn't see any more.

But back at the hotel, we stumbled upon this:

Looks freaking fake almost.
But we actually ended up with what I believe is almost the entire tornado lifecycle caught in those long exposures from Gypsum. It appears this matches the tornado report 5 E Salina.

See http://stormchase08.blogspot.com/ for this in full size, the other other pictures that captured it, and a detailed recap of the day. The pictures of the tornado are near the bottom. Click on them to bring up the full res.

As far as I remember, those pictures were all taken looking basically north. Which would fit.
I was actually focusing on the more foreground scud area!!!

Then, three minutes later, we saw a large period of rapid powerflashes towards the northwest... towards Salina.

My camera timestamps for the tornado are 9:55 - 9:58.
For the powerflashes back further to our west: 10:01
The powerflashes were certainly back to the west. I thought the storm had made it further east at that point. I remember having to turn my camera about 50 degrees when I saw them. I just caught the last one or so on a fully zoomed out video. Looks to me like it's possible it's a tornado coming down... though it's almost impossible to tell. If it is, I don't understand, unless there were two sepearate areas of rotation that both produced tornadoes like 5 miles apart?
Does anyone have some timestamps we can use to triangulate? Tim/Gene?

Unfortunately didn't get any video of the noctural stuff.

Crazy night, and sad to hear about all the losses. Thanks to bases Jim Southard and Clark Evans, as well as bit of help by Eddie Natenberg, Phil Hurlbut, and Don Van Dyke. Not sure how we would've done it without some good information.

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

That boy scout deal just straight up sucks, I watched that storm develop near Fremont NE and followed in NE through Washington Counties and eventually into Southern Burt County, Somewhere near Herman the storm really started to look mean, (even though it was not tornado warned at that point) it had a really nice rotating bowl and a big wet RFD coming off the backside, about that time the storm was also starting to turn just a little more East, (not good for me as I was stuck with no where to cross the MO River) the next crossing was Decatur which was too far North, and would have put be well behind the thing, in hindsight I should have just crossed the river at Blair and cut North at MO Valley. Anyway, knowing I would never get ahead of it by going all the way North, I dropped South to catch the storm moving into the North side of the Omaha area. I had a good visual from atop the bluff South of Elk City of the messy unorganized updraft, it eventually wrapped in rain, and I continued ENE with the storm when I visually noticed a notch with screaming inflow, it was wrapped in rain but I tried to safely get just on the North side of the Notch, Isaw what I believe was likely a rain wrapped tornado North of Elkhorn that tracked to the area NW of Bennington, I'll have to go through my video and watch as there was never any fully condensed tube but violently rotating rain curtains.

 

[PeteMcConnell]

Jeff Crecelius and I left Hastings at 2:30 or so and worked our way east on I80. We ended up between Wahoo and Fremont when the cap broke. Rotation was overhead as we pulled into Fremont. Then the storm to our south in Wahoo went tornado warned. We took action to get into position for the tornado warned storm as it moved northeast toward our location. It was intense as it approached and it was hard to stay ahead of it in a good position to see a tornado. We and the local spotters bolted as it threatened to overtake us. After zigging and zagging through Omaha we ended up inching our way down I80 heading west. We exited at Gretna. As soon as we pulled into the gas station for "shelter", the power went out. No doubt as to why, the xm was showing strong rotation very close to us to our south. Law enforcement had the road blocked so nobody could could drive into what I believe would have been a rain wrapped tornado. I'll be checking NWS survey reports to verify whether or not there was a tornado there on the ground. It would shock me if there wasn't. When I heard about the scout camp I almost cried. I've got five kids, some of which will be going to camp next month. I can't imagine what those families are going through. I'll have pictures up within 24 hours.

 

[afischer]

Starting in Sioux City, I chased the first two updrafts northeast from the area. Been a while since I've seen a storm get TOR'd before SVR'd right off the bat. My hopes were initially high as the convection was pretty explosive with strong SSE inflow, but anytime an updraft looked like it wanted to be a sustained rain-free base it would quickly fill with precip. Moved down to a new storm that had an early tornado report near Pierson... sure didn't see a tornado. At this point there were two semi-discrete storms coming up from the southwest (I believe the second one was the one that affected Little Sioux) and cells farther southwest from that which were tor-warned. The northern two really seemed like they were fusing into a line, so I moved back west through the convection on Highway 20 to Sioux City and dropped south on I-29 to catch whatever came through/south of the Omaha area later. At one point I saw numerous large branches on the interstate, but can't honestly remember where or which storm it was associated with. I targeted two tor-warned storms between Omaha and Lincoln. Beat the core of the first one to downtown Omaha. Wasn't impressed visually so dropped south and crossed the river into Bellevue for the trailing storm, which had a large hook on radar. It was producing quite a barrage of CGs. Watched what seemed to be an HP supercell updraft with a turquoise precip dump pass just to my south. Called it a day there. My thoughts and prayers go out to the families affected by the Little Sioux area tornado.

 

[Bryan Howell]

Finally got to go out and chase in the first time in over a year. 2 coworkers and I decided to go out after we got off shift at 2, so we were getting a late start out of the Twin Cities. Didn't actually start heading south until a bit after 3 as we were waiting to see if another coworker wanted to go who has mobile internet. We left without him and he ended up nowcasting for us. I had picked a target of Worthington, MN and had we left earlier, we may have seen something near there. We passed through heavy rain with lightning near Northfield, MN and hoped skies would continue to clear as we headed south. There were a few breaks, but nothing to get excited about. Had to stop twice as my CB/Wx Radio antenna kept blowing off the roof and hitting the window. I was lucky it didn't shatter the window with how hard it hit. Things still weren't looking too grand as we stopped in Fairmont to try and get some wireless access. Perkins has free wifi so we fired up GRL3 and saw the line just to our east with TOR warnings all over it. We wanted to try to get down to Spencer, IA and started heading west again. Went south at Sherburn, MN dropping into Iowa. Warnings went up for the Spirit Lake/Okaboji area and we didn't want to get involved with those lakes, so dropped south just after Superior, IA headed toward Terril, IA. We finally got a hold of our nowcaster and he told us we were headed straight for a rain-wrapped TOR and needed to get east fast. I think we tuned into KICD out of Spencer about this time and they did a great job covering the event. We made our way back to Estherville, IA and heard that the sirens were going off in Terril, which we had just left. As we headed back north, we noticed a break in the line off to our NW. Storm motion was still only about 35-40 mph at this point, so we thought about trying to make it through the break to avoid the rain-wrapped TORs that we were hearing about. Ran back over to Fairmont for another stop at the Perkins and saw that the line just north of the break was TOR warned, so we headed back out. It was getting dark at this point and the storm motion really picked up, so by the time we jogged over to US169, we were too far behind. At that point, we enjoyed the lightning show back into the Cities. Overall, we had fun, saw some structure, saw a very bright and crisp rainbow, great sunset and some spectacular lightning.

 

[Ben Prusia]

No tornadoes yet again for me but an interesting chase to say the least as I again bounced around from tornado warned storms from Valley, Nebraska to Plattsmouth, while chasing through the metro Omaha area during rush hour!

I intercepted the tornado warned storm near Valley where strong rotation was observed. I continued east on this storm along Maple Street in northwestern Omaha where the rotation continued to be observed as it headed into Omaha. As the storm moved further north and then to the east, I broke off of the storm as it headed towards Iowa to try my luck on storms developing to the south and west. Noticing a few minutes late that the OAX radar was not operating, switched over to the Hastings radar and tried to intercept the storm near Lincoln. I didn't make it that far as I then intercepted a newly warned storm near Gretna where a funnel cloud might have been observed. Headed back into Omaha and then south on 75 to intercept another tornado warned storm headed towards Bellevue and Offut AFB. Realizing I was in the path of the storm, I quickly headed south on 75 while observing some rotation. Did not see anything really from this storm and as darkness fell, decided to call it a day and head home.