6/17/06 REPORTS: KS / OK / TX

[Scott Roberts]

My wife Roxan and I left from Wichita about 6:30pm, after we finished attending the wedding and reception for our nephew, who was married a week to the day after his sister

We took along our neice Megan and a friend's daughter Katie, both teenagers who had never seen a tornado up close. We didn't think today was going to be the day to show them one...but we were wrong! :blink:

As it so often seems to happen for me...right as we were about to give up on the line of storms, it produced. We had driven through some pretty heavy rain as we played back and forth across the dry line through southeastern Butler county.

We decided to stop a few miles south of Latham, KS, just into northern Cowley county, after noticing there seemed to be a LOT of convergence right there. Got some beautiful cloud shots to the southeast, and the line overtook us from the west. We turned to our northeast, where we were seeing some nice large-scale rotation. After a few minutes, a small funnel started to drop from the clouds, and we watched my first birth-to-death tornado. From our vantage point, we were unable to verify touchdown, but two other chasers for the station, Eric Lynn and Lance Ferguson, were a bit closer to it, and northeast a bit, and said they did see a touchdown.

[attachmentid=379]

Full pictures and video at http://www.ksstorm.info/061706tornado.html

Hey...even if it was a landspout, it was still the first birth-to-death tornado for me, and the first of any kind for the girls. B)

 

[Sam Sagnella]

Nice fairly local chase, went down I-44 towards Chickasha and then looped back up on HWY9.

 

[Steve_Stuck]

Headed up to Oklahoma and arrived about 3:30pm about 10 miles wnw of Ardmore to see if there was anything worth shooting. Found a nice place to setup on a dirt road.

Though the storms were mostly crap, they were still very pretty to photograph.

I headed back down on the 35 back into Texas and saw this tower go up to the west.

A beautiful end to this day.

 

[Andrew Khan]

Yesterday, we started the day in Woodward, and headed south to Snyder, and already there was convection, and warnings kept being issued via scanner, every second....we saw a funnel west of Lawton, but no pictures...it got caught up in rain way to fast..then we headed SE of Lawton, and saw a rotating meso, which actually cycled before our eyes from cyclonic to anti-cyclonic, however rain shrowded it, so we had re-position, and we also had a monster core headed right for us, that was very nasty. We headed towards Duncan, and saw a white little funnel, at the tail end of the cell. We then went to Waurika...and saw dustdevil in a gas and go, went to DQ, and got some crap, that was nasty....we then waited for a weak cell to overcome us, that had awsome lightning, and a "Wedge" rain shaft........well, it looked like it. After that cell got completely over me, it started to bow out, and picked back up/solidified, and became a nice outflow dominant line, with awsome structure, and a nice shelf cloud. In this shelf cloud was lots of rotation, and eddies embedded in it. As we were photographing it, after racing ahead of the precip, some horses, came especially out of there barn, just to see us, and Kurt Hulst petted it, and then they ran back into there barn. We got at least 50-60 MPH winds.....with that. We then met up with Neal Rasmussen, and chatted with him a bit. The shelf cloud had a monster core...with nickel size hail, and torrential rain. We then headed to Marrieta to find a hotel, and we saw a sweet rainbow, and mammatus from a dead anvil, and we saw a knew cell developing near Red River, TX so we headed out for some lightning, and on the way got a great view of a far away cell, somewhere....

Here are some photographs....

 

[Angie Norris]

A bit of a challenge Saturday as the overcast made chasing visually a game of hide and seek.
I left Norman heading south on I-35 with a target of the Davis/Sulpher area. Just as I got past the exit to Davis, I could see a tower going up to the west though a break in the low clouds, so I had to get a bit farther south to pick up a west road option. I finally got back to Hwy 7, then north on 74. Picked up the storm near Elmore City, where it was just a wall of solid, black cloud to the north. I found a nice spot on Hwy 29, where I had a good view of the storm base and just watched the storm for a while. Had the wildlife encounter for the season, a roadrunner who crossed the road in front of me (I didn't know we have those in OK!). I decided to head back to Norman, and was treated to a decent lightning show through the heavy rain. The best bolt of the day was a HUGE CG over Hwy 9, perfectly centered in my windshield, beaded up as it faded out, five minutes after I turned my camera off...typical
Just a nice afternoon in the Plains... B)

 

[Scott Roberts]

Okay, okay!

I take it back about the landspout!

A number of folks have given a number of reasons why they think this was a true tornado. I agree with them. The biggest reason I've changed my mind is the prominence of the RFD notch...which was more pronounced earlier than it was in the photo I posted. I'd forgotten about it when I worte the posting, to be honest.

50 lashes with a wet noodle! :lol: