7/20/09 REPORTS: CO, NE, KS, OK, TX

[Scott Hammel]

Just got home from a pretty crazy scene in Wheat Ridge, CO where a possible tornado passed through around 10:30 or so.

Snapped trees and a few inches of hail accumulation. They even had to bring out the snow plows to clear some of the roads. Two tornadoes confirmed in Englewood and Castle Rock. Not sure if this damage was caused from a tornado or intense straight line winds. We'll have to see tomorrow once an official damage survey is conducted. Not bad for a night I just headed out to shoot lightning! Full write up on my blog. Also, Dann Cianca was there and shot some video which I'm sure he'll have up in his blog soon as well.

 

[Rob Satkus]

Early am over Norman, 7/21/09

 

[Jeremy Jones]

I caught the Kingman SuperCell as it was passing over Medford, at around Sunset.

 

[edward oneal]

Western Kansas Supercells

Supercells that moved over Western Kansas at sunset.

 

[Mikey Gribble]

Here is my report from yesterday. It is also my new blog address http://mikeygribble.blogspot.com/ . I changed hosts so for the three people that go there (I forgot one of your names) this is the new address. I'll try to get yahoo to do that automatic forward from my old address again though.

Yesterday we got on the tornado warned storm southeast of Kingman and stayed on it for most of the afternoon. That thing was an outflow dust machine. It had a couple big gustnadoes. I got there right after the tornado was reported so I can not comment on whether or not that was true, but I can say when I was on the storm it was pretty high based and even when you were standing under the edge of the updraft you had winds sandblasting from the north. That thing wasn't even close to having a balalance between inflow and outflow so the updraft base remained kind of skinny and elongated. There were areas of unorganized rotation and decent vertical motion occasionally, but nothing to write home about. I have all my equipment put away so I ran out the door with the weather radio, my laptop for mapping software and the cameras. I had my blackberry to check radar until we got on the storm. It was kind of nice except for the fact we didn't even know the storm had a tornado warning for the first 30 minutes due to our lack of data (my weather radios external antenna was broken so we weren't getting a signal and I forgot to bring my amplifer for my cell). We pulled up to some two house town and here the sirens going off. That was are first clue they put out a warning on it.
The storm stayed the same the whole time we were on it so we decided to call it quits a little early and head home. I have a nice gustando shot on my blog. Here is the link again http://mikeygribble.blogspot.com/

http://mikeygribble.blogspot.com/

 

[Steve Worthington]

Oh what a night
We ran the cell all the way down from Kingman KS to hyw412 around Enid OK.

At one point we were pinned in by a TVS that knocked out power as it took out light poles along I-35 just inside southern Kansas. There were 7 TVS`s showing up on GR3 at the same time around 1:30am.
Crazy Night



Anyway, here`s a few good shots of the cell along hwy412 in Okla somewhere around 12:am

 

[D. Hayes]

Bad photo of a wrapped wall with a faint funnel from a expiring tornado. This was just north of Norwich KS around 7pm. I think this is the same storm Steve has better photos of above. Most all of mine came out low contrast due to all the rain on my side of the storm. Edit: Changed images to enhanced versions. The second image you can see the debris cloud on the ground wish I could of gotten closer but the gravel roads were not being kind.

Later that night east Butler Co. KS was tornado warned with a possible wrapped tornado. I had a good vantage point but the possible tornado was well hidden. I did get these photos I assembled into a movie to see the clouds doing there thing around this wrapped twister.
Here

I took this photo around 11pm. This illuminated cell was over wichita KS moving SE into Rose Hill. It was reported that it dropped over 2"/hr

Here's another movie of the above animated from a collection of about 100 time lapsed photos. Sorry about the videos looking like mud. Going to move the over to youtube for HD.

 

[Carey Walton]

Wild weather in the Denver, CO front range area with tornados, high winds, very heavy rain, and piles of hail.

These storms had one last parting shot at Westminster and Arvada as they kicked back some lightning up to 10-15 miles behind the storms.

 

[Mike Umscheid]

Great Bend, KS LP Supercell

I chased/photographed the LP supercell that rolled south near Great Bend on Monday 7/20. Account and images on my blog at http://www.underthemeso.com/blog/?p=922

 

[Dean L. Cosgrove]

July 20 Supercell - Grant, NE to Bird City , KS

I was on this supercell as it formed near Grant, NE . The cell formed south of the severe storm near Ogallala, NE.

The storm exploded and in a few minutes was severe.

This storm became dominate after the cell to the N merged with it. It was a long track tornado warned cell that produced hail to softball size .

I barely got out of the way of the monster softball throwing supercell as I drove S from Benkelman, NE to Bird City, KS . The storm picked up speed from 15 to near 50 MPH . At that point it was impossible to stay ahead of it so I went E of Bird City to escape the larger hail .

Last pic was when the storm was chasing me at "only " 40 MPH .

I could not get pics of this beast at its worst since I wanted to get E in time to avoid wind driven softballs . There may have been a tornado wrapped in the rain N of Bird City but I could not confirm that for sure .

Dean Cosgrove
http://chasetours.com/

 

[Jeff Bartlett]

I also chased the northern Oklahoma cell as it tracked to the south. Got on it around Garber and then followed a larger, meaner cell to the west near Lahoma, Ames, and Okeene.

The first one was pretty to look at and I had a nice position set up between the updraft and precip.

Then north of Enid, it got really pretty.

This storm then got choked off by the storm to the NW, so I pushed through Enid and found the bigger and meaner cousin of the first storm. Great looking wallcloud and updraft. While standing there getting a few shots I could see what appeared to be some random scud underneath the wallcloud. As the minutes passed, the scud began to take the form of a funnel, but I still didn't think much of it. Upon further review of the pics, you can see dust being sucked up into the scud "funnel" and into the updraft. I didn't call anything in and I'm still not exactly sure what I was looking at. The dust being sucked in even obscures the bottom of the lightning just above the horizon. Either way, it sure was pretty.

As this wallcloud continued to drift to the south, I was fighting the core to stay ahead of it and would be over-run on a few occasions. Just east of Ames I was about to be over-taken again by the core and the hail sizes were getting larger and larger and I wanted no part of that. Right before I left, the lowest portion of the wallcloud was skirting along just NW of Ames when I saw the first of ~10 power flashes from the same small area all within maybe 10 to 12 seconds. The last pic is the power flashes with no visible cause. Tornado? RFD? Straight-line winds? Rogue pack of beavers chewing on power poles? Who knows. Power flashes are just to the left of center.

If anyone has any insight on these, especially the scud "funnel", I'm all ears. Well, eyes anyway.

 

[JoelHamburger]

Steve W.:

What was the object that passes from the top of the frame to the bottom @ 58' in your video ?

best,

joel

 

[Steve Worthington]

We dont know yet??

Some kind of Oklahoma UFO is the best I can tell ya
It was moving so fast I cant even think of what it could really be.

Edit: Sorry, I see they removed the link for some reason???? It`s still up if anyone wants to see it, just go to reports on TVN.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I made an impromptu chase to catch the southward-moving supercell that was coming out of Kansas. I didn't think I had time to get to US 64 to head to Enid before the supercell would be over the highway, so I opted to take Hwy 51 west towards Hennessey. By the time I neared Marshall, however, it was apparent that my "target" supercell was weakening; it had the "supercell updraft getting skinnier by the minute as a result of increasing CINH"-look. Nonetheless, I was able to a couple of lightning pics S of Marshall, before retargeting westward to the intense storm that was in the Lahoma - Meno - Ames areas. Unfortunately, I wasn't confident in dependable, paved road options between US 81 in Hennessey and Rte 8 that runs through OKeene. And actually, now that I think about it, I know I chased in that area as part of V2 back in mid-May, and I know we had big problems finding roads that crossed a stream in that area.

At any rate, as a result of the road option issue, I opted to play it safe by dropping southward on US81 towards Dover and Kingfisher, a path that had the unfortunate problem of being in the FFD / anvil precip much of the time. This complicated lightning pics a bit, but I was able to get a few more off. I accidentally left my tripod in the UMXP radar truck at the end of V2, so I don't have a tripod to use. As such, I had to settle for resting my camera on the roof of my car to stabilize it enough to take long-exposure shots (which also limited the areas I could shoot and left me with things like signs and trees in the way of the "action").

A pic of the shrinking supercell well N of Marshall... I think some haze is evident at the cap level as one can see a quasi-horizontal "line" of something in the image... I've seen this many times as the ABL begins to stabilize in the evening.

The next few shots are from a few miles S of Dover around midnight. I also noticed the "wall-cloud"-like feature from this location to my WNW. I think I took a bit of video around here, so maybe I can pull out a vid still. Jeff B. above me has much better (and, presumably, closer) shots of this feature.

GPS log / track and another picture or two are up on my website at http://www.tornadocentral.com/chasing/2009/07202009.php

 

[Tony Laubach]

http://blog.tornadoeskick.com

I got home from work at 6:30pm and sat down to watch a very entertaining Rockies game. The game concluded, and I started to get ready for bed. I received a lightning net alert and was made aware of the storms blowing up north west of Denver. Within 15 minutes, they exploded into a trio of severe warned cells.

I ended up chasing the mini-derecho/tornatic storm that moved through western Denver. What started out as a potential lightning chase escalated into all out warfare! I intercepted the storm right as it neared I-70 from Wadsworth and saw a funnel about the same time as power flashes. I quickly lost view of the funnel when I got slammed by 50mph winds on the interstate. When I rolled up on Kipling, I observed significant street flooding and minor wind damage. As I neared 44th, I began to notice larger trees down. I ventured into a couple neighborhoods west of Kipling and observed a lot of tree damage, including a giant tree that had destroyed a home.

Inititally, the thought was that a tornado had gone through. The amount of damage combined with the funnel/power flashes lead me to initially think tornado. Upon surveying the damage, I fell back to a high wind event given the south/southeast direction of the blown debris. An area of concentrated damage between Tabor and Parfet Streets along 44th would be the only area I'd give credit for a tornado, and that area included signs bent completely over and very large trees snapped at the base (not simply uprooted and pushed over).

I have a ton of pics and more video to come, most posted on my blog ATTM, but a full log will be up with all my daytime damage photos along with three video packages I shot. I got on this storm about 10:20pm and was up all night documenting damage. I got home and went to bed at 8am the following morning, thus being up for 26 hours straight thanks to my 10-hour work shift earlier in the day.

The storm takes aim on me as I hit the Wadsworth exit, the funnel and power flash being sighted moments before this hit.

What most of the Wheat Ridge streets looked like imemdiately after the storm.

The hail fog was incredible and with the power out across the area, made for a very eerie scene.

Hail accumulations in Lakewood. The wind damage was considerably less here, but hail certainly left its mark.

Sunrise showed the true extent of the damage.